How to slow down

a guide to slowing down in a world that won’t

1. Stop committing to big future plans

It’s nice to have plans because then we have something to look forward to. But once you make a commitment, unless you end up flaking, you’re on the hook to stay excited. Not just for the main thing, but also all the supporting tasks.

For example: You might be excited about running a marathon in six months, but are you ready to run four times a week and sacrifice one day every weekend for your long runs? What’s really underneath the desire to run a marathon? Is it a sense of accomplishment? Being able to follow through on your commitments? Losing weight?

Find the essence and start there. Pursue that mission, but instead of in one massive future commitment, take it one day at a time. Starting today.

2. Reclaim your attention

Put the phone away. Turn off notifications. Delete social media apps.

First it was oil, then it was data. Now the most valuable resource is your attention. If you're not paying for it with money, you're paying for it with your mind. Social media feeds are engineered to hijack your focus and distort your sense of having enough. Watching endless highlight reels trains your brain to feel behind.

Don’t charge it by your bed, otherwise you’ll impulsively check it first thing in the morning and doomscroll at night. Move your charger to another room as a starting action. Need an alarm clock? They still make them. I even linked it for you.

3. Interrogate your “but’s”

You might want to slow down, but you're worried about the tradeoffs. What if you lose your edge—your ambition, your momentum? What if slowing down means missing out, being left out, or falling behind

But falling behind on what, exactly? Keeping up with the Kardashians? I don’t give a shit about Love Island or what the latest TikTok dance trend is. But I do care about not wasting my life trying to keep up with things that don’t actually matter to me.

Interrogate your “but’s” and “what if’s”. We often frame everything as a tradeoff: rest or achievement, slowness or success. Are you stuck in an either/or? Either I go fast and win, or I slow down and lose. Either I’m productive, or I’m lazy. But what if that’s a false choice?

What if slowing down doesn’t mean giving up? What if it’s not a tradeoff at all, but a reorientation? What if slowing down is exactly what makes you sharper, steadier, stronger?

4. Upgrade your fuel source

What’s driving you? Is it money? Status? A hunger to feel worthy, to belong? How do you relate to yourself when you’re not moving forward? When you’re not producing or earning?

Striving can feel amazing… until it doesn’t. Securing the bag, getting shit done, chasing the next milestone—it works, until it starts to hollow you out. And when it does, things break.

The shift away from that kind of fuel is gradual. It comes with setbacks and relapses. I’m still working on it myself.

Athletes talk about playing “for the love of the game.” Missionaries serve from devotion. A dad works long hours because it means putting food on the table for the people he loves.

Operating from fear, insecurity, or not-enough-ness is dirty fuel. It burns fast, but then it burns out. Love and purpose are cleaner alternatives. They're just as powerful, far more sustainable, and if you stay connected to yourself, they’re infinitely available.

5. Feel enough

It’s not as simple as reading a little blog post and thinking your way out. You have to actually feel it yourself.

Modern Western culture tell us that consciousness lives in the mind, which leaves the body treated like a meat sack or visual apparatus to attract a mate. That’s wrong. The body isn’t just along for the ride—it’s an integral part of the whole, and it’s far more intelligent than we think.

The body stores memories in the form of emotions. It’s often closer to truth than the stories that your mind makes up. That’s why it’s so tortuous when you believe something in your head, but you know it’s not true at a deeper level.

Feeling enough means landing in a quiet place of inner abundance. Yes, your bank account might be low and the future might be wildly uncertain. But your body can still recognize: you’re safe right now.

This isn’t something to force or effort your way through. There’s no A+, no checklist. Feeling enough starts when you slow down enough to be with yourself.

6. Prioritize what really matters to you

There’s no shortage of prioritization frameworks: Eisenhower Matrix, RICE, Impact/Effort. As a product manager, I’ve used them all. They’re helpful for team projects, but when it comes to your life, these frameworks miss one crucial thing: the source.

Who is this priority coming from? If it’s your boss or a real obligation in work, that’s fine. But when it comes to your personal life, how much of what you do is actually for you? And how much is inherited from your friends, family, industry, or society at large?

René Girard called this mimetic desire. We want what others around us want simply because they want it. Spend enough time in any group, and you’ll start chasing the same milestones without even realizing it.

The result is overwhelm. That familiar sensation of being stretched too thin, rushing through to-do lists filled with things you’re not even sure you chose.

Real prioritization is about subtraction. It’s about questioning the “shoulds,” and letting go of the things that don’t actually matter in the bigger, grander picture. It’s as much about saying no as it is about saying a full, wholehearted yes to what truly aligns.

Not everything deserves your time.

7. Simplify

There’s a difference between complicated and complex. A complicated system has many parts, but it can ultimately be figured out, like filing taxes or assembling IKEA furniture. A complex system, like an ecosystem or a human life, is full of interdependencies and surprises. It can’t be solved. It can only be lived.

Why does this matter? Because we often get it backwards. We try to solve the complex with spreadsheets and hacks. And we let the complicated, like calendar clutter, indecision, or meal planning, slowly choke the joy out of our day.

I say: Let the complex be complex. That’s life. But simplify the complicated wherever you can.

I want my life to be simple. Not because I’m a simpleton, but because I want to make room for the things that are beautifully complex. I want to ponder philosophy and seek the sublime, not worry about I’ll sleep or what I’ll have for lunch.

At the core, all I really want is to be healthy, to have deep relationships, and to wake up with the freedom to spend my days in ways that feel meaningful. Simplicity helps me hold onto that. It clears the noise so I can stay close to what actually matters.

8. Give yourself permission to do things you enjoy

It’s remarkable how good we are at not letting ourselves do the things we actually enjoy.

Somewhere along the way, we picked up the idea that joy has to be earned. First you finish your homework, then you get a cookie. First the chores, then you can go outside. But now the homework is endless work, and the chores never end. They’re not even cookies anymore. They’re nourishing things like hiking, making music, or learning something simply because you’re curious.

What got you here might not be what gets you where you want to go. The reward loop of performance followed by permission may have served you once. But eventually, it gets in the way.

You don’t need to accomplish something first. You don’t have to earn joy. You just have to allow it.

Doing things for the sake of it helps us realize that not everything has to be like work. Internal enjoyment doesn’t need to require the prerequisite of external achievement.

9. Enjoy fully

It’s hard to slow down if you’re not enjoying your life. If nothing feels great, it actually makes sense to stay busy working, pushing, and distracting yourself.

But odds are, you already have things in your life that could bring you joy. A simple meal, good music, access to every movie or show ever made from the comfort of your home. We live in an age of abundance, but we’ve forgotten how to enjoy simple things.

We eat with one hand while scrolling with the other. We watch three different sports games at once—one on the TV, two on the laptop—while tracking bets on our phone. We numb instead of savor. We pop Skittles when what we really want is a ripe juicy peach.

Part of slowing down is resetting the threshold for what brings you joy. You don’t need a better plan, a bigger experience, or the perfect setting. You don’t need to chase something new to feel good again. Often, it’s the humble, repeatable things that when experienced while present restore us the most.

Enjoyment isn’t about adding more. It’s about doing less, but noticing more. And the more you enjoy fully, the more you start to notice just how many moments you’ve been skimming past.

For me, it started with meditation. Then it was walking without my phone. Then it was learning how to pick the best watermelon. Sweet, crisp, with no mealy spots. Enjoyment doesn’t have to indulgent or gluttonous. It’s a practice. And it’s available everywhere, if you’re paying attention.

10. Tend to your nervous system

This might sound like optional self-care, but it’s actually foundational. We weren’t built to sit in front of screens all day, locked in our heads and disconnected from our bodies. And yet, that’s where many of us live; tense, shallow-breathing, overstimulated, and wondering why we feel so off.

Your nervous system is your internal control center. It tracks whether you’re safe or under threat. Back in the day, that meant lions or starvation. Now it’s Slack notifications, news alerts, or the endless pressure to be doing more. Even if you're physically safe, your body may not feel it.

If you want to slow down, you have to show your nervous system it’s okay to do so.

Start by breathing. Slowly. Shallow screen-breathing keeps you in a low-grade stress state. Movement helps. Walking, yoga, stretching, dancing, or going outside without your phone. Try yoga nidra. It’s my favorite way to downshift.

If slowing down feels hard, it might be because there's something you're unconsciously avoiding, like grief, shame, or anxiety. These emotions can’t be outpaced. But they can be metabolized, slowly, when your system is ready.

Tending to your nervous system is not a luxury. It’s what makes slowness possible.

11. Mark time with ritual

Time is an interesting thing. On one hand, it’s made up: hours, minutes, days. But on the other hand, we experience time less as a concept and more as a felt sense. It stretches and contracts. Waiting in line at the DMV feels like an eternity, but a deep conversation with a friend can zoom by so effortlessly.

Days start to blur when we run on autopilot. We sprint from Monday to Friday, cram our fun and rest into the weekend, and then brace ourselves for the Sunday Scaries. It’s a rhythm, but it’s not exactly natural.

Long before smartphones or hyperconnected work lives, people marked time through ritual. Daily rituals created soft boundaries in the flow of life with slow mornings, shared meals, evening walks. Larger rituals marked thresholds: childhood to adulthood, single to married, life to death.

Ritual doesn’t have to mean incense, chants, or evil spirits. It just means doing something with intention. Drinking tea in silence. Lighting a candle before writing. Going for a walk at sunset every day to let the body know it’s time to wind down.

By ritualizing small moments, we’re practicing the art of noticing, appreciating, and anchoring ourselves in time. It’s how we make the invisible visible. It’s how we slow down enough to feel where we are.

12. Work intensely

Working hard is a vital part of life. Laziness isn't rest; it’s avoidance.

At first glance, working intensely might seem incompatible with slowing down. But it’s actually the shallow, scattered, always-on kind of work that burns us out. True impact comes from caring deeply and focusing your energy, not from constant activity.

I still want to be a high performer. I want to hone my craft, improve, get stronger, build better products, write better essays, and coach more powerfully. There’s nothing wrong with performance itself. It’s the identity of being a performer that gets slippery. One is an action. The other becomes a mask.

When I work on something that matters to me, it feels even better to go all in. The more I care, the more I want to raise the bar. And the more I raise the bar, the more focused and alive I feel.

In some ways, our tendency to stay busy or distracted comes from not going deep enough. We half-ass things, then wonder why they don’t satisfy us. But when you’ve worked intensely, when you’ve given something your full attention and energy, slowing down doesn’t feel like a guilty indulgence. It’s the natural next move. You don’t have to force it. You just do it.

That satisfaction hits different. After a real workout or deep work, you don’t want to doomscroll. You want to rest. Your body wants to recover and your mind feels empty. The urge to numb fades. When we work in a way that’s natural, rest comes naturally too.

This is how we come into the world. Babies play with full intensity, eat when they’re hungry, and then rest without hesitation. The real challenge isn’t whether to work hard or slow down. It’s to find work that feels like a game worth playing.

13. Live seasonally

Sometimes it’s easy to forget we’re animals.

But we are. And animals live in tight relationship with their environment. They eat when food is abundant, migrate when it gets cold, and rest when it’s time to rest. The seasons shape everything they do. It’s not a debate or a Huberman protocol. It’s instinct.

Living fully like an animal isn’t practical. After all we have jobs, social norms, and grocery stores. But I’m not sure that sitting in a box all day, staring at screens for both work and leisure, is the answer either.

Slowing down in a world that keeps speeding up requires returning to something deeper, something older. Living seasonally is one way back to our natural rhythm. You don’t have to escape to a cabin or move to the woods. You just have to start noticing.

Summer brings long days and warm air, which might invite more wandering, more swims, more unstructured time. Winter brings short days and low light, which might ask for slower mornings, quiet evenings, books, or knitting if that’s your jam.

Do what feels natural, and you’ll start living more naturally. And living more naturally almost always means slowing down.

When you live seasonally, you begin to notice change. You see how your environment shifts in subtle ways. You see how you’re shifting too, often faster than you think. That noticing builds trust. And that trust helps you slow down.

The Tao Te Ching says “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

14. Let life surprise you

One reason we resist slowing down is the belief that we need to keep grinding to create opportunities and make progress. We see our goals on the horizon and, being smart and capable, map out the exact steps to get there. This approach can work for simple, linear goals: train for a race, get a certification, save a certain amount. But when it comes to the complexity of life, it starts to break down.

Think about it: how much of your life has actually unfolded according to your carefully laid plans? How many of your biggest turning points came purely from strategy and effort, without help from other people, unforeseen timing, or plain old luck?

I landed my dream job, but got laid off 10 months in. With barely a year of experience, I job hunted in the middle of a pandemic and took the first offer I got. It was remote, with odd hours and its own challenges, but it also gave me winters spent skiing and months living in Hawaii—experiences I’ll always cherish. I couldn’t have predicted any of it, and that’s the point.

Life includes forces beyond our control. Call them blessings, chance, karma, chaos. Whatever your framing, they’re real. And acknowledging that is both humbling and freeing. It means you don’t have to do it all. You don’t have to fill every hour with output. You don’t need to scheme your way to the next milestone.

Instead, you can start to make space for serendipity, synchronicity, and the creative sparks that arrive when you stop trying so hard. Sometimes slowing down is the most intelligent move you can make.

15. Move slowly

You can’t read a blog from some dude on the internet and expect to slow down by tomorrow. This isn’t a checklist or a competition. Some of these ideas might feel natural, others might bring up resistance. That’s okay. Real slowing down happens through direct experience, not intellectual agreement. So don’t rush to try everything at once. Pick one and try it out. Feel it in your body, not just in your head.

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P.S. I’m a coach.
I help ambitious humans slow down, feel more alive, and do work that actually matters to them. If you're ready to explore that, you can learn more here.