Deliberately doing an activity that will slow me down

Notes from talking to a residential counselor at the Houston OCD Program

Supposed to be faster for "generally want everything to be faster" sake e.g. walking her dogs

When finding herself unduly influenced by efficiency concerns

She will go do a task that will force her to slow down

Water the lawn by hand

[Gardening is something she used to enjoy more often, this task helps her enjoy valued things.]

Enforced slowness to enforce awareness

uncomfortable to do this

perhaps especially so when unduly influenced by efficiency concerns

uncomfortable but will slow you down

which can facilitate “twice as slowly” and “twice as calmly” mentality that I want to adopt as often as possible

Take time to do something

Art exercises I could do:

Blind sketching - keep eyes on the thing you’re drawing and don’t look down at paper

Use non-dominant hand to draw an object 

Intent to hold while doing the activity:

Cultivate awareness

Really look at the object I'm drawing 

Really experience the experience I'm having

Value the process of doing the activity and having the experience

Get to know something and engage and participate in doing something with it

The last item on that list provided an answer to a question I asked at the end of our conversation: "What is it all about anyway?" with "it" referring to life.

In response to this she talked about the River and Tides documentary about Andy Goldsworthy, and that provided an unbelievably (in terms of who would’ve guessed that my posing this question would actually yield an answer that really resonated so well for me) satisfying answer: 

Getting to know things and engaging and participating in doing something with them.