Resisting Efficiency
It was a simple question. The entire exchange could have been completed by text message in less than a minute. We spent more time than that arranging our meeting.
“I’ll see you at the Passeig at 7:00pm,” my friend says.
A few minutes before 7, I put on my jacket and head over to the Passeig, a rectangular park beneath a long cluster of trees in the center of La Seu d’Urgell, the city where I live.
“Shall we stroll while we talk?” my friend asks.
The Catalan word, Passeig, does not literally translate to a “town square.” Its shape and design encourage its actual meaning — a walk. Think of our Passeig as an active place but in a “simple, slower, and less” kind of way.
As soon as we begin walking, the urgency of the question I had come to ask my friend fades away.
Instead, we drop into a short but on-point conversation about life, purpose, and relationships.
These topics, as well as the languages we speak, a mix of Catalan and English, shift like the cool autumn gusts of wind blowing through the trees above us on this Sunday evening.
Nearing the end of our Passeig circumnavigation, we wind down our conversation, say, “adieu,” and return to our respective homes.
As I do, a thought sinks in:
If my only objective had been more efficiency, then all that I would have gained was an answer to my question.
With gratitude, — Joe
Connect with Joe:
Connect with Joe:
Joe Jacobi is an Olympic Gold Medalist and Performance Coach who collaborates with leaders & teams by getting them outside the day-to-day rush of life and bringing focus to what truly matters most.
His strategies and concepts help clients, including sales and technology executives, doctors, senior-level bankers, and military leaders, to perform their best without compromising their lives.
Joe continually practices and refines his core principles and strategies via his own life and pursuits at his Pyrenees mountains home beside the 1992 Olympic Canoeing venue in La Seu d’Urgell in the Spanish state of Catalunya — the same canoeing venue where along with his canoeing partner, Scott Strausbaugh, Joe won America’s first-ever Olympic Gold Medal in the sport of Whitewater Canoe Slalom at the 1992 Olympic Games.
