Cool Down (12 page)

Anger, similarly, is a state of emotional intensity that usually comes about as a reaction to a negative situation. When a person is feeling anger, she may experience a similar sensation of emotional arousal, a surge of vitriolic passion, and a desire for instant action. But, in fact, in the face of the anger response, the heart's ability to pump blood efficiently through the body drops significantly, which puts certain people at risk for disturbances in heart rhythm (arrhythmias). It can also do significant damage to your lungs. Anger is not a healthy emotion.

It is interesting to note that the physical stresses brought on by fear and anger differ markedly from those brought on during another high-intensity situation: strenuous, enjoyable exercise. The reduction in blood-pumping efficiency does not happen during periods of
eustress
(positive stress). Exercise, though vigorous, is still a form of relaxation, akin to walking fast because you like to. The difference, in terms of experience between what the body feels when angry or fearful, compared to what it feels during times of enjoyment demonstrates the wide scope of physical and mental repercussions that must be understood if we are to live healthy and productive lives. No place better illustrates these repercussions than urban Japan.

The
Slow
movement started in Japan in reaction to a very real problem known as
karoshi
, translated as “death by overwork.” Real death, not just disillusionment or boredom. We're talking about hard-working professionals, in their 30s, 40s, or 50s with no obvious signs of illness who one day simply keel over. There are two primary causes of death through
karoshi
: the first is heart attack and the second is stroke. Both are brought on by a noxious mix of overwork, stress, and pressure.

Since the first official case in 1969, Japanese officials have tracked all cases of
karoshi
, primarily because of its grave implications for the Japanese workforce, but also, I would suggest, with an eye to the growing number of lawsuits being brought forth by grieving families of the deceased. The Japanese Ministry of Labor regularly publishes statistics on the spread of this affliction.

Japan was, and still is, a fertile breeding ground for
karoshi
. For decades, its work culture expected that no worker was to leave the office at the end of the day until everyone was finished, usually well after 8:00 p.m. An average of two hours of unpaid overtime per day was expected and was dutifully given. It was all about “face time.” It was also expected that colleagues join each other for drinks after work where, within the tightly constrained cultural atmosphere of urban Japan, small talk, gossip, or criticism could be expressed and conveniently excused as “the alcohol doing the talking.” Millions of exhausted Japanese businessmen, in later decades to be joined by exhausted businesswomen, would then squeeze themselves into packed commuter trains, returning home late in the evening to grab three or four hours' sleep before starting the ritual again. Japanese professionals who have kids routinely use the services of extended-hour daycare centers and overnight nanny services, but even the population of overworked parents is dwindling. Japan's birthrate is plummeting, and the cause is directly linked to overly long work hours.
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It's not as if the Japanese consciously desired to become workaholics and absentee parents. It was simply the result of a combination of elements, including tradition, economic expansion, ambition, and necessity. These created the circumstances for such an impossible workload to take root. For a while it seemed like a good thing. But there are some in Japan who have started to question this commitment to death-in-harness and have begun to express a desire for the adoption of a less hasty lifestyle. The answer, they believed, was to adopt and practice the principles of
Slow.

The Japan Consumer Marketing Research Institute (JCMR) published, and continues to publish, a series of reports that shows how some of their country's consumers are indeed consciously shifting to a “slow life” consumer lifestyle. The JCMR, which advises national and international companies on trends and business opportunities in Japan, identifies, for example, how some Japanese males in their 40s and 60s are now leading the downshift into the “slow life” consumption pattern.

Certain towns have gone as far as to take revolutionary steps in aid of the
Slow
movement. The prefecture of Iwate, for example, located in northern Japan, re-elected its governor, Hiroya Masuda, in 2004 for a third term on a platform of “pro-relaxation” with 88 percent of the votes cast. Says Mr. Masuda:

Iwate's achievements are interesting, and its coastal countryside is beautiful, but it remains to be seen whether the approach to
slow
adopted there has universal appeal. Much of the interest in the area, indeed much of the traffic into and out of Iwate, seems to come from stressed Tokyo-ites, eager for a rare weekend of rest and relaxation, but compelled to return to their own city's harried streets come Monday.

Kakegawa, further south, declared itself a “Slow Life City” in 2002. Located south of Tokyo, it aimed to become a city that promoted a comfortable lifestyle and relaxed state of mind, not only with regard to the pace of work and food, but also to “slow industry,” in which competitive production was maintained with ecologically friendly approaches to industry and economic development. Kakegawa, like Iwate, is a beautiful place to visit but would you really want to live there? These are small, and not overly prosperous towns, after all. Do they represent the turning tide in terms of the global approach to
slow
? Perhaps not by themselves, but they have friends.

There are many other towns and small cities around the world that have joined with Iwate and Kakegawa to embrace the
Slow
movement. Together they form a collective, under the banner “Cittaslow” (pronounced chit-a-slow), a made-up pseudo Italian-English term meaning “slow city.” The goal of Cittaslow is to draw global attention to towns and administrations that have undertaken steps to restore historical centers, boost the use of recyclable containers in public structures, promote the greening of private and public spaces, and encourage car-free zones. It's largely a European movement, and its website,
www.cittaslow.net
, is accessible in both English and Italian.

It would be very easy for those comfortable with the culture of speed and wary of change to dismiss the Cittaslow concept as rather provincial, even quaint, given that all of its founding cities are far from economic powerhouses. But therein truly lies the beauty of the
Slow
movement and its own sort of simplistic sophistication. More and more people are realizing that enduring the trade-off of having to work 80 hours a week simply to maintain a lifestyle within the boundaries of a major metropolitan area is no longer the only choice. They are discovering that there are other, less expensive, less demanding, more enjoyable ways to live.

Carl Honoré, author of the definitive summary of the
Slow
movement, entitled
In Praise of Slow
, highlights the simple math that often gets obscured by the fog of high-speed workaholism:

Consequently, it makes sense for smaller towns to embrace the movement without fear. They have discovered an alternative richness to life, other than just money or corporate power, which more and more people are starting to see as both attractive and practical.

Perhaps the most famous of the
Slow
movements is the
Slow Food
movement, also an international organization, whose aim is “to protect the pleasures of the table from the homogenization of modern fast food and life.”
⁴
Centered in Europe, and particularly active in France, the movement encourages not just the purchase of organic and locally grown foods, but also the pleasure of taking time to eat. The French have always been famous for their passion for rich and elaborate food, yet as Mireille Guiliano, CEO of the champagne company Veuve Clicquot, and author of
French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure,
explains, there are better approaches to maintaining or losing weight than becoming obsessed with diets and deprivation. A lot, she says, simply has to do with eating right, exercising well, and enjoying life.

Okay, I'm sure there are a few overweight women and men lurking in the cafés of Paris and Nice, but much of the success of this philosophy has to do with a traditional approach to dining, a far less hurried one, that many people in France enjoy. They take the time to savor the meal, to review its presentation, to take note of its many flavors, and, while dining, they enjoy passionate conversations or arguments. They talk as well as eat. This gives their digestive systems more time to receive and process the food, without being forced to literally pack it away as body fat. In addition, a good intellectual discussion, even a satisfying argument, helps stimulate endorphins and other activators in the brain, setting the stage for a productive, alert afternoon, even after consuming a substantial meal with wine.

That's all very nice for all people over there. The French get to eat, the Italians get to walk across their city squares, and the Japanese get a chance not to die quite yet. But what does all of that have to do with people in North America and other speed-obsessed centers of business? Well, have a look again at a significant fact hidden within Mme Guiliano's description above. She mentions how her attitude to eating provides a better approach to weight loss than diets and deprivation do. What she demonstrates with that statement is that there are often better tactics than the merely obvious. When it comes to food, the obvious and expected approach for North Americans is to diet, which results in cravings, cheating, and shameful feelings. Diets seldom work for long since they go against the natural tendencies of the body, and in many cases the weight simply returns. But since dieting has been with us for decades now, it is accepted as the social norm. Mme Guiliano's approach, however, is to continue to eat, but to eat in a measured, slower way. This, she shows, achieves greater progress, a more stable, natural approach to weight management without cravings, and is also much easier.

So it is with
Cool Down
. The purpose of this book is not to repeat what Mr. Honoré and Mme Guiliano say in their books, but to show that the same unconventional approach that they so eloquently describe can be successfully implemented within the North American work culture. By doing things differently, rather than completely depriving yourself of them, alternatives appear. It would be foolish for example, to wrestle a wireless PDA away from its addicted owner. It would be dangerous, also, to suggest that no calls or emails should
ever
be answered after hours. These things are too close to the comfort level of busy professionals, and the withdrawal that they would feel would cause them to return to their current habits. That's not what
Cool Down
is about. Instead it's about revising those habits, to ensure that the trivial does not get pulled along with the truly important, and that conscious awareness of the value of every moment is constantly assessed and accounted for. Ultimately, this demonstrates that not only is
slow
an easier route, it is actually more effective and productive.

One of the major liabilities of the
Slow
movement is the word itself. The word
slow
is anathema to the mentality of business upon which the North American economy professes to be built. The term triggers a bias; many view it as bad. It connotes unproductive activity, reduced energy, coming in second or third in competitions. Negative concepts spring quickly to mind, such as work-to-rule job action, or retirement (forced or otherwise), or of being old or old-fashioned. In the minds of ambitious people,
slow
paints a picture of uselessness, frustration, and a laid-back counterculture approach to life. It brings to mind images of traffic jams, of dot-matrix printers buzzing away, line by line, and of old people standing patiently in a queue at the bank to pay their phone bills. None of these has a strong appeal to ambitious inhabitants of the working world. But this again is because the term
slow
has, to this point, been framed mostly within the context of non-productivity.

However, there is another perspective.
Slow
can mean productive. It can also mean making money. More and more companies are seeking to redefine
slow,
to integrate it so as to be better aligned with healthy, profitable business practices, in which flexibility, balance, and life issues rank as highly as corporate ethics and transparency and product quality. Throughout this book, I profile successful executives who have discovered and implemented the power of
slow
in their own ways. There are many companies that have started to take the plunge.

In 2003, Montreal-based aluminum producer Alcan Inc., in an attempt to stem the tide of high employee turnover due to burnout (people were working seven-day weeks, 13 or 14 hours a day), implemented a “work-life effectiveness strategy” that included mandatory no-work hours, as well as on-site experts in work-life balance. Alcan's executive had recognized that employee burnout posed a bigger long-term threat to its business than the short-term cost of encouraging staff to slow down.
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