Fireside Chat with Dr. Sherry Turkle

The Power of the Pause.

When was the last time you experienced something profound enough to elicit a pause inside of you?

Perhaps a small moment of profundity that stopped you in your tracks, or a life changing realization. 

When you experienced it, how did you integrate it into your mental models? Did you talk about it, write about it, create a work of art to express it? 

Last week I experienced a profound series of moments at Workday's Human Algorithm Summit, both on-stage and off. And my only instinct has been to simply pause. To marinate. To absorb. To give my mind time to make novel connections about what I encountered. 

Too often a long pause can be perceived as a loss of momentum. There's a burgeoning drive to maximize everything we encounter to such a degree that it seems the sacredness begins to rub off. 

But when was the last time you just simply held your encounters without rushing to the next one? Content is inundating us day and night, which cheapens it. The only way to restore its value is to pause and integrate the insights in ways that can deeply reorient us.

Today, let yourself pause. Let yourself breath. Let yourself absorb. And let that be enough.