Tiny ways I'm swapping instant gratification for slow burns

Instead of making huge life shifts, I've been making tiny slow swaps to help me find more joy, in a sustainable and energy preserving way...

Like a lot of people, the culture of instant gratification is starting to grate on me. I’m tired of having the attention span of a 4 year old.

I’m tired of burning through all my joy and excitement in a matter of hours.

I’m tired of trying to get those dopamine hits quicker and quicker and I’m tired of being bombarded with a year’s worth of information every time I look at my phone or turn on the TV.

I realised that there were things I loved to do, but I’d rush through them.

I’d feel that rush of happiness and just as quickly as it came, it was gone. Whether it was watching a 30 second video of a dog having a great time on a beach and then instantly scrolling away, or binge watching my new favourite shows in an intense day sesh. Yes I loved these things, but I was consuming them at a rapid rate, leaving me without anything else to bring that same buzz the rest of the time.

It was starting to have a big impact on my mental health because when I looked at how I spent all the hours in a day, there would only be tiny pockets of joy. The rest of the time just felt a bit… empty.

So I decided that I’d try to make small adjustments to prolong those feelings of gratification and joy and here’s how I’ve been doing it:

Switching from fast drying gouache and acrylic paints, to slow, layered oil painting

I’ve been painting and drawing for years and I love it, but I didn’t realise how much the mediums I was using contributed to how much joy I got out of it.

I always thought the medium didn’t matter. That it was the result that was the bringer of joy. So I would paint with fast drying mediums that would allow me to get to that gratifying end result as fast as possible.

I’d always really loved the finish of oil paintings though. I love the classical, slightly morbid and dark romantic art period, pre-raphaelite art and the paintings of masters like Caravaggio and Henry Fuseli.

I’d tried to paint with oils once before and it was a disaster. I didn’t have the patience for it, even though using the paints felt a lot more fun than using acrylics or gouache. It didn’t give me that buzz of finishing a painting fast enough.

With my new goal of slowing things down, I decided I was going to try again and this time, really lean into the limitations of oil paints. To lean into the need for patience while one layer dried for a whole week, or the fact that it’s best to work in very thin layers.

The result was that I found so much more joy in the process of painting than in getting to the finish line. If anything I was a little sad when my painting was finished and couldn’t wait to start on another.

Here’s a little look at what I ended up with because I’m very proud of it, considering it was very much a beginner, trial and error process!

Spending more time reading or listening to music rather than scrolling

When I was in my teens, the only thing I used the internet for was to chat to my mates on MSN and occasionally play Neopets.

The rest of my free time was spent lying on my bed listening to the radio or my MP3 CDs that contained 100’s of songs. Those were the days.

When I started to suffer with chronic fatigue, I really struggled to do anything but return to this very passive past-time. I didn’t have the strength to hold a book, but I could lie on my side and idly scroll through TikTok or put my headphones in and listen to Hozier for the 10000 time.

Once my chronic fatigue started to subside, I jumped right back into reading — It’s amazing how much you appreciate things when your option to do them is taken away — and the act of just lying on my bed, headphones in and listening to hours of music stayed with me.

I highly recommend listening to music in this way. We so often these days use music as background noise to accompany chores, exercise or tasks, but there is so much joy to be had in just listening.

What I’m reading at the moment: We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole - I wanted to learn more about Ireland because I know virtually nothing as an English person and I felt guilty. It’s an interesting read but it’s a hefty book so you have to commit. Next on my TBR is Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke.

Switching from social media to Substack in my business marketing

I really try and practice what I preach within The Slow Marketing Club and so I made the decision to take a step back from social media and focus more on Substack.

I love writing, especially on a Sunday morning when there’s nobody in the house and I can pop Spotify on the TV, so I wanted to make more time for it while also making it a part of my marketing strategy.

Don’t get me wrong, when I was creating social posts I enjoyed doing it, but social can very quickly feel draining and I realised that my motivation was waning. (I spoke about this recently in my latest Slow Marketing Club newsletter that’s due to go out next Monday).

I love that I can sit down and pour everything into this space in long form. Jumping from creating one post after another just doesn’t appeal to me at the moment. Plus, I love the freedom I give myself in these posts to just write about whatever I want in whatever way I feel like writing at the time.

Saying no to binging all the good TV shows

I’m like everyone, I love a TV binge, but there’s very few amazing TV shows being released at the moment I feel like we have to savour them.

I’m also not a huge TV person. I can’t sit and mindlessly scroll through channels, I only switch on the TV if there’s something I know I want to watch.

Recently I devoured The Other Bennett Sister (yes I am now in love with Dónal Finn like all the my other introverted girlies and yes I did then also watch Young Sherlock because of it, which is another show I highly recommend!) and I watched it live each week.

I then decided to watch it again but binge it while I was dog sitting, but I found that the original joy wasn’t quite there. I realised that a lot of my enjoyment of it came from that slow burn and having to wait each week.

I’d never realised before, just how much joy is in waiting for episodes to come out in drips, even though that was how it used to be!

Even TV shows that I’ve watched thousands of times like Black Books, Schitts Creek or Parks and Recreation, choosing to spread out the episodes is so much more joyous then trying to cram the joy into a tiny space in time. It means you get a dose of joy every single day, which massively improves your mental health.

All of these things I was already doing, just not consistently or in a different format. I didn’t make any huge shifts to add more slowness into the places I find joy, just small adjustments in my habits.

Let me know if you too are finding ways to slow down your usual joyous habits and hobbies and if you’ve noticed the same impact on keeping joy sustainable.

Speak soon,

Cat x