Quality life

One did it team is in intensive working period to bring the next, exciting launch of the website. As I write this, I hear our technical people go trough the service, new features and improvements. The place is filled with notes, pictures, sounds of clicking and typing. But sometimes it’s nice to get out from the office and participate events related to our project.

Marja and Mari participated in Megapolis2023 festival in Helsinki. Megapolis is an annual event and it emphasises the cities as a frontier of ecological lifestyle. This year’s theme of Megapolis was happiness. How people can live happily in the cities? Amongst many interesting speakers was Carl Honore, author of the book In Praise of Slowness. How a Worldwide Movement is Challening the Cult of Speed. Now, I am a person who likes to give time to thinking. Some people may think that I’m just slow or lazy when I look out from the window and think. But Honore finally gave me the best excuse to do this in peace. He preaches about quality of life versus the speed of our life. We have fast food, speed yoga, drive trough funerals and we speed read the bedtime stories to our children. Why everything needs to be so speedy, he asks. He doesn’t mean that we all have to start doing things slowly right away, but that we should consider doing things in right speed for us. For example, why we all need to go to work at the same time? Or why do we always need to be available via e-mail or mobile? Why can’t we give the full attention to a person we are talking with?

Okay, what does this all have to do with One did it you might ask. I think it is essential. If you consider speed, it many times relates to ecological impacts. If we want to travel fast, we choose the airplane or car instead of i.e. train or bicycle. If we want our laundry dry fast, we put them to thumble dryer instead of letting the clothes dry slowly. If our shoes gets broken, it takes time to repair them and we often choose to just quickly buy new ones. All those things are more eco-efficient when done slowly.

I think good quality lifestyle is in the core of One did it. People often suppose that being eco-efficient means also that you have to give up some good things in your life. This depends on the perspective. Giving up speed or doing things in right speed doesn’t mean that we have to give up something. It is about gaining something more: time for our loved ones and for ourselves. Eco-efficient lifestyle emphasises quality over quantity.