Slow-read, surely

This is the second last article of the 2022 and as usual, I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to write about. When in doubt, just write--about anything. One can always write about the act of writing itself.

I've been journalling a lot these past 2 years, even though in terms of events, these must have been the least eventful years of my life. In my last article, I mentioned how events are time markers and they are the thing that gives us a sense of the passing of time. It is no wonder that time just flew by over the past two years but even so, they are no less meaningful. I've enjoyed the time I spent interacting with people at work, which had been almost 100 percent online.

When you work online, everyone becomes equal. Every colleague is a cubicle mate.  In some strange way, people are more approachable because it takes a lot less effort to make contact--you simply 'ping' them. There's no sense of like knocking the door of someone's office. That sense of hierarchy is not so evident when everyone is a ping away.

I can as easily whisper something to a colleague in Budapest as I do to a colleague who happens to live a few blocks away. My attitude towards work is simple: it is not important. Work is just an excuse for me to hang out with friends. It simply gives me great pleasure to help friends, and hopefully in the process I learn something from it too.

I do not mind repetitive tasks--even the most mundane ones provide one with opportunities to learn. How so? Simple. If something is so repetitive, then one must be able to do it without thinking. It then becomes a mechanical task requiring only muscle memory. When one is performing such a task then, the brain is 'free'. It's like driving--when you drive you can listen to an audiobook and meditate on other things. It's actually the best use of time--you are killing two birds with one stone.

My goal is to make my everyday job as mechanical as possible so that I can free my mind for 'higher level' processing. For example, I often think of ways to improve my work efficiency: how can I perform this mechanical task even faster? What is the best time for performing a certain task? How do I minimise errors? What tools and templates can I use towards this end?

When you approach your daily tasks this way, everything becomes interesting. Even a sending routine email reply is an opportunity to be 'creative'. I often try to use an unexpected word or phrase things in such a away that they appear fresh. 

When I have a series of routine tasks to perform, it affords me the opportunity to free my brain to listen to a podcast or even 'watch' a video. There's so much content to consume these days that one must make full use of one's spare mental bandwidth for such a purpose.

Recently I found a new way of reading: it is the complete opposite of speed-reading. You see, I have an old LED monitor of VGA resolution, which I don't really use anymore. So I hooked it up to my personal laptop as a second screen and mounted it in portrait position. I would then use it to display a full page from an e-book. It sits there beside my main computer monitor almost like a framed picture and every time I rest my eyes on it, I inevitably read a few lines, like how one could not avoid reading a poster.  

This I think is the ultimate way to slow-read. I would be in no hurry to turn the page. The reading is purely incidental; and when I think I've read every sentence in the page, then only I would advance to the next. And there you have a way of indirectly reading a book! 

I think we tend to rush through life too much. If you are making tea, you'll have to allow time for the tea leaves to infuse in hot water. Some content should be consumed that way too. Poetry for instance, is to be savoured slowly, requiring many repeated readings for one to truly grasp its hidden beauty. 

When time seems to speed past us in a blur and when work seems utterly routine and mundane, complain not. Find those interstices of space and time and allow the good things in life to infuse into your soul. Slow-read your way to a more fulfilling life!