Quiet Quitting, Slow Living: The New Lifestyle Choices

In a world obsessed with speed, Gen Z is choosing to live life at half the pace—and twice the depth.

The hashtag #slowliving has crossed the six million mark on Instagram. Tiktok stars are spouting terms like ‘quiet quitting’ and ‘lazy girl jobs’ and Gen Z is ready to take a pause, breathe and reflect. Albeit while posting these lifestyle changes and choices on social media.

In an age of everything instant and fast, a quiet revolution is taking place in the minds and the lives of a few—embracing slow living. Just as what our grandparents did. Cooking is slow and meaningful, selecting seasonal vegetables from local farmers, making gravies from scratch and bringing out the brass pots and pans instead of the microwaves and air-fryers. Fashion chooses sustainability, longevity and durability over synthetic, wear-and-throw fast fashion. Screen time and-coffee-on-the-go mornings are making way for slow starts with painstakingly brewed tea and yoga-in-the-sunshine. Hobbies are going off-line—analogue photography is testing creativity and skill in a way no digital image can, and book reading clubs meet on Sunday mornings at neighbourhood parks in a bid to replace the screen with a paper book and make new connections.

Don’t expect to see the middle-aged making the shift. It’s the Gen Z that’s teaching an older generation how to take it slow and live ‘mindfully’. Quiet quitting means that Gen Z is choosing to not ‘overwork’, rather, using the free time to pursue hobbies or long coffee breaks. Rushing up the professional ladder isn’t a priority. While these trends may seem flippant and a middle-class population in India may not have the luxury of shunning that extra one hour of work, the movement shows that younger people aren’t willing to burn out early like a generation before them.

At its core, slow living is all about mindfulness and well thought of choices rather than the proverbial going with the flow. It’s the way we lead our lives until the onslaught of gadgets and the highly hyped charm of multi-tasking. It’s about stopping to smell the flowers and diving into conversations with your children rather than scrolling on the phone. It’s about soaking in the simpler things in life.

Movies made fast living fashionable. Slick English movies showed people sprinting to work with coffee and a croissant in hand. Slow living was demonised as a waste of time. Why cook when you can order in? Why repeat the same clothes when you can don new styles every week? Clicking multiple photographs on the phone and then colour correcting them is faster than waiting for the light to fall at the right place and carefully planning the frame before using even one of the limited 36 shots in a reel. Books have developed a voice as people listen to audio books and podcasts instead of sitting down to read.

But as stress-triggered mental ailments grow, there’s an awareness that fast living isn’t healthy. The human mind, isn’t really supposed to ‘multi-task’, a Mumbai-based psychologist told me once. When we shift rapidly from one thought or task to another, multiple times in a day, the mind gets confused and loses its ability to focus. Completing one job at a time is a better way to be more productive. Over-scheduling our calendars leaves little room for rest, or reflection. Slow living clears up space for the mind to rest and recoup.

Many would argue that slow living isn’t a practical solution for busy, nuclear families. There’s no one to share the duties as work hours get longer, deadlines get tighter and a deluge of entertainment options make us want to pack everything into our day. It’s probably a lifestyle for the privileged few who don’t have to struggle with home, work and social life duties. But it isn’t true.

Living in the moment helps us live more meaningfully. And we don’t need life coaches for that. Mimicking the routines of our grandparents is a ready lesson in slow living. When you cook or eat, don’t discuss work or scroll on the screen. Focus on the colours and flavours in your plate. On a walk, don’t listen to music or a podcast. Instead, watch things around you—the pathways, the street dogs or even a random bloom hiding beneath a leaf. Nature heals and nurtures. Take off those smart sneakers and feel the mud under your feet. Gaze at the moon or the stars at night instead of logging into a streaming platform before bedtime.

Slow living heals and nourishes the mind. It’s a break from the furious pace of wanting to over-achieve. It’s about dropping out of a race with the world, not wanting to catch up all the time. In reel and video terms, it’s all about living at x 0.5 times speed.