Burlingame elementary school secretary authors guide book on slow living

O’Dea’s daily ritual became the content for one of the first widely circulated blogs on crock pot cooking, leading to TV appearances and a book deal for a cookbook. 

However, when the Instant Pot hit the market in 2016 and her publisher asked her to convert her slow cooker recipes for the new technology, she refused and was ultimately fired. The hyperefficient technology made the larger life lessons blatantly evident, she said.

“The reason I liked the slow cooker is I have a very bouncy kind of brain and so the idea that I could get dinner over with in the morning when I’m still heavily caffeinated and coherent, it really was helpful,” O’Dea said. “I really started thinking about the slow living part and the slow cooking part was just kind of planning out my day on purpose and avoiding decision fatigue.” 

Against the backdrop of Silicon Valley and growing up on the Peninsula, O’Dea said she is very familiar with the nonstop, goal-driven hustle culture that can permeate life as early as grade school. 

“Where we live, it feels pressure cooker-y,” O’Dea said. “It’s the idea that you’re behind and I just don’t agree with that because if we’re lucky, life is long, so why are we trying to cram everything in this short amount of time?”

The slow-living lifestyle has been a big part of O’Dea’s life for some time now — she has a podcast on the topic and coaches others on how to embrace it — but her new book “Slow Living: Cultivating a life of Purpose in a Hustle-Driven World” is the latest way she’s hoping to spread the word. 

“There’s a lot of Keeping Up with the Joneses here and a lot of, I need the newest Tesla. It’s that fear of missing out,” O’Dea said. “I rewrote FOMO to ‘Figure Only Myself Out.’ Are the things you’re chasing really things that you actually want, or is it just society’s expectations, advertisers’ expectations and this external pressure to do more, be more and achieve more.” 

After speaking with many adults around her, gathering insight on the pressures they face and how they make decisions, she’s learned that most people “just want to feel at peace.” 

“They just want to feel calm and they want to climb into bed at the end of the night knowing that they had a good day and they didn’t get in a fight with their spouse and they didn’t snap at their kids,” O’Dea said. 

Slow living is an effort to look internally and figure out, daily, what it is you want and making intentional decisions to get there, O’Dea said. It’s about doing things “on purpose” in a slow, steady and sustainable way. 

O’Dea said the equation for success is mindset plus action plus consistency. To start integrating this slow-living ideal in your life, O’Dea said decluttering is often the first step, but she doesn’t mean getting rid of everything. 

“While it’s super therapeutic to clean out a closet, it’s usually decluttering obligations on your calendar and maybe people in your life that are making you feel less than, instead of inspired to do better,” O’Dea said. 

As a mother who spent many years staying at home, she understands the demands that come with daily life. To complete the everyday necessities, such as prepping dinner in the morning, she said it’s important to address one’s own needs first. 

Participating heavily in hustle-culture can have serious consequences, O’Dea said, and hopes readers consider how it can affect your personal life and health. 

“I think we’ve all met people who are so busy chasing a certain success at work or a financial milestone that they turn around and their family packed up,” she said. “If you don’t decide on purpose to slow down, your body’s going to do it for you, and it may come in a way that you’re not happy about and you won’t have a choice.”

As her kids entered adulthood, O’Dea said she felt like it was the time to write down “a good how-to guide for adulting properly” that she wished she had herself. 

“If scrolling social media and going to neighborhood barbecues makes you feel bad about yourself, don’t do it for a while,” she said. “Figure out who you are first and when you are strong and stable, it doesn’t matter what comes at you because you already know deep down inside who you are and what you stand for.” 

Although the book is geared as a sort of “how to” for young adults to keep in mind, O’Dea said she strongly believes in the power of “course correcting” and hopes anyone can take something from the book.

“If you don’t like the trajectory you’re on, pay attention to that,” O’Dea said. “You’re not destined to live a certain way.”