Hacker News Reader

Comment by spodek | Hacker News Reader

> I try to meditate every morning for about 15 minutes and been doing that for quite some time now.

I find that doing any Self-Imposed Daily Challenging Healthy Activity will improve your life tremendously, meditation being just one type of SIDCHA.

While the benefits differ slightly, the magnitude of benefit from other SIDCHAs -- like exercising, drawing a picture, writing a blog post, writing three business ideas, cooking a meal from scratch, etc every day -- can be just as great. You develop discipline, ability to overcome internal resistance, self-awareness, etc.

I'm a big fan and practitioner of SIDCHAs and wrote them up: http://joshuaspodek.com/sidchas-the-series.

View on HN

I love the approach of digging into the underlying pattern rather than fixating on the details of the routine.

I used to struggle with Agile and daily standups at $JOB until I started keeping a private journal daily. Now I have several years of daily notes across several jobs that I can refer back to and use for reflection, avoiding common pitfalls, revisiting particularly difficult challenges with a different perspective. The most valuable entries I have beyond technical details or company idiosyncrasies are about arguments I've gotten into or interpersonal dynamics I've noticed.

The biggest benefit I've noticed is that I feel much more resilient to both stress and change, and I don't sink near as much time and effort into distractions or rabbit holes. Random ideas get written down and set aside for monthly review and I can get back to work.

It sounds like you do something more comprehensive, but I thought I'd share my experience with journaling at work.

I pretty much try to write (with pen and paper) for 10 minutes a day to sort my thoughts out and figure out what do focus on, perhaps think about what has affected my performance lately (good and bad, to do more of the good and get less of the bad). Occasionally, I'll stop doing it for periods of time, until I notice that my recent work has started to seem less effective.

The 10 minutes of writing increases the chance that I'll feel like I've accomplished something by the end of the day by like 200%. So you'd think I'd never skip it, but of course, when actually doing it, it feels like wasting 10 minutes at any given time, so sometimes, I just don't.

“I find that doing any Self-Imposed Daily Challenging Healthy Activity will improve your life tremendously, meditation being just one type of SIDCHA.”

That’s how I feel about diets too. Most people have such terrible nutrition that almost any diet will make things better because it gives people some structure around eating habits.

Well, not sure if this is related to the actual topic (meditation), but I would agree with this.

For the last one month, I have been sticking to intermittent fasting (16:8) and giving up on sugar entirely and redcuded carb intake to very small amounts.

Can say that the diet is almost keto although I think I do go over the 30gm of prescribed carbs. However I do notably experience the metallic taste in mouth regularly indicating ketosis.

I have noticed...

- Drop in anxiety

- Improved self confidence

- Goes without saying, lost about 5/6 kg weight

To me it seems like this is a permanent lifestyle change which I look forward to continue with.

>“ While the benefits differ slightly, the magnitude of benefit from other SIDCHAs -- like exercising, drawing a picture, writing a blog post, writing three business ideas, cooking a meal from scratch, etc every day -- can be just as great.“

I’m not sure how you can equate meditations benefits to drawing pictures, or writing three business ideas. They are fundamentally different activities that produce vastly different outcomes, some being much more valuable.

In the case of meditation it’s the ability to pause the incessant thinking mind, glean insights into the nature of consciousness and be able to enter the present moment more frequently. Those things alone are worth far more than being able to draw pretty pictures or bench your body weight.

Meditation may have specific benefits. But having a fit body and knowing how to draw, write or cook is also nice.

But the important common part is that you take steps to better your life. Even activities that have no proven benefits by themselves such as magic rituals, "alternative medicine", prayer, etc... can work.

The idea is that such activities can create a positive chain of events: you going to the gym, your training calls for better nutrition so you eat better, you also sleep better and the workout schedule can impose a healthy work/life balance. You may want to start meditation to improve your focus.

With meditation you realize your body doesn't feel well so you eat better, sleep better, that pause helps you maintain a good work/life balance. You may even consider exercising.

Notice the recurring themes. Once you are in a self improvement mindset things start to support themselves.

The issue I take is saying the benefits differ slightly.

It's difficult for me to appreciate the equivalent benefits of being able to draw nice pictures vs having mastery over ones mind.

I wrote a post about just this topic: http://joshuaspodek.com/choice-sidcha-isnt-important. It has a bunch of pictures or I'd copy it here, but the upshot is that more value comes from doing something self-imposed healthy and active every day than from the specific activity.

In my experience, a lot of mental mastery comes from discipline, focus, dedication, and such from consistently overcoming challenges.

From how you characterize creating art as drawing "nice pictures", I suspect you might underestimate the value of artistic self-expression, fitness, and other things, but I might be misinterpreting.

The one that you missed, and that works incredibly well to give me a good day, is practicing a musical instrument.

Thanks for you feedback! I'll have a look at that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com