Cebo Campbell

Slow Down Buddy, You’re Doing Too Much.

The world can wait.

Yep, I am talking to you.

You have too much to do, so many people to please, so many deadlines to meet that you might as well be underwater. This is the point where you have to stop what you’re doing and get a little perspective.

You, my friend, are one person in a very small city, in a small county, apart of an over-populated state sitting at the corner of an average-sized continent on an infinitesimally puny rock spinning around a sun that other suns rolls their shiny eyes at. Our galaxy only a crumb in a universe bigger than you have the capacity to comprehend. The reality is, nothing you have going on is that important and your problems are not as big as you think. Your deadlines will not unravel the whole of the universe. Telling someone they have to wait will only mean they will wait. With that in mind, slow down buddy, take a step back and ask yourself what is really going to happen if you take the night off…or the weekend…or just take the next few hours and sit on a porch with a book? Well, nothing in particular .

Our greatest, and simultaneously most unfortunate gift is the ability to take that big ol universe and make it as small as our problems or tasks. That gift is precious when it is focused on our families, friends and art, but when used to complain or create urgency where there is none, that gift can literally bury you.

Life is short. Do your best, but realize that when it comes down to it, you are trading dollars for life-hours and sometimes all that jive just ain’t worth it. This is a very difficult thing for business owners and startups to realize. We are so focused on the money and the bills and the progress that we cannot see the forest for the trees. No deadline is worth your piece of mind.

So, slow down buddy…

…you’re doing too much.

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3 responses on “Slow Down Buddy, You’re Doing Too Much.

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  • Great post Cebo! That is so true, time with family is so important also. Our kids grow up too fast to miss opportunities to just take a break and play with them in the yard or go for a walk.
    Thanks!

  • March 17, 2012 by Cebo Campbell

    Thanks Dennis, you nailed it. Sometimes my best ideas come when I am taking a break from my relationship with my computer screen.

About

I am an author and a Creative Director. My latest books are:

Sky Full of Elephants – coming 2024

Violet in Some Places – Available at Not A Cult

As a full-time creative (Chief Creative Officer at Spherical), I spend most days at the desk leading a team of creatives to brand some of the best hotels in the world. So, I write in the nooks and crannies of my available time. I wake up at 5:30am just to get in a few hours putting words on paper. I write on the train. I write on planes. I write waiting in lines. I feel I have to write. The reason is simple: representation.

Cebo Campbell Author of Violet in Some Places

I often tell the story of Ferris Bueller; a kid who decides to skip school and, on charm alone, steals a car, impersonates a cop, drinks underage, tampers with computers, and at every step exposes his best friends to peril, only to go home and fall asleep with his mother to kiss him into sweet dreams. I asked myself if Ferris were Trayvon Martin, how might that story end? I know the answer. So do you. And this is why representation is so important. I aim to contribute more stories into the world that diversely feature regular (but beautiful) lives made extraordinary. Art, I believe, is the only way to accomplish this. All my creative work is inspired by and aims to add to all the great work in the world.

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