Meditation

I have, in the past week, attended two meditation sessions.

I have always been interested in meditation, in no small part because the mental techniques Buddhist monks use were popularized by New Age thinkers, and create discernable changes in the brain.

Thus far, I have only practiced the relaxing “breathing” meditation, where you focus on a sensation related to breathing. Meditation is the act of directing all your attention onto one thing; in breathing meditation, it is a physical sensation. A byproduct of doing this is quieting the incessant background noise that normally occurs in the mind. Personally, I find that my mind makes hundreds of connections – thoughts, notes, memories – each minute. This is very useful, but can be both tiring and distracting.

While breathing meditation relaxes me, that’s no why I’m so interested in.

Meditation involves controlling attention, and thought. Any form of meditation is a practice of that skill.

Coincidentally, much of life involves attention and thought. I find that the most difficult part of any project, large or small, short or long term, solo or team-based, is focusing on the project.

I have a tendency to distract myself when presented with a difficult task, or one that seems never-ending.

This cartoon, which I found on Russell Beattie’s site, illustrates the problem:

This results in the project taking more time than it should; since my time is limited, this means that projects that have deadlines end up being of lower quality than initial projections, and that all other projects in my life are delayed. The things that I want to do for fun and self-actualization – things without hard deadlines – are delayed indefinitely.

It’s actually taken me a surprisingly long time to realize that was the cause. I had previously attributed my lack of productivity to the general phenomenon of ‘procrastination.’ The problem with that proscription, unfortunately, was that it’s proved useless at solving it. I’ve read books on procrastination, and they are wholly unhelpful. I know how to plan, how to manipulate my emotional regard for a project, and so on. I still work slower than I am capable of, produce lower-quality work, etc. There’s no doubt that procrastination is a part of the problem – a tendency to delay projects to the last minute, because I can – but that’s not a difficult problem to solve, assuming I can focus efficiently.

If I can systematically apply what I learn in meditation to other areas of my life, I should become more effective. Well – that’s the Current Operating Hypothesis.