My high school grades prove that I wasn’t exactly a star student. I don’t know if the official records still exist after the old high school I attended burned to the ground, but I know that it doesn’t really matter. Things changed in terms of academics when I arrived at college. The big difference is that in college I worked hard at earning grades and making my education count. I knew how to work when I was in high school. I had received a significant amount of praise for jobs I had done. My cousin said to me as a summer job of working at his ranch wound down, that I had outworked his other hired help that summer. A local pharmacist praised my work when I cleaned the floors in his store weekly. I worked alongside other employees in my father’s business and learned to keep up with them.

For most of my life I have worked to deadlines. In college I had required reading, midterm exams, final exams and deadlines for assignments and papers. In graduate school, I learned to keep up with the scheduled pace of learning and finishing professional papers. I became a published author in those days and learned to meet publication deadlines. Once I graduated, I was a preacher. There was a final exam every week. The quality of my work was judged in part by the quality of the sermons I preached. In addition to preparing sermons, I produced weekly worship bulletins, monthly newsletters, and annual reports. In the early years of my ministry I worked at jobs on the side that had definite deadlines. I learned to time news broadcasts and reading the markets, sports, and even the community calendar that had to be delivered to the second to synchronize with the network news that arrived via cable and satellite to be broadcast. Later I worked for a weekly newspaper with strict publication deadlines every week.

I learned to be organized and to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. Then I retired. My life has changed. There are still a few deadlines. Meetings occur at specific times. Tax returns have to be returned on time. Farm animals need feed and water delivered in a timely fashion. Gardening follows the flow of seasons. Most of the deadlines in my life, however, are fairly soft. It definitely feels like I have much less pressure.

I am learning the joy of slow work. Yesterday I took on several tasks. I prepared new hives for a couple of colonies of bees that arrive this morning. I repaired a drip irrigation system for planters on our back deck and my dahlia beds. I mowed weeds at the farm. Each task I did at my own pace, gathering my tools, doing the work at a walking pace, taking time to look at things, and then putting away tools in just the right place. I have all of the bee boxes and frames laid out in the order I will need them today. I have my irrigation lines installed just the way I want them. I have adjusted the sprinkler heads one by one. I trimmed the weeds and put the weed trimmer away just the way I like it. I never felt rushed. Along the way I spent considerable time just watching the bees coming and going from the existing hives. I watched my grandchildren playing in the yard. I sat on the steps to our deck with our son and listened to his stories of the past week. I ate my meals in a leisurely fashion.

I have found that I really enjoy working at my own pace. I know that my productivity in the shop is far less than I used to accomplish. I have a kayak project that has been stretched over several years. I used to build a boat in less than a year in my spare time. But I am in no rush and I like doing things just the way I want. My woodworking is more precise than once was the case. When I take things slow, I tend to stop when I make a mistake and do whatever it takes to correct it before moving on. I spend more time thinking about how I want to do a job and make fewer mistakes than I used to make. I take time to write poetry, something that I rarely did over the course of my life. I read two or three books at the same time, alternating my reading depending on my mood.

I know that a lot of chores take me longer than once was the case. When I move bales at the farm, I rarely throw them. I pick them up carefully and move them one by one. My stacks are more precise, and I make more trips from the trailer to the barn, and I no longer try to keep up with the young ranchers who can move hay at twice my rate.

I enjoy working at my own pace. I’ve begun to tell others that I enjoy slow work. I think that I am learning some of what I know about slow work from working with bees. When I rush into the apiary and start shuffling tools or bee boxes around, the bees become agitated and guard bees begin to swarm around my head. Sometimes they will land on me and I have to take a deep breath and slowly back away or I would get stung. However, when I approach the bees slowly and watch them as I move boxes and peek into the hives, they adjust to my presence and allow me to work without bothering me. They will go about their business of carrying pollen and nectar to the hive and returning to the fields to gather more without bothering me. They will alter their flight paths to allow for my presence without sending out guard bees. It does require, however, that I move slowly. Another beekeeper friend calls it “the Zen of bees.”

Bees are incredible colonies. They can build and fill honeycomb at a quick pace. They transport pounds of nectar and pollen from the fields into the beehives. The queen lays eggs to fill an entire bee box in a short amount of time and all of the larvae are tended and fed in an efficient manner. When a cell produces a bee, it is quickly prepared for its next use. But they accomplish their work by each doing a little bit. A single bee carries just a few grins of pollen at a time. Collectively, however, the hive grows and develops at a good pace.

I think there is great value in slow work in our fast-paced world. I still have much to learn, but that is one of the gifts of retirement. I have time to think and to work at my own pace.