Author: jaapsoft

In praise of slow walking

align=”center”

When on Raasay I did some slow walking. Raasay is a beautiful Scottish island, it is silent and there are no crowds on the roads.

Slow walking is paying attention to the path, the verges of the road and the surroundings.

I listen to the sounds of water and birds; to use my binoculars I have to stand still. I watch the hills for deer, then a golden eagle flies above me. Crows chase the eagle away.

I prefer to do slow walking on my own. Walking in company could be very pleasant, but slow walking is a solitary act.

I love to take photos when walking. It channels my attention to the visible here and now but even without a camera one could have this kind of attention. We can use our eyes as if we are looking for a photography subject.

Cheers to the people who maintain the paths. Thanks for the stepping stones they provide for, the small bridges and crossings to climb over fences.

Crossing By @jaapsoft

Slow walking is only about walking. Walking is “an sich” (a ‘thing-in-itself ‘as defined in Kantian philosophy). The destination is not the most important part of the journey.

Slow walking is enjoying moments.

There is no app for slow walking, no phone is needed…and if somebody did make an app, then it would count neither steps nor time…

Maybe elderly people slow walk not just because they cannot go fast? And youngsters too can choose to walk slowly or take a stroll.

May 8, 2017
The art of just watching

According to Cornelis Verhoeven, a Dutch philosopher, action-orientation is the belief in the necessity of activity alongside the rejection of passivity. Action oriented people believe that it is better to do something than wait passively for action to emerge from a given situation. Loafing is regarded by these ‘activistische ideologen en moralisten’ (activist ideologues and moralists) as almost criminal behaviour.

Action oriented people can even get angry when they see loafing in others.

Verhoeven believes people caught in action-orienation feel they can always succeed through action. There is nothing that seems to challenge humans more than their incapacity to act; such things as watching TV, playing games or just hanging around are seen mostly as bad habits. Our world today assumes we should always be ‘doing’ something useful.

We have come to consider focus and action as “good,” and idleness or loafing as “bad” or unproductive.

It is mostly true that we tend to feel guilty if we spend time doing nothing. In turn, Verhoeven sees action oriented people as blasé, as wanting to deny the value of any delay between wonderment and answer. He writes about the value of wonderment and about ‘the art of just watching’. Action orientation prefers a quick solution, even when it entails doing violence or forcing a given situation, above patience and emergence as an approach to life. Yet, ‘the word is very important, it is a delay between thought an action’. We should, therefore, take time with words as these are a ‘middle position between thought and action’.

He talks about the importance of ‘just considering’ and ‘just watching’.

Design by @mdvfunes Licensed CCBY

Verhoeven writes that as a philosopher he does not want to change the world; considering and watching is not only the opposite of action orientation. It is not the kind of watching of a person driving a car, for example, nor is it leering or spying.

Just watching, as understood by Verhoeven, has no other purpose than itself. It is an act free of purpose, never a productive force.

He talks about his approach as a “philosophy of the seventh day” – understood in the traditional way as the day we do not work.

Although Verhoeven has no lack of official recognition of his talent in his country of origin, he remained largely unknown to the general public during his life.

May be because his philosophy did not fit with our modern action-orientated ethos? Perhaps our world has little vocabulary left for what counts but cannot be counted and no time left to just watch without a purpose.

Watch an interview with Cornelis Verhoeven after he’d won the P.C. Hooftprice for literature and was interviewed by somebody who had never heard of him.

April 2, 2016
(Re)Learning to read

One way to read with more attention and more care is using the Book Journal.

You need a notebook and a pen at hand when you are reading. You read with the intention to write down at least one sentence of the book. The Daily Stillness recently published tips about slow reading. Slow reading aims to reconnect us with our love of reading. Wiki-How offers a step by step guide to start you off creating a book journal.

It is possible to steer your attention or improve your focus with the help of a Book Journal. This little task of writing down a memorable sentence does help to read slower and with more attention. Taking notes is a way to improve your attention and retention of the material you read. We tend to highlight and reread passively at best, research shows that it is effortful retrieval that helps us learn; taking time to read, recall and write our own interpretation of what we read. John Dunlosky a renowned researcher in this area can tell you more if you are interested in this research.

I use a paper notebook to write sentences down, as I find that using a phone or tablet would distract me from reading. You know that these devices distract you from reading, even just hearing a notification that you do not respond to has been shown to be distracting.

I keep this Book Journal close to my favorite reading place. I try to use my fountain pen to write in my Book Journal because that makes it more like a diary, I guess. Maybe you want to buy a very special notebook for your Book Journal. And sometimes when reading in other places I do use a post-it or a piece of paper for temporary storage. I used to travel a lot and always had a book to read with me.

My Book Journal is a real treasure. One sentence in the Book Journal can make me remember the whole book.

Sometimes I can use the quotes in speeches or when I write a letter on a special occasion. I started the Book Journal in 1993 and now I am writing a second one because the first is full of quotes. When I wrote my own book I was very happy I added the date of reading, title and author to my quotes and notes so I could use them in my writing. I also often added the page number of a quote. All very helpful to my own writing later.

One citation from my Book Journal:

“Of course, in order to practice this style of reading as an art, one thing is above all essential—something that today has been thoroughly forgotten (and so it will require still more time before my writings are “readable”) — something for which one almost needs to be a cow, at any rate not a modern man — rumination.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of moral, prologue.

Source of images: Book Girl Reading Book with Post-its

December 11, 2015
Silence and creativity

The creative thinking process requires the silent pause.

After a first phase of thinking about a new idea I need some rest, I need incubation time. I often imagine the unconscious mind continues pondering during my silent incubation time. The brain and our intuition needs silence.

Intuition has a very tiny voice. You cannot hear it unless you take your time and be silent. Some problems are solved when I sleep. The next morning the solution is there.

When Archimedes did not know the solution to his problem he took a bath; relaxing in his bath he knew where to look for the answer. In ‘Zen and the art of motor maintenance’ making a cup of coffee is used as a way to be silent and let the mind work for itself to avoid the gumption trap.

The silent pause in the creative process help us maintain enthusiasm and energy flowing. Stress drains your energy and enthusiasm. It will kill your creativity. As Steven Johnson often reminds us: Chance favours the connected mind, connection needs the silent pause.

“True intelligence operates silently. Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found.” ― Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks

November 21, 2015
You need self control to remain the master of your device

How does your device help you with self control and preventing stress and pain?

Source License CCBYNCSA

Recently on the Daily Stillness we explored apps to help digital stillness. One was called Pause to support mindfulness training and the other was called Self Control to help us focus when online. I saw the daily activities and wanted to share my own experience as a long time user of this kind of digital support. This guest post is about my experience.

Digital stillness apps could help you. At first, I used this type of app as prevention for repetitive strain injury (RSI).

I do spend lots of time on the computer. Writing books, doing internet research or writing on websites. I did get RSI because of all that internet work. It hurts a lot. It is painful. Medical help was required. I also needed a solution to continue writing without painful consequences. So I did some searches on internet, and found many resources.

I selected some apps to help me take time off and do my RSI exercises regularly. I tried a few and found a solution that fits me. Now I use AntiRsi. It is for OS X, source code is available and it does run on Ubuntu 14.04. As Wikipedia explains ‘AntiRSI is a program for OS X that helps prevent RSI (repetitive strain injury) and other computer related stress. It does so by forcing you to take regular breaks, yet without getting in the way. It also detects natural breaks.’ Another app called Self Control may be more what you need,

Set it for 4 hours, for instance, and your browser will behave as if it’s offline for that period of time. No amount of browser restarts or computer reboots will stop it. Before you have heart palpitations, know that you can whitelist or blacklist certain sites. So, rather than completely disabling the entire Internet, you can selectively decide which sites are OK, or not OK, to visit during your focus period. J.K. Glei

At first listening to the Self Control app was easy because I still suffered from RSI. I listened and took my pauses. Yet after some time the flow of my writing process kept me working, even if the Self Control App told me to stop. That was stupid of me. I had to ask for medical help again, but at least I did learn my lesson.

Now the AntiRsi app works better for me. I like the freedom in the preferences to adjust pause times. Now it is easy to finish a last sentence because the app does not block the computer. When I started using apps for support I needed one that blocked my computer and gave me no choice. I needed to be forced to stop. After I learnt my lesson when the RSI recurred I no longer need to be forced to stop, I will stop.

I also really like the application icon of the AntiRsi app in the dock, it is a little clock that shows the time left to work before a pause. Yet this type of app do not only protect me from health problems. The Self Control app made me leave the computer for a pause of about 8 minutes. In the pauses I do all kind of things. Making coffee, clean the house as I often work from home or care for the plants in the window or play my bass clarinet!

I did discover that those pauses were very profitable, because in the pause I did have time to think freely. My thoughts wandered when I was doing something else than working on the computer.

That is how I discovered The Secret of the Pause.

The slow and unguided thinking in the pause fosters creative ideas. Do you know that book about thinking slow and thinking fast?

The Self Control app is still on my computers, in case I forget to choose what helps my well being and creativity.

When people ask me to do something I take a pause before answering. My first thought is to help people and do what they ask me, but the Self Control app did teach me to ask for a pause and give the question some time to find an answer. Now I take some time and let text wait rather than publish it at once. It waits in draft mode for some time and that is just fine.

November 2, 2015