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Sloww Sunday Newsletter 073 (August 22, 2021) — Slow Living Movement, Voluntary Simplicity, Marketing Manipulation, & More
Hi friends,
Here’s the latest from Sloww along with the most interesting things I discovered last week. To respect your time and attention, every newsletter can be read in under 5 minutes. If you enjoy it, please take 5 seconds to share it with someone who could benefit from it.
Happy learning and living!
New News
⛰️ Woah! Sloww got a shout-out in one of the editors’ picks articles in The New York Times! Welcome to all the new email subscribers who stumbled upon Sloww from the mention. If you missed it, you can read the article here: Who Needs a Whirlwind Trip When You Can Take It Slow?
“‘While typical travel is all about what you do, slow travel emphasizes how you do it,’ Kyle Kowalski, the founder of Sloww, a website devoted to slow living, wrote in an email. ‘Instead of a jam-packed itinerary, slow travel is about intentionally choosing where you will do less in order to experience more. Instead of rushing from one thing to the next, slow travel is about balance and pace, leaving open time to create space and spontaneity.'” — Elaine Glusac
♾️ It was a special week because there was another shout-out in the new Infinite Loops podcast with Jim O’Shaughnessy featuring Tom Morgan (1:05:16 mark): Curation in the Age of Information Abundance
“Seek out really good synthesizers because they’re people who are operating in the middle of the information ecosystem … Maria Popova (Brain Pickings), Kyle Kowalski (Sloww), Blas Moros (The Latticework) … They are helping curate content for you, and they are trusted filters. They’re almost like a proxy for your consciousness.” — Tom Morgan
Sloww Stuff
🆕 Sloww Sunday Summary: 50 Wise & Mind-Expanding Highlights from Newsletter Issues 1-50
This post is for you if you just recently subscribed to the email newsletter and have wondered what you missed. Or, if you’ve been along for the ride from the beginning but want a refresher. Each highlight links to the original newsletter where you can learn more.
🔒 Behind the Scenes: A Look at My Personal Lifestyle Design
In case you missed it, this Premium post shares my personal answers to 35+ lifestyle design questions. This post should give you some thought-starters for your own lifestyle design!
Modern Knowledge
🐌 In Praise of Slowness — Carl Honoré
(19 mins | TED)
Carl Honoré is the author of “In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed” (Book Summary + 🔒Premium Summary). It’s hard to believe this TED Talk is 16 years old! It’s still one of the best videos I’ve discovered about the slow living movement. There is a ton of slow living content out there these days. The downside is that most of it isn’t great. Why? One of the biggest things that I’ve learned over the last 5+ years is that slow living is less about a bunch of trendy tips, tricks, or tactics, and more about foundational strategies and philosophies for how you approach your daily life.
Slow living is not:
- Living in slow motion, speaking slowly or quietly, soft music, etc.
- A trendy aesthetic of black/white, neutral colors, etc.
- Anti-technology, anti-productivity, etc.
Slow living is:
- Realizing your relationship with time and downshifting your default mode from unnaturally busy to your natural pace.
- A life philosophy or state of mind/being that you bring to your daily life.
- Being present and intentional so you can be more connected to yourself, others, and the world around you.
Develop a more intentional relationship with your space and time:
- Space: Decluttering, simple living, minimalism
- Time: Downshifting, slow living, essentialism
“Sometimes it takes a wake-up call to alert us to the fact that we’re hurrying through our lives, instead of actually living them; that we’re living the fast life, instead of the good life.” — Carl Honoré
Timeless Wisdom
✌️ What is Voluntary Simplicity? — Vicki Robin
(27 mins | YouTube)
Similar to the slow living movement, when it comes to simple living and even FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early), some of the best content is original content from many years ago. Vicki Robin is the co-author of the bestselling book “Your Money or Your Life” which was first published in 1992. This video interview was conducted in 1998, and they are still wise words decades later.
If you want more from Vicki Robin, check out the videos and quotes in Sloww Sunday issues #067 and #003.
“The new roadmap says that there is something called ‘enough’ … Your ‘enough point’ is having everything you want and need, to have a life you love and full self-expression, with nothing in excess. It’s not minimalism. It’s not less is more (because sometimes more is more), but it’s that sweet spot or Goldilocks point … Once people start to pay attention to the flow of money and stuff in their lives in this way, their consumption drops by about 20-25% naturally because that’s the amount of unconsciousness that you have in your spending. So, when you become conscious, that falls away and many people say they don’t even know what they used to spend their money on.” — Vicki Robin
Mind Expanding
🤯 How Marketing Manipulates You — Edward Bernays
(Twitter)
The short excerpt in the link above from “The Great Mental Models Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts” by Shane Parrish (Farnam Street) is about Edward Bernays, a pioneer in propaganda, persuasion, and PR. It’s a showcase of extreme marketing manipulation and hard to believe it’s from 100 years ago. If this is what was going on then, can you imagine what is going on now?
After working in the marketing/advertising industry for a decade (2007-2018), it’s fairly clear to me that if the masses don’t master their minds soon, they will have little chance of mentally protecting themselves from the fully automated and optimized marketing manipulation of the near future. Why care about this? If you understand the psychological mechanisms that are being exploited, you can better develop a “memetic immune system” in your mind as an antidote to advertising.
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested.” — Edward Bernays
💭 Deep Quote
“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.” — Helen Keller
Sharing: If you enjoyed this issue, please help grow Sloww by sending this post to some friends or family who could benefit from it or sharing it on social media. Anyone can subscribe for free here.
Support: Sloww is a one-human labor of love. If you’re interested in supporting my work, there are several financial and non-financial ways to support.
Feedback: Have something you want to say, or just want to say hi? It’s always much appreciated. Just send me an email or reach out socially.
Have a slow and simple week!
Kyle Kowalski
Solopreneur & Synthesizer, Sloww
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