I don't know of a better word for it than disattention. Perhaps downtime? But it's not so structured. It's just those moments where you'd previously let your mind wander. Gone forever.
And I agree, not letting your mind do this from time to time results in higher stress and less ability to focus.
I read "Non-Things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld" recently and since reading that I make an effort to not pick up my phone as much. I'd recommend reading the book, if you're looking for something to do instead of doomscrolling.
Anyway, the article I'm thinking of was about a guy who had advice along the lines of "keeping up your hygiene" or "maintaining your cleanliness habits" and his anecdote was about being stuck for a while in making progress on a problem, but he would have a habit of taking a daily shower. There was a detail he shared about getting an insight and then being able to write some ideas on the window with the condensation.
I wonder if I can find it again.
> I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in
> And stops my mind from wandering
> Where it will go
I mean, just shut your phone off. You're likely just missing text messages anyway.
And by "maintain a practice", I mean it's more like something I return to with frequency and less a daily compulsion.
Focusing on the breathe or ambient sounds is "easy", and is precisely the reason meditation is seemingly difficult. The mind craves more than simplicity; for some this occurs after a few seconds, for others after a few minutes...it all depends on the day. Learning to observe when the mind wanders is one part of the practice. Labelling the quality of thought that caused the wandering (planning, worrying, visualizing, replaying, etc)and returning to the simpler act of focus on breathe or sounds is another part of the practice.
This article is very much the author discovering some variation of meditation; if they feel the need to "invent" something and share it in a blog post...then here's hoping it promotes more people to give it a shot and maybe it'll lead to at least one person developing a new practice for themselves.
As far as "inventing". I know what you (@reg_dunlop) mean but I don't see too much real harm. My father was into a book that talked about "not thinking". It was just a re-framing of part of mindfulness. If it helps... I'm not going to fuss about it.
As far as eyes. I was taught to not close my eyes completely but most of the way. I saw a documentary that explored Tibetan monks and their meditation. From what I recall, one of the monks said to use the eyelids as adjustable window blinds(or a valve... I'm paraphrasing to my understanding of what he was saying) so that if they got a bit sleepy they would open them more.
Personally, I'm a big believer in mindfulness but I do have some questions on some finer points. I might even aspire to teach it, but need further help myself first. Let me know of any resources that helped you (anyone)
For me it was "The Mind Illuminated" by Culadasa. A meditation textbook which tells us what to practice, how to practice and why. Especially useful if you need the finer points.
I'm reluctant to say more about my own mindfulness practice; I feel the finer points about how or when to meditate are open to interpretation. Anyone can be as superficial or dogmatic as they'd like when it comes to choosing a practice, and how they adhere to it.
The point, for me, isn't strict adherence; It's both simpler and more interesting to let go of the preconceived notions of attempting to achieve something.
One thing I will say: If I believe I can't meditate for 5 minutes, I meditate for 15. This makes me more open and receptive in life when I find myself saying "....I should meditate".
You are something beyond all this. Try find it.
By going through the mind goes in a trance unable to think any thoughts. I find it better approach compared to try to disciplining the mind.
As for the article, I am actually doing 1 - 2 min shikantaza regularly while working. I'm staring at an empty screen. I do it multiple times per hour regardless if I feel focused or not.
* Don't try to fix the posture while attempting shikantaza.
** Obviously something even more practical for a beginner is to gain focus by counting breaths and then breath awareness, before trying the most difficult type of zazen. I'm just describing what would be a way for someone that does not practice to imagine what correct shikantaza feels like.
It could be, but it depends on what you're cultivating. If you're spaced out, day dreaming, then you're practicing distraction. Meditation is practicing the opposite of distraction, to become aware of the mind's true state.
In Zen Buddhism for example you are always striving to increase awareness, by constantly monitoring your internal monologue, pulling yourself back from day dreaming, expanding from focus on the breath to all near by sensation and phenomena.
True meditation, in the zen sense, is an order of magnitude more difficult to do consistently, and takes intense willpower.
> True meditation, in the zen sense, is an order of magnitude more difficult to do consistently, and takes intense willpower.
There are different forms of meditation and the one with the most evidence is also the easiest to do, mindfulness [1].
Very little intent is needed to get the majority of the benefits from meditation. I don't know that zen meditation offers more benefits, perhaps it does. But I do know that the "fake" forms of meditation are still beneficial.
Specifically I would say the concepts of “striving” and “intent” aren’t ones I would use.
What it actually is takes a little more to pin down (famously) but I would consider the concept of surrender to be more applicable. In fact I would say the absence of striving would be a good sign you’re on the right track.
I would consider staring at a wall without intent to be completely compatible with Zen practice.
they definitely were not describing soto-zen tho, that’s for sure.
edit — i find it almost koan-esque that there’s two schools referred to as “zen”, both of which generally dislike the label “zen”, both of which have very different practices and methods.
I have heard of zen described as 'just sit down and shut up' and stare at a wall. With no goal, no purpose.
The Zen approach, more than any other, seems to precisely emphasize the purity of 'sit down and shut up'. Shikantaza - literally means 'simply sitting'. It fundamentally involves no staring at walls, no koan to grasp and struggle over, even following your breath is not really a part of it... It really, really is 'just' sitting, in every systemic sense. A practice which has no clear goal or intent, instead focused on removing anything that could act as such, act as any tether over awareness. Awareness untethered, unbounded, past distinction.
Lao Tzu comes to mind... he said it much more succinctly: Wei - Wu Wei (do - not doing). The action of effortlessly being adrift with the flow, the action of surrender of your 'self' and the infinite schemes/designs/narratives that it builds (as someone in the discussion above here aptly suggested). Another quote comes to mind from elsewhere: 'Let go your earthly tether, enter the void, empty and become wind.'
This seems counterintuitive. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but in my newbie practice it seems to be like resistance or cardiovascular training where there is effort in the moment and a sense of one's limits and a sense of unfolding and gains toward more depth and weight and duration. Like the gym it can be disappointing to lose ground after a break but there is also the contentment of regaining strength similar to rereading a familiar book and seeing it in new light.
There have been times that required more purposeful scheduling and preparation that is my default mode and times when whatever was in my head made me just actively hate sitting there and fail to realize that sensation as an ephemeral state. I accepted the door was closed that day and came back the next to pick up at the stopping point.
I think your parallel is spot on!
Unfortunately, it's very hard to understand how training attention in this manner can provoke dramatic improvements in attitude, happiness, and even conventional life goals. This is where a lot of the work in modern Buddhism is being done, and I personally believe we need to integrate these techniques into our everyday systems and ways of living. Otherwise, it's perfectly reasonable to dismiss them since good, objective evidence of their efficacy is hard to come by.
Perhaps a useful framing for readers on here is in reprogramming your self. We often accept that we cannot change or even that we want to change. By training our attention, we can focus it on the way the mind itself functions, and this eventually gives us the power to rewrite or rework core parts of our selves. The body contains the source code to our perception of reality, and when we can truly let go we find that we are free to be the person we want, and it is in fact our destiny.
I remember sitting in an intro session and the teacher asked everyone for what they expected - one of the guys there was a dude bro who was obviously there because his girlfriend dragged him. He said all the fancy things about reaching higher consciousness, like he thought the whole thing was stupid but he was playing along. Then after sitting for 15 minutes he was more into it than his GF. He clearly had an experience and excitedly struggled to find the words to describe it. I honestly think the less you expect out of sitting, the more likely you are to get something, weirdly.
In the first regime the time goes somewhat quickly and it isn’t as difficult. I call this the zoning out regime. There usually hits a sudden point where zoning out is no longer quite as easy. This is probably the meditative regime where I have to be more mindful about keeping my mind blank.
I set a timer just to train my will, but I don’t prioritize spending a ton of time in that second regime. Just anecdotally, once I’m past the zoning out regime my focus is usually back.
There's one where you are at rest and slowly shift the focus of your gaze from near to middle distance to far away, and back.
It's supposed to be a grounding exercise to bring your mind back to a state of rest and just observing.
This is almost exactly like Transcendental Meditation, even down the to the length of time of ~20 minutes.
I feel like staring at walls is similar.
This is common. A true meditation practice brings up a lot of stuff, from general body aches and pains to deep emotional things you may be unconsciously suppressing. With time and persistence, and with the right teacher, it becomes liberating though.
I just end up feeling emotionally "flat" after doing it. Which sometimes feels like that's the goal, but I don't like the feeling
You are correct, in just 4 hours.
Interesting twist- notice dark shapes in your color spectrum for a while, then switch to light. Trippy.
That might actually be true! But there are people who claim they cry, or experience infinite bliss, or that meditation gave them long lasting mental health problems and is dangerous. When I've emptied my mind and let the trees and houses fly past on train trips, I've neither cried nor experienced infinite bliss nor broken down mentally.
It's more like the opposite. If you think about your breathing, you'll be "controlling" it (which funnily enough is not the case when you don't think about it). Meditation is the opposite: you have to be in a state where you can think about your breathing and yet you're not controlling it.
I can tell that, from doing it since a long time and from talking to people about it, even many people who practice meditation cannot reach that state (thinking about breathing without controlling it).
And you also really don't focus on body parts: you "disconnect" them all until you don't even feel them anymore.
And you also shouldn't focus on irrelevant things: you have to focus on absolutely nothing.
There are many different techniques to "pass on through to the other side": some visualize thoughts ("words" or the "internal monologue") as if it was a sea. The more thoughts, the more hectic the sea (and you want it all calm: no words, no internal monologue). Some imagine a lotus flower opening and when the last leaf opens, you can be in. Some imagine diving.
I meditate on and off since a long time. There are benefits, for example I definitely can lower the intensity of headaches (or at least how I perceive the pain). What I tell my friends is that Buddhist monks are actually on serious trips beating any psychedelic drug that does exist.
It's a great feeling to just stare at a wall and think.
My first thought is usually, "If I could think about anything right now, what would it be?" And this frees my mind up to think about what I want to think about.
Me too. And all I wanted was a Pepsi.
As a former heavy coffee consumer, I experienced varying degrees of tiredness over my workday, and inconsistent sleep patterns.
Ever since I stopped drinking it, my energy levels have been far more predictable and decrease rather linearly until bedtime. There is definitely no more "hitting the wall" in the early afternoon! Living caffeine free has generally been a considerable QOL improvement (after initial withdrawal).
- I'd still get the feeling of "oh shit it's 4pm and I've not really started doing anything productive today". But then I'd look at the clock and it would be 10am and it turns out I still have the whole day ahead of me. The day passes so much slower that, even if it feels like your pace of work is a bit slower, you still get much more done overall.
- I'd get to sleep much faster (measurably because I would fall asleep before my partner, having previously got to sleep reliably after her). That applied even compared to days where I'd have coffee only before lunchtime. The idea that late-day tiredness from caffeine withdrawal helps get you to sleep is nonsense.
Having said that, I've relapsed back to a few cups a day. Logically I know I need to quit again.
Meditation is to mental training and focus, as going to the gym is to physical training.
Socials killed our attention span. Agents are literally making us context switch even more.
Putting aside the whole "I am at piece and one with the world" part of meditation, it is extremely hard.
I'm also no expert. When I'm waiting for something to finish (agent, compilation, etc), I've found that staring at a wall ends up in a net positive in productivity rather than replying to a message, going on X, or kicking off another agent.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/68809bfcd88dbd...
But maybe that's exactly the lesson.
Yes, that means no phone, no headphones, just you and your brain enjoying a walk. Let your mind wonder and be free.
Some Zen teachers think that it is impossible to meditate while walking as it keeps the mind moving rather than still. These are the folks that go against any kind of seasoning in food for the same reason. I always thought that was a very restrictive way to box in and needlessly constrain what meditation can be. If it works for you, great but don't sell it as the only path. That is the thing with a lot of folks, to try and overly define 'the only way', the smarter ones know there is a thousand paths to the top of the mountain.
Thích Nhất Hạnh used to swear by walking meditation, others would scoff at that. Each to their own.
'There is a thousand paths to the top of the mountain, the view is the same for all at the peak'
Psychology research backs this up -- I think there are studies that show students who have a break between two classes before better in both classes (it's called interference).
Anyways it felt weird to me that our work never accommodated this, I think peak performance requires tuning the environment to the human biology, not management optics.
I really want to point out that the purpose is not to concentrate so hard that focus remains. It's simply to be aware of attention drifting, and gently bring it back. Repeatedly, over time, this becomes easier and easier.
There is a sense of unwrinkling the mind that I achieve after a session. The inner voice drawing me toward the anxieties of life becomes quieter and quieter. The ability to choose to disregard thoughts and move on becomes stronger and stronger.
Losing focus could be e.g., (1) lacking the attention span (ability, fatigue, disinterest), (2) lacking the working memory to hold the problem; (3) distraction (by more important or interesting things); (4) focusing too hard on the wrong things (and getting no where); etc.
Solutions differ, but like talk therapy, most any approach will have some positive effect just via escape from oblivious continuance or self-defeating (mental) behaviors, if not development of insight (i.e., self-observation).
To me the key is that thoughts are motivated (interesting) and amplified (concerning or exciting); the key is to recognize that you are the source of that energy, and learn to notice and decide whether this energy is helpful in the situation. Usually that means letting it go, but sometimes you need to raise it (e.g., to address an instance of ongoing injustice). Then focus is a function of having the energy needed for a given situation - no more or less.
I’m now so much more relaxed and mentally rested by literally having no music/podcast on while driving/walking/showering these days.
Your brain needs quiet time.
But it never ceases to amaze me the consistency and time spent sitting and smiling and other similar endeavors by Benjamin - https://www.youtube.com/@BenjaminBennetttt/streams
It's not "scientifically proven" to work but it's quantifiable that there's a clear improvement. We tried to scientifically prove it - the scientists were incredibly offended, lol.
So it can't be proven, but there's data. We started quantifying it because corporations asked for data. Nobody wants to buy an app where you record yourself staring at a mirror, so we don't charge for that. We end up charging for the data reporting, anonymization, data handling, etc.
There's some interesting data, like we find people who are highly stressed will get all kinds of diarrhea, vomiting, and angry if they crank it up to 30 minutes. So we designed it to start at 5 min/day for a week, then 10, then 15, slowly up to 30.
Staring at a mirror is a little different to staring at a wall, but I'd imagine the results are similar.
I don't stare at walls personally because I find that state easiest to access in a moving vehicle, so my equivalent is sometimes daydreaming rather than reading or scrolling my phone when I'm on a bus or train.
Do you have a similar experience when walking or running (deliberately)?
> Additionally, during attention demanding tasks, sufficient deactivation of the default mode network at the time of memory encoding has been shown to result in more successful long-term memory consolidation.[33]
> Studies have shown that when people watch a movie,[34] listen to a story,[35][36] or read a story,[37] their DMNs are highly correlated with each other. DMNs are not correlated if the stories are scrambled or are in a language the person does not understand, suggesting that the network is highly involved in the comprehension and the subsequent memory formation of that story.[36] The DMN is shown to even be correlated if the same story is presented to different people in different languages,[38] further suggesting the DMN is truly involved in the comprehension aspect of the story and not the auditory or language aspect.
> The default mode network is deactivated during some external goal-oriented tasks such as visual attention or cognitive working memory tasks.[7] However, with internal goal-oriented tasks, such as social working memory or autobiographical tasks, the DMN is positively activated with the task and correlates with other networks such as the network involved in executive function.[8] Regions of the DMN are also activated during cognitively demanding tasks that require higher-order conceptual representations.[10] The DMN shows higher activation when behavioral responses are stable, and this activation is independent of self-reported mind wandering.[39] Meditation, which involves focusing the mind on breathing and relaxation, is associated with reduced activity of the DMN.[40]
It's kinda like falling asleep, except more coherent.
it could probably work as well to close your eyes instead of staring at a wall.
i've always found meditation types revolving around focusing on one thing (candle, wall etc), or nothing (empty mind) to be really hard. my mind just wanders and i end up super anxious, frustrated, and exhausted - resulting in me giving up pretty quickly
What I've found is that focusing on "everything" - ie sitting still and trying to observe your surroundings, your body, all sounds simultaneously seems to work much better. It's easier to get to a calm state this way.
Also, doing this while walking can also work - but perhaps easier to accidentally start thinking about something else
There will always be anxiety, otherwise you would have processed it already and not hurried away into other activities. It sure feels life-threatening, but as long as you don’t give in to the illusion and remind yourself that it is not, there is no rational reason to jump away. Breathing is a typical way to remind yourself that you are safe in the present environment. And the gift you receive is more and more clarity and a relaxed base state from which to face what’s next.
If you keep looking for hours at a short distance, you should instead take breaks looking at a distance for long term eye health.
That’s why I prefer working next to window or a big open space, not a cubicle where I can stare at a wall.
(Also, even on the second-order of "what about your eyes", I would guess that staring at a wall several feet away is already an improvement over staring at a screen in your hand.)
To play along as we crowdsource a combined solution to more than this narrow problem, I'll add my own 2nd-order suggestion as well (for fitness and health), and suggest staring at the horizon while walking outdoors for a few minutes
I could only keep peak thinking/designing/developing for about an hour or so. That's peak matrix level with edge cases identified and documented on the way.
I could do OK for a lot longer, but the same quality wasn't there.
The non-smokers would resent us for it, but most of them would go for a half to one hour coffee instead.
I going to try this. Thanks!
However, a lot of my mental performance has become intertwined with the concept of breaking the mental work pattern with some light physical activity like taking a short walk, or just mental inactivity like going outside for a smoke (which also includes a positive chemical reinforcement, coupled with some light environmental stimulation), which might yield itself somewhat similar to the staring at a wall routine, though much less dull.
Throw in YouTube Shorts / TikTok etc and it makes me wonder if that estimate is drastically too low. We went from the information age, to the brainrot overload age, to let's both have brainrot and let computers think for us.
The suggestion of going for a walk at least means when you get absorbed by something in your mind, you are still out on a walk, You can't just turn around and start working on some new idea if you are out on a path somewhere.
Again, I want to emphasize, that in none of these are you explicitly practicing the act of leashing in your mind.
All in all, I think the popular conception of meditation, Youtube-ized since the 2010s, has more nuance. Maybe people see this distinction and think it's obvious. To me, as someone who unironically feel like I'm net negative from self-help content than net-positive, this matters to me, personally.
If you want to get mystical, there are plenty of stories of deep Eastern masters practicing their craft every day. They certainly are thinking about their act - they are not trying their best to "get rid of all their thoughts". These are different activities, each with their own merits, both much different states than the common state of the modern man today.
That being said, meditation and the surrounding ideas have helped me overall, if not just because the specific influencers that I do hold as valuable had a good attitude when approaching it. But nowadays I'd imagine it's been silently incorporated into the very underlying forces they were trying to avoid (I have to meditate because it makes me a more improved human being compared to my peers!)
Eh? I'm retired now so I don't need to work but when I did I often went for a walk when a problem seemed insoluble. After a while I might feel that I have the solution to that and I'd start working on another problem as I continued my walk. You don't need to be in front of a screen with your fingers on a keyboard to do some work.
This is just Zazen but with less thought put into it...
If you're tired of corpo meditation, go to a Buddhist monastery and learn how to do the real thing. You don't need to pick up the religion, just learn how to reach the kind of deep concentration that leads to joy.
But for staring at walls, I like to do that in the sauna. My mind sorts out so much stuff in that hot room that is like magic. Showers used to be that way for me, before I cared about water use.
Try zero caffeine for a while. It will not be easy, for the majority of people. After 3 months the worst of it will be over, and most people are withdrawal symptom free by 6 months.
Btw free means no decaf, no chocolate, no tea.
Edit for grammar
When I’m tired or distracted at work, I do a “magic eye” with my keyboard: I bow my head down close to the keys, then focus my eyes to infinity, and gradually bring my focus closer to “snap” to different focus depths.
When I worked in an office, my coworkers found this disconcerting. Really helps me reset though!
And I should really meditate more.
I wish people didn't overuse certain terms. Dopamine has a half life of 2 minutes in the body. It can't possibly keep you up at night.
It's just the caffeine, which in turn has a half-life of several hours. Also below a certain level it's eliminated approximately exponentially, so there's a long tail of residual caffeine.
May be true.
But doing "rewarding" work encourages your body to emit more dopamine. Some people call it "the flow", others "hyperfocus", but it is a constant stream of dopamine that keeps you doing what you currently do. And you can interfere with the emittance and absorbtion by using caffeine.
I have never understood why people feel the need to use terms like "dopamine" in very pop culture and highly unscientific way, instead of just describing the state that they are talking about.
The other day someone told me that they "sense a high concentration of acetylcholine" in me. Thank you, I guess?
Personally, I blame Jordan Peterson. it's not that he used those terms incorrectly (he didn't). It's that the general public interpreted them in a way that went on to live a life of its own.
Fair enough if the use of “dopamine” is imprecise, but excessive screen time / doomscrolling / shitposting is definitely enough to wire you awake on its own, without caffeine.
That's for IV dopamine, used in extreme circumstances. Natural dopamine lasts shorter than that!
If staring at a wall helps then don't let me stop you but I've sometimes done something very similar by just sitting in a chair without any cell phone, book, electronic item, etc. until I'm very bored. Not like "gritting my teeth, come on we can do another 15 minutes let's goooooo" like an exercise push, but definitely waiting past the first couple of twitches of boredom until it's a constant. It's kind of an interesting way to start a vacation, really helps disconnect from work very quickly. It can be some hours, though.
I do find that this only happens for me if I'm "doing nothing". I see others suggesting exercise, or something else, and those are absolutely good in their own way. But they are not the same thing as just doing nothing. It's still trying to do something and "use the time productively".
The downside is that the family just sees a guy sitting there "doing nothing" and can find a dozen reasons to interrupt... it's hard to do this when there are any other people around, and while I'm not an absolutist about a plan that can be summed up as "sit until you can't" without much loss, the interruptions do very quickly diminish the utility. There's a huge difference between sitting uninterrupted for an hour, and sitting for 15 minutes, putting away the dishes, sitting for 15 minutes, getting up to help reach something, sitting for 15 minutes, explaining that yes you really are sitting there just doing nothing would you please just let me do that, and sitting for 15 minutes.
This particular thing doesn't match "meditation" to me, because I'm not even doing the minimal thing meditation involves; I'm not concentrating on breathing, not trying to "not think", not trying to do anything. If the mind races, let it race until it is done racing[1]. In this point in particular this certainly doesn't match a lot of specific meditation traditions. If the thought of doing something occurs to you, that meditation technique of letting it pass through you until it disappears can be useful.
If meditation is a deliberate attempt to slow down, or a deliberate attempt to concentrate on some particular thing, or a deliberate attempt to empty one's mind, it still has a deliberative goal. If you're willing to broaden the term to encompass not even having that much of a plan, then I have no objection. But this feels to me too low level to even justify the term meditation as most people use it. If you're "trying" to do anything at all, then this isn't really what I'm talking about here. I'm not saying this is "better" than meditation, I'm more saying I'm not sure this even rises to that level, as low as some of them may be. It's really just "rest", a concept our century and culture has largely lost track of.
(Of course the obvious semantic argument about "well are you trying to not try, hmmmmmm?" is there and you are free to debate that in your own head, because like I said, I'm not trying to be absolutist about this. This isn't a program I'm proposing so much as an experience report. You do whatever and call it whatever and argue about definitions as much as you like.)
[1]: If your mind literally never stops this may not work for you... that said, in the 21st century, are you sure your mind never stops racing if you just let it run itself to exhaustion? Have you ever tried? It could be some hours, plural. Again, I fully acknowledge that some people reading this can say "yes". I acknowledge the existence of great neurodiversity. But if you've never tried just letting it run itself to exhaustion you may be surprised what happens if you can find the time to let it.
its good to realise its called a practice since u practice it. no one every really things of nothing
Unfortunately for many, and few managers will admit it even though it's true - there is a performative aspect to physical presence at work. Being away from your desk, idle on slack, etc to go take that walk is a problem in many work environments.
Probably one reason why SWEs are disproportionately interested in FIRE.
SWEs are disproportionately interested in FIRE because it is (or was) an easy way to get a high paying job without an extended education period like becoming a doctor or lawyer. You could go straight into a six figure job after 4 years of college and even wear shorts to work, while your med school and lawyer friends were just getting started and had years of grunt work ahead of them and debt to pay off. SWEs are also disproportionately represented on online spaces like Reddit and forums where FIRE was popularized.
SWE jobs have been the most flexible I’ve had and seen across my career. I also had a manager who would police time spent in seats, but at every other job going for a walk was not an issue.
Contrast that with many of my friends in other careers who, still to this day, have stories about their managers imposing dress codes or forbidding headphones in the office. The average SWE is spoiled in workplace flexibility, even if there are exceptions.
This:? Financial Independence and Retire Early (FIRE) ?
I mean. Sure, who wouldn't want Financial Independence. Let me get right on that.
Kind of a stretch from staring at a wall.
You're suffering some sort of burnout, and you want to try some hack to be _more_ productive? Looking at a wall so I can crank out _more_ work? No, screw that. If I'm ever feeling that way, I'm going to try and work _less_ and take _more_ breaks.
Doing things with an ulterior motive most likely changes the experience of those things.
There's something inherently stressful in "doing relaxation".
So why not combine working out directly instead of staring at a wall? Ride a stationary bike at low zone 2/lower in my experience allow for uninterrupted focus during that time at work. While on bike, the mind shuns distraction and focus on "what's next" in the workstream (distraction includes HN, evidently I haven't gotten on the bike yet).
My homeopathic theory is that I have a total mental energy that is the sum of focused energy and a distracting energy. This distracting energy can be temporarily used at task at hand but it results in mental exhaustion, or left alone it leads to distraction seeking behavior. While on the bike, distracting energy is fully consumed by riding, allowing for focused energy stay focused. If I go above low zone 2, it starts eating into focused energy and I lose efficiency.
Exercising and sitting b meditating are two related but seriously different things. Which is why there are many other types of meditation to practice (walking, working, silent, etc) but zen mostly considers sitting and looking at a wall the OG
I had a same issue and I found it helped to just step away and blank out in nature.
Also try delaying your first coffee to after the first hour of being awake.
Reading this article is a great reminder that we all need to disconnect and ground ourselves again. My brain (and likely most of ours) just can't handle 100% up-time all day and needs that break.
Tangent - I used to go cycling a lot, and required a lot less wall/river-staring then. Of the people I knew who I cycled with, 95% of us were coping with some kind of mental health issue in some way and had found our fix on the bike. I miss it.
In-person interview: the majority of people want you to be making frequent eye contact, and are less comfortable when you aren't. Some people also hear folk myths that looking a certain direction is a tell for deception or fabrication. ("Up and to the left means lying; up and to the right means hungry.")
On videoconf interview: if you look away when thinking, people might think you're looking at (or listening to) AI output or a human collaborator, to cheat.
(OTOH, you might be better off finding thoughtful colleagues already familiar with introvert and neurodiverse thinkers, who are aware that many great engineers are also nerds, and who include that within "culture fit".)
I would also push back on the idea that this sort of behavior could be unique to "introvert and neurodiverse thinkers". Must there not be social and/or "neurotypical" people with idiosyncrasies?
Like do you understand that everyone is not rich working home next to a nice park or great forrest? Like many, many, many in this world people have to travel 1,5h to work middle of an urban metropolitan area with almost no trees and definitely no fresh air, and their living conditions are no improvement? But this practice or other types of meditation you can do even during your remote, or even in a solitary confinement? And if you get good at this hou can do small few minute/seconds of meditations or “wall staring” during the day?
I am very privileged and there’s deers walking 5min from where I live, but I don’t have the audacity to think everyone in this world are as lucky.
Like yes it's cool to have air conditioning and basically any food anywhere at any time, and many have transportation that can take us across the country at a moment's notice. There are marvels now that our ancestors would die of shock trying to comprehend. That said, it seems still that we've made a remarkably awful place for the vast majority of people to live and work in, more the latter than the former, while a handful of people basically live in a never-ending theme park.
TLDR on the app is that you join real time 'boring' livestream rooms with random people.
The app never did really take off, but I still would love some fresh ideas around combatting information overload (outside of the 1000's of screen/content blocking type apps)
But a wall would probably do just fine as well.
When I was working more vision was always a bottleneck ... Staring at yet more close things would be less useful than staring at far away things
It's nice because your eyes don't need to be open for it, so they don't get all dried out and itchy.
Consider:
We all know about "paying attention". Pay attention in class. Pay attention to the movie you're watching. Pay attention to where you're walking. Etc. It's important and we do it all the time.
Take that to the next level. Pay attention to a thing for a while. AKA Concentration. That's important too. Deep thinking, careful doing, science, engineering, art. It's necessary for all that.
And then there's meditation. It's more stuff to do with your attention.
Samatha (AKA concentration meditation) is concentration taken to the next level. All that deeper thinking etc that you got from concentration, this takes it further. Possibly much further. There are weird depths. And also, you become very familiar with the ways of attention. How it moves and how it affects the rest of your world and what you can do with it.
And then there is Shikantaza (AKA formless meditation, meditation without a seed...). it's a hard left turn. Serious sci-fi. I'll leave it at that.
It helps me focus to have just one active “feed”. And I put my phone away when I work to eliminate that screen as potential distraction.
Where I still kinda “fail” is during natural downtime. Like if I’m waiting somewhere, e.g the Dr office, I’ll pull out my phone and browse mindlessly.
The paper linked to justify this just talks about media that people consume which is growing. But that has nothing to do with the point this post is trying to make?
Your eyes "stream 4k video" anytime your eyelids are open regardless if you're watching a movie or looking at a wall? Why would me watching more videos say anything about how much information my brain processes?
Staring at wall produces little information in and of itself, perhaps through reflection, but staring at a TV produces a load of information, most of which is useless like names of characters, their favorite dresses, what food is being eaten where, etc. You can learn a lot by just passively observing even "dumb" TV especially if it contains foreign content or skills like cooking or sports. Again, not saying all of it is relevant to your life, but that's a different issue.
TikTok I have no knowledge of, but for sure seeing something like "Arab dude wearing suspicious looking outfit playing unknown instrument that I now have a name for playing a tune I did not know the name of but I do now says weird cultural thing that is highly specific to his or her locale but it kind of makes sense because of clues inside the video" is still very high-load compared to "I see a bird there that I do not care about in any way shape or form but I do remember it is blue".
I'm aware of an association between perception of time to number of photons received in the eyes.
These relate to both how much time the events appear to take subjectively as well as how well remembered they are or how long they feel retrospectively. As in there is an actual physiological explanation for "time flies when you're having fun".
There probably is something to also be said for attention too. Increased awareness and attention will undoubtedly use up more 'bandwidth' or 'storage' too.
Just do Zazen, my dude.
Show HN: Improve cognitive focus in 1 minute (oneminutefocus.com) 741 points by junetic on Feb 7, 2024 | 287 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39288039
