Slowing time: On the subject of an over-stimulated world

I was in Joshua Tree National Park a couple of weekends ago for a whirlwind camping trip. Whirlwind in that I left San Francisco at 5am on Friday morning and got to Simi Valley to pick up my friend Dan Rollman at around 11. Then we headed east to the Mojave Desert for about 36 hours of camping, climbing and tromping around. And then I turned right back around on Sunday morning to head home. It was a typically over-scheduled, too-fast-to-appreciate-anything trip.

What was notable was that this was not rushed trip: we had successfully made time slow down. We got to chill in the shade reading text printed on paper. We got to scamper about piles of rocks, sometimes recklessly. we got to debate things that seem important. We had take the opportunity of being out in the middle of nowhere -- without technology--to think and reflect. Matt Richel of the Times made profound obervations a few months back about how your brain changes because of technology, but it is also capable of changing back.

The ability to slow time down and live in the moment is what life is all about.

How do I know this? I know this because I hear from older people and harried people that what they really value is *time.* They want time to spend with their families, they want time to pursue their passions, they want time to reflect. They want to listen to Kind of Blue one more time. They want to appreciate where they are at a particularly noteworthy moment, or not.

And what are the enemies of this? Many of the modern conveniences that make our lives easier are also draining us of time. Think calendars, clocks, alarms, mobile phones, email, voicemail, twitter, facebook. They enrich us tremendously, and allow collaboration previously impossible -- they are not bad things-- but they should be put in a box because of the way they steal our time to think deeply.

How to make it all okay? This was one of the things that we talked about on our camping trip. Should there be a counter-movement to break the modern time? Should we take a day off, as the Sabbath Manifesto crew (including Dan) propose? Should we design a technology product that enables this, however counter-intuitive? Should we have a retreat? Or are we just using the wrong type of clock?

How can we cleanly integrate slow-time into our everyday lives?