The beetle I walked straight past.

Here's the longer version.

Once I actually stopped, properly stopped, and crouched down to his level, something shifted. He showed me the beetle. Then he showed me a crack in the pavement where a flower was pushing through. Then he pointed at a cloud that he insisted looked like a dinosaur (it did, actually). Over the next ten minutes, he noticed more in that one stretch of pavement than I'd seen in years of walking it.

I felt something I wasn't expecting: shame. Not the dramatic kind. The quiet kind. The kind that whispers: "You've spent the last year writing about healthy ways of working, sustainable goals, and rest. And here you are, dragging a toddler past a beetle because you've got somewhere to be."

He wasn't going slowly because he's three. He was going slowly because that's how you actually see things.

Why We've Confused Speed With Progress

We've been building a culture that rewards fast. Fast responses. Quick turnarounds. Packed calendars. "Sorry, I've been so busy" has become a greeting rather than an apology. In some workplaces, speed is treated as a proxy for commitment. The person who replies to emails at 10pm looks more dedicated than the one who replies thoughtfully the following day.

But speed and progress aren't the same thing. Sometimes they're opposites.

When I came across Dr Sophie Leroy's research on something called 'attention residue', I was intrigued. When we switch quickly between tasks (or conversations, or meetings), fragments of our attention stay stuck on the previous one. We're physically present but cognitively somewhere else. That residue builds throughout the day. By 3pm, most of us are operating on a fraction of our actual attention, not because we're lazy, but because we've been moving too fast for our brains to keep up.

Research on leadership tells a similar story. Leaders who pause before responding, who resist the pressure to have an immediate answer, consistently make better decisions. They build more trust. They create psychologically safer teams. Not because pausing is a technique, but because it signals something powerful: "I'm taking this seriously enough to think about it."

Before the summer, we talked about rest not being the opposite of productivity. I want to push that further. What if slowing down isn't just about rest? What if it's where the real noticing happens?

One Speed Doesn't Fit Everyone

When I think about neurodiversity, this is especially important. Different brains process pace differently. Some neurodivergent people think best at speed, riding the momentum of hyperfocus. Others need significantly more processing time than neurotypical norms allow, and perform brilliantly when they get it.

The problem isn't any individual's speed. It's when our workplace has one default pace and expects everyone to match it. Meetings run at conversation speed. Boardrooms reward whoever speaks first. Decisions get made in the room rather than upon reflection.

 - What would it look like if your team were encouraged to work at different speeds for different tasks?

What This Looks Like in Practice

A manager I worked with recently told me she'd been running back-to-back one-to-ones every Tuesday afternoon. Thirty minutes each. Five direct reports. By the fourth conversation, she was already thinking about the fifth. She knew she wasn't really listening, but she couldn't see any other way to fit everyone in.

I encouraged her to slow it down to three one-to-ones per Tuesday, give each one forty-five minutes, and move the other two to Thursday. Nothing revolutionary. But she told me, "The conversations changed completely. My team started telling me things they'd been sitting on for weeks. I was noticing things I'd been missing.”

When she slowed down, she saw more.

I remember talking with mental health campaigner Adrian Garcia on Mentality Meets. He put it simply: 

"People need to understand that they can take time for themselves. But not only that they can, that they have to. It's absolutely vital."

He wasn't talking about spa days or annual leave. He was talking about the daily, non-negotiable practice of protecting small pockets of time where you can actually think. 

Not as a luxury. As a foundation.

Your Challenge for September

I'm not going to give you a framework this month. No five-step process. No audit.

Just one invitation.

Have one slow conversation this month. Pick a colleague you usually talk to in passing. Ask how they're doing. And when they answer, don't rush to the next thing. Stay for ten more seconds than feels comfortable. See what you notice.

That's it. 

One conversation. 

Slightly slower than normal.

If it feels awkward, that's fine. Slowing down often does at first. We're so used to pace that stillness can feel like something's wrong. It isn't. It's just unfamiliar.

What's Coming This Autumn

I’m inviting you to explore what happens when we actually slow down. What we start to notice in our colleagues, our teams, and ourselves. How we learn to ask for help without shame. And what changes when we're truly present.

In late November, I'm going to do something new: I’m running a series of free live conversations where we can practise this together, not just read about it. More on that soon.

For this month: slow down. See what you've been walking past.

I'd genuinely love to hear what you notice. Drop me a line at hello@peterlarkum.com.

Your Friend Peter