Slow Movement

I found a video promoting slow movement a couple of months back:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/carl_honore_praises_slowness.html

Quite interesting, if you have moderate internet speed to watch this :).

My take? Europeans can afford the slow thing. We can't. While we, Bangladeshis are inherently slow, we top in corruption, poverty, bureaucracy, procrastination -- last thing we need is to be preached about slowness.

Yes, I know the Europeans... I've seen our CXOs and consultants in GP leave office during the daylight, while we are staying till 10 pm for next day event. For outsourced job, we stay up here at any odd time of the day and night, while they pick the time of their choice for product meeting. They remain unreachable for about a month during Christmas. Some of them are unreachable for almost a couple of months during summer, Easter, or god knows what.

Can we afford that?

If we are unreachable for a fraction of a day, we are labeled as 'unprofessional' . The next day the work and fund move to Indonesia, Vietnam, Brazil, Argentina or any of the myriad options they have.  

Slowness thing has some merit. But let's not slow down while we live in this dirty, problem ridden, unorganized jungle of homo sapiens. We need to be fast and real fast to make this country a better place.

Now is not the time to slow down. We are at a war -- an economic war, a war to make our country a decent living space. The people who are preaching about slowness, eradication of child labor etc. were really fast when they were at war. And they defeated the slower part of the world time and again. Now that they have a good system, they can afford to be slow. There is this stupid third world who works fast, cheap and stays up to take care of the price of their slowness. 

We, on the other hand, don't even have a system. We shall have to try many things, learn form mistakes with a hope that down the line we will have one. Riding on that we will be able to be slow some day; give time to family, friends -- play golf, switch off cell phone in weekends etc.

I think it's a crime for us if we be slow right now. We are supposed to be the leaders of the nation. We are the creme de la creme of the country. (The point that you are being able to read this post proves that you belong to the super privileged part of the population.) The nation does not need another "slow leader" now.

Japanese are workaholic. They work 16 hours in a day. They are super productive, innovative, fast and professional. Americans work hard, fast and long hours, too (we get quick feedback from them :-)).

So, let's not confuse by choosing the wrong idol. We don't have luxury to be slow, my friends. I mean... look around you!