All my writing is musing and open discussion as I learn and navigate my experience, and is not making any normative claims - see my approach to writing for more on how I intend to share!

Finding tempo

I’ve recently left London. I’d had a great 2 and a half years there, but was becoming a bit fatigued by the city.

I never really knew how to describe it to people – the best I could come up with was that I was feeling suffocated by the city, and unable to find the time and space I wanted for myself.

One day, I sat down to do my morning pages straight after waking up. As I opened my notebook to find an empty page, I noticed that I was tapping my pen really fast on the desk. I’m generally a fidgeter and am always tapping away, but I consciously noticed how fast I was tapping this morning.

Given this was when I’d first woken up, it reflected to me some underlying state my body was in – following a beat moving so fast that I noticed and had to actively slow down.

Immediately I had the thought, “I’m not living at my tempo”.

In music, tempo is the speed at which a piece of music is intended to be played. It’s usually measured in beats per minute (bpm) - 60 bpm would mean one beat passing every second. It’s different from rhythm - tempo provides the underlying structure from which rhythm, emotion and groove can build and emerge, and is the shared structure that allows musicians to play music effectively together. It’s really important!

I’ve previously thought about tempo in wider contexts like running (how when you’re in tempo with your body and running well it feels amazing) and team mentality (what tempo is the team moving at, very pop-psych business), but not in a way to evaluate my body, how I was spending my time, and the environments I was in.

To extend the thought through more musical analogy - a band can’t play well if they aren’t playing to the same tempo. Similarly, if all the different parts of my life aren’t in tempo with each other, I can’t expect them to work together in healthy ways.

I got the sense that the life I was living in London was forcing me to operate at a faster tempo than my body wanted to, and so my body was constantly playing catch-up to try and stay in time – which for me has become a very useful way to explain the suffocation and frustration I was feeling.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about how far this idea of tempo can extend.

Using tempo in decision making

At the time (this was around March), I was making some big decisions – I knew I needed to leave my job, and leave London, at least temporarily. The main questions were about when.

I set my last day at work as 2nd May, and I would move out of London by the end of the month. At the time these just ‘felt right’, and continued to feel right, and I found the idea of tempo captured it perfectly. Throughout March, April, May and now June, days have been feeling like they have been more in tempo with me – that changes, movements and even just day-to-day activities are happening more and more ‘on beat’. That if I was to tap out my tempo, the different parts of my life would rhythmically and harmoniously occur exactly when my body wanted and needed them to.

I then started to think about when things aren’t in tempo. If my life is moving at too fast a tempo, I feel stressed, pushed, disembodied and struggling for an outlet. If it’s too slow, I tend to feel frustrated, stuck and sapped of my potential energy. It’s quickly turned into a useful framework for me to use in decision-making, and evaluating whether different options and choices are not only right for me, but right in the right way and occuring at the right time!

Other thoughts about tempo

As I’ve started to reflect on this, some other aspects of tempo have entered my mind:

• Tempos change: Like any piece of music, my tempo can speed up or slow down for any number of reasons, possibly including my wider health, mental state, environment and more. I’m learning to constantly listen for my current tempo and use it to steer my decisions, rather than claiming to have found it once and stick to it.
• Tempos can complement each other: Even if things, or people (more below) aren’t moving at the exact same tempo as me, they can still be in rhythm with me – a simple idea is moving at half or double speed, but even other variations can be in sync and feel good (for instance, polyrhythms). I’m starting to explore what differences in tempo feel compatible, even complimentary, and which feel unconnected and awkward.
• Tempos can be off-beat: This great video sums up brilliantly the idea of groove, and how music that robotically hits the beat sounds… robotic. Feeling and emotion and groove in music can come from being fractions early or late. Maybe the same principles can apply to my life tempo - things being pretty much on beat but slightly off could add colour, intrigue and curiosity to an otherwise formulaic approach. This could account for spontaneity too!

Where I’m applying tempo

I think this idea of tempo can apply to lots of things in my life (I’m still figuring it out), but four main areas for now are:

• Bodily check-ins: When I’m meditating, or get a moment, I’m trying to explicitly feel what speed my body is moving at, and wants to move at, which I can use to speed up or slow down my day-to-day. This feels like the foundational one – if I’m not moving at the speed my body wants to move at, something needs to urgently change. Otherwise I feel detached from my body, and that is ­not a nice feeling.
• Plans: Do plans feel they are happening too soon, too late, or on beat? Can I change things around so they feel more in tempo with me?
• Environments: Do the spaces I spend time in and interact with allow me to live my life at my tempo, or do they enforce a different speed? Crowded tubes make me feel too fast, long Zoom meetings sat in my bedroom make me feel too slow.
• People: Are the people around me moving at a tempo that is complementary to mine? Incompatible tempos in music can feel forced, awkward, messy and hard to connect with. Incompatible tempos between people can feel the same. This applies to changes in tempo too – if I speed up, or slow down my tempo, will others also respond dynamically? An orchestra doesn’t work if the percussion section slows down but the brass section continues at the same previous speed. The ebbs and flows of interpersonal dynamics, I’m learning, rely on the ability to match, and make space for, changes in tempo.

Summary

I’ve been having a lot of thoughts about tempo – this represents where I’m currently at, and I’m sure they will develop!

Some questions I now ask myself that I’d love to hear from you on in the comments:

• Do your body, plans, environments and people in your life feel like they’re moving at your tempo? Are things landing on beat?
• If not, what changes do you think you can make to bring things more into the right tempo?
• How do you/can you keep yourself and your life in tempo?

The main thing to say is – there’s no explicit way to measure tempo. I don’t sit and try to figure out my tempo (though it can be fun and insightful to try and play the beat of it), and if I do it only serves as a guide rather than any kind of truth. It’s more becoming a useful concept for me to evaluate how I’m feeling about decisions, spaces, relationships and more.

Because when things land on beat, they feel good 😎