Activity 7 - 30 days of slowing down

The talk

This activity is based around the talk Carl Honore praises slowness. In his talk Carl explains some of the various slow movements around the world, and about how he engaged in a raft of slow activities to write his book In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed (Plus). Things like the Slow Food movement, the Slow Cities movement, and a number of other ideas based around the general concept of savouring time instead of counting it.

The challenge

I'm really looking forward to this activity, given that I'm feeling a bit stressed and weary of late. It will still be happening in parallel with 30 days of drive, but being forced to slow down will be a good focus for me. I'm hoping it will help me recharge my batteries a little.The main challenge for this will be the whole concept :-) I don't do slow very easily. I have a nasty habit of doing too many things at once and not giving things my whole attention.

The activity

This is going to sound so simple, and yet I know that it will be very hard for me to apply. For this activity I will being doing the following things:

  • meditating - because this worked so well for me in the current activity :-) actually I'm hoping that the overall focus of slowing down helps me do this more successfully.

  • stop multi-tasking - this will include a whole heap of things like not watching TV while we eat dinner, not playing with the ipad while I watch TV, and only checking email at work when it is convenient for my tasking (so closing Outlook until I'm ready).

  • stop eating lunch at my desk at work - taking an actual lunch break and leaving my desk and, when possible, the building.

  • enjoying slow food - the slow food movement is about cultivating, cooking and consuming food in slow ways. That means we get to take advantage of the farmers' markets around here to get the fresh, organic produce; find recipes that are about enjoying the preparation and cooking of the food; and then consuming the meals in a slow and purposeful manner. We won't eat like this for every meal, but we will at least do this on the weekends.

  • relaxation - I will make time to relax in my day. Hopefully this will be achieved by taking a proper lunch break, not multi-tasking and meditating, but if this is not enough then I'll need to make more time to relax (walk Lily, read, bookbinding etc.)

  • give up StumbleUpon - this will be one of the more difficult things, since I am slightly addicted to it, like many other Stumblers :-)

There will undoubtedly be other things that I will change in this month. I feel that the main thing with this activity is to be more meaningful with how I spend my time and to savour the activities that I'm doing. I know that there is a high likelihood of doing a lot of little things wrong with this activity, but I also feel that this is an incredibly important lesson for me to be able to learn.

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Quarterly reflection - the project so far

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Reflection - 30 days of the 3 As