I think a lot of us are tired of the pace the online world seems to expect. Everything is supposed to be fast and reactive and optimized for a hundred platforms at once. But the truth is that most small businesses are not built for that kind of speed.
And many of us are ready to shed that programming or are learning with other who are doing that or have done that. The slow web is an invitation to step out of the frantic churn and build something steadier and more rooted. Your site can become a home base instead of a billboard. A place where your work can live on its own terms, at your own pace.
Resist participating in the frenzied dance of business as usual
Part of embracing the slow web means choosing the platforms that actually feel good to you. If TikTok feels like a tornado and your whole body says no every time you try to use it, you do not need to force yourself into that space.
It is not a moral failing to step away. Maybe your energy feels better on Substack or in longform YouTube videos or in a simple monthly email. Maybe your ideas come out clearer when you speak them, which means a podcast might be a better container than Instagram Stories. The slow web trusts that you can build resonance without scattering yourself everywhere.
Let your words be fully seen & utilized as a resonance beacon
It also means letting your content work for you over time. If you pour yourself into a blog post, that can easily become a week or more of content. You can read a section aloud and turn it into a video. You can pull out two sentences and turn them into a carousel. You can expand one idea into an email. That is slow content in action. You are not trying to hustle for attention. You are tending to the ideas you already have and letting them travel farther.
Your website becomes a steady anchor through all of this. Social media is the wilderness. It is chaotic and loud and constantly shifting. Your website is the hearth. It is the quiet place where everything leads back to.
People can land there and feel the pace you keep. They get to settle into your world without you having to be constantly available or constantly performing. They get the true version of your work instead of the algorithm-safe snippet.
Slowing down, even online, is helpful in strange times
The slow web is not about doing less just for the sake of it. It’s about doing the right amount for the life you are actually living and the business you are actually building. It’s about trusting that depth is its own form of visibility.
The people who resonate with you will not miss you because you are not posting every day. They will find you because the space you built feels like somewhere they actually want to linger because it’s a respite from the urgent pace elsewhere.
If we beat the system at its own game, we’ve lost. It is no longer time to rush through the contested world blinded by fury and anger – however worthwhile these are. Now, we think, is the time to ‘retreat’ into the real work of reclamation, to re-member again our humanity through the intimacy of our relationships. The time is very urgent – we must slow down. – Bayo Akomolafe in The Times Are Urgent, Let’s Slow Down
If you hold your ground and work at your own pace, the online world begins to bend toward you. You create a corner that doesn’t require urgency or exhaustion or constant self-promotion.
You create a corner that feels like an invitation, which is basically a portal to the realm you inhabit or are a part of creating. You’re worldbuilding in real time, and putting out signals for the ones who may be ready to come and inhabit that world.
