In "Four thousand weeks" by Oliver Burkeman, he breaks down that this obsession with action stems to the industrial revolution when it was decided that workers should sell their time for a living.
Before that we used to have task-oriented jobs, like milking the cows, which you cant do more than once in a while, or harvest the fields, which you can't do until it's ripe. In general humans are more evolved to this kind of work given our 200'000 years of task-based genetics versus 150 years of time controlling your action.
I’m not sure where this idea came from that farming was idle and only industry required constant work. Every hundred-year old book I’ve ever read that features farming includes themes of how the farmer’s work never ends and runs from dawn to dusk.
There's a lot to do on a farm, yet no farmer is expected to be working a full 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, at moderate intensity. No farmer has to do something within the next hour or their boss shouts at them. No farmer has to feel bad, or need to catch up, if they have to take a day off unless it's planting season. No farmer has any qualm about ending a day early because they've done all they planned to do. No farmer obsesses with stimulant medication or correct dosage of modafinil to get through their daily work.
And there's a huge difference between a subsistence farmer, which most of humanity has been for most of history, and intensive farming, which admittedly benefits from machines, but it's anyway a much more regimented industrial operation.
I recently read that serfs weren't expected to work more than a few hours a day until industrial automation really took hold. I wish I had the link, but it made sense - and then labor laws were a reaction to those expectations, not solving a long running problem.
I thought of the same series, but that's not the tl;dr I would have chosen at all. I would have gone to part 4e where I found this quote near the end:
> We should also note that these women work an enormous amount. We estimated, you will recall, working hours for our male peasants on the order of 2,500 to 3,500 working hours per year, massively more than modern full-time employment (40 hours per week is ~2000, typically around 1,750 hours after sick time, vacation, holidays and such). By contrast our peasant women are working in this model 3,760 hours per year, significantly more than their fathers, husbands and brothers and wildly more than modern workers.
It's nice to think that our ancestors didn't have to work as hard, because it justifies our own desire for more leisure time. IMO that desire is justified anyways; but premodern subsistence farming/any sort of self-supported lifestyle is incredibly labor-intensive compared to modern agriculture, regardless of whether you're a serf or a freeholder.
I don't know shit about farming but I still don't think there is a single true statement in what you've said. Why would a farmer not be expected to work a 40 hour week? What farmer doesn't have targets, goals, deadlines, constraints, expectations? You think agricultural workers don't depend on, use, and abuse drugs?!
This reads like, "My job is very complicated, yours is very simple."
> I mean, they would cut your balls off (castration) just to qualify you for unpaid labor in the old world.
And they would kill slaves right here in the new world. Neither of those things is representative of farming as labor — it represents specific moral bankruptcies in those societies. There are plenty of small to medium sized farms where I live, and neither of those principles has applied to them for nearly 400 years, at least.
Right, somewhere between the Crusades/Inquisitions (plural, cross-regional) and the Atlantic Slave Trade was the moral peak of humanity - is that the take?
Even on a quaint farm in the south of France the punishment for a servant disobeying their master was a lot worse than getting laid off with severance - one might say severance had a different meaning.
> Right, somewhere between the Crusades/Inquisitions (plural, cross-regional) and the Atlantic Slave Trade was the moral peak of humanity - is that the take?
… what?
No. I’m saying that none of these societal tyrannies has anything to do with being a self-operated farm owner now.
Oh I thought you said for 400+ years (small) farming has been as ethical as it is now.
I understand that you're saying:
> [slavery] is not representative of farming as labor
But I disagree, since it clearly has been. Military, prison, servitude, employment, even the tyranny of "the man of the house" - all these hierarchical authoritarian social structures (whether or not they were ever noble or righteous, or useful) have improved ethically over time in the lives of those subjected to the violence of these systems - the conditions used to be a lot worse, across the board.
Labor is not solved in terms of ethics, but it's a lot better now.
There are a few million people in jail and supervision in the USA, offloading the crudity and performing the work of incentivizing conformity, at slave wages as we speak.
I've worked on a traditional farm, and it's definitely hard work, and lots of it, but it is finite. Sure, there are some things you could always do, but usually there are a fixed number of tasks you plan for a day, and many of them have to be done at specific points in time. This naturally creates breaks between work.
As some other commenters pointed out, the comment (and the book) are not making claims about work hours. Seeing it from the perspective of "dawk to dusk" with our, now time-based perspective is the wrong interpretation of it because it imposes our view of work and time on a task-based life.
You would work dawn til dusk, but you would: milk the cows at 06 AM, have a walk/chat/game with friends, bring the animals out, have breakfast, have a nap, refill water for animals, do some weeding, go have lunch with the other workers, etc. Then in the evening you bring the animals back in. So while you had a "15 hour workday" on the clock, your day is not consisting of actions and improvements without an end that can be done indefinitely, but by tasks that arise gradually at certain moments. All the time between the tasks is "time off" in the modern interpretation, and then you have a completely different view of work, because there is no pressure to produce at any point.
That's a very romanticized view of it. The pressure to produce is if you don't plant the seeds, there won't be crops later in the year. If you don't harvest the crops, they'll rot in the fields, and you'll go hungry. If you don't fix the fence, then a fox will get into the chicken coop and the sheep will get out.
I’m not sure where this idea came from that shit in old books is inherently rational or they would have any frame of reference to compare it to the modern world. Everybody’s conception of the worst is based on their own experience.
I currently work in a trade. My sixty-something boss constantly makes side comments about a life of backbreaking work, for more hours and in the midst of more hardship than any of the kids these days. But interrogate it lightly and you’ll hear about a guy that got a union apprenticeship right out of high school, was making a solid adult wage by 22, moving back and forth between another trade he had a house at 25, and was a classic truck collector and eventually fabricator in his 30s. Now that he’s in his sixties he’s going to retire with TWO pensions for life. If you talk to anyone in the industrial trades, they’ll know one or more of these ”I’m only bitter because I worked too damn hard for everything I ever had” guys that spent most of their lives under competent union representation, never had any serious threat to their lifestyle that wasn’t of their own doing, and owns a vacation home, a motorcycle, a boat, and multiple cars.
I’m sure they genuinely believe it. And I’m sure if they wrote a book about it, they would paint a picture of indentured servitude where the houses and cars and everything were sources of stress and financial burden. Then, they’d say, “hey, check out my cool cars and lake house,” and then talk about how living with your parents after age 18 is a moral failure.
We should all listen to guys like your boss. Circumstances have changed a bit but their beliefs are generally directionally correct and they have some great lessons to teach.
I’m directly between his age and the age of the people he criticizes. He has absolutely no understanding of what challenges young people face. His path to stability has vanished. There’s no apprenticeship program in that union anymore and in the ones that are, the percentage of your living expenses to your income is incomparably higher. The younger people work more hours than he did at their age and have a hell of a lot less to show for it because it buys a hell of a lot less. Since wealth compounds, this is not merely a temporary setback — it’s a completely different arc of progress. Many have replaced pensions with riskier and less stable 401ks. He has no idea what he’s talking about. His formula for success in life basically starts with “begin an industrial career just before the peak of the golden age of US manufacturing in a heavily industrialized area in the golden age of organized labor.”
In South Korea everyone was recently using 3x leverage on the stock market—which mostly consists of just 2 companies, so concentrated that American institutions aren't allowed to call their index funds diversified—because you have nothing to lose by losing 200% of your money. Which did happen last week as the market crashed. Those people are no worse off for losing 200% of their life savings, because they are already at zero if they don't literally win the lottery—life savings weren't enough to be net positive.
I think it’s pretty hard for people that came up in the 70s and 80s who are ending their careers to wrap their heads around how shit it is to try starting a career/life right now. Even when people outright tell them, they assume those people are exaggerating or making excuses for not challenging themselves. Back in those days there was always some other route. The entire lower-end of the job market, including just about anything entry-level, is so deliberately extractive now that, by design, you just ‘can’t’ get ahead. That’s where the financial nihilism comes in.
I feel like they were more confident back then. They knew if they followed a certain path they were likely to succeed. Now it's all murky and it's obvious that most paths lead to failure, but it's not obvious which ones don't.
Well imagine having the entire first like decade of your career happen before the Reagan era blessed the relentless pursuit of profit at the expense of anyone, even if they were core parts of your company? Before Private equity, rampant off-shoring, etc. etc. etc. Even in the nineties people were saying things like “don’t switch jobs too often because it will make you look disloyal.” Well now, in many industries, if you have the same job for 5 years people think you’re just unmotivated. Considering how little employers are willing to invest in employees compared to recruiting shiny new ones, it makes sense.
It's true, but part of the problem is that there is an oversupply of people seeking high-skill jobs before they have had the time to actually build those skills. Whereas if you need to a guy to haul lumber around, and there's a guy standing in front of your lumber saying "I can do that", he can probably do it right now and you pay him for it.
There are still jobs like that, but living standards have increased so much that they aren't considered worth taking when you can hold out longer for better ones, to the point that it's considered like a "boomerism" to suggest doing jobs that people in other countries are happy to take to live at a 1970's standard of living.
Even in the US there are seasonal blue collar jobs like that. Youth generally last until 25 or so now though, and that's partly just a skill issue/matter of mindset, because it didn't sound weird for a 20 year old to work in a factory or on a boat back then like it does now.
IMO the giant difference between now and then is the massive gap in income/wealth between people just starting out or working 1970's style jobs, and jobs with global reach and high leverage (ie the most capable produce 2-100+ times the value, but the average person produces nothing of value or negative value). There are WAY more opportunities to benefit from that now than there were in the 70's. I think that's what causes most of the angst tbh, that there is so much more opportunity cost and variance in outcomes now because of global trade/technology, if you just want to work to live you're not going to the same results as people who live to work, or people living places where they literally have to "work to live".
To be honest I don't think the boomer mindset of just working to live and play with your expensive toys was ever a very good one, because it led to the consumerism that makes people think they need $10M to retire or seek $200k jobs right out of college without actually wanting to do those things enough to achieve them (and not needing them anyway)
> there is an oversupply of people seeking high-skill jobs before they have had the time to actually build those skills
This is not a new problem and does not lay at the feet of job seekers. Manufacturing trades are a few decades ahead of software development in this respect. Before off-shoring, being a tool and die maker was one of the most consistent paths to getting a really well-paying job. It took a long time to get into it: often a decade or more of on-the-job experience and only the best machinists qualified. But they’re crucial to most manufacturing, so most companies, even small ones, had a path to progressively bring new, inexperienced people into the trade, build their skills, and turn them into the people that companies needed. Then, off-shoring meant that they didn’t need as many tool and die guys as they used to have, so they mostly stopped taking apprentices. As time progressed, they had a seeming never-ending stream of experienced people to fill those dwindling roles, but now, there’s a problem: almost all of the people from the original system are retiring, and almost nobody’s been training apprentices, so the entire industry is at risk of losing that crucial manufacturing skill. Meanwhile, China has tens of thousands because 80s executives sent all of our knowledge over there in the 80s and 90s and they just kept progressing. As an aside, anybody who says “there will be new jobs,” as a response to the possibility of AI-driven job loss should visit the rust belt. There were new jobs— we as a society just didn’t care enough about the people we discarded to help them see the benefits of that.
Companies in the US right now, tech notwithstanding, largely see no commitment to helping maintain a labor pool, or help individual workers progress into more useful workers. They think it’s immoral to spend a dime on anything that isn’t going to contribute directly to this quarter’s bottom line.
> there are jobs like that
Yes I understand this. I’m a tradesman and I encounter all levels of blue collar workers far more frequently than just about anyone around here.
> they aren't considered worth taking when you can hold out longer for better ones
People don’t hold out on those jobs. I see people doing them all the time. They’re no different from uber or DoorDash. You just don’t see people doing those jobs as a career because they can’t provide you, let alone your family, with basic necessities.
Firstly, those jobs aren’t stable enough to bet your housing on, let alone with kids or whatever. Secondly, they never offer health insurance, which is an absolute must in the United States where your kid breaking their arm could put a low-wage family in the red for literally years. Let alone getting cancer or something.
> living standards have increased so much
Standards of living have not universally increased- the cost of convenience goods, electronics, entertainment, clothing, and other things have decreased. The cost of many necessities, such as housing, health care, and education, have all increased much more quickly. Go look for some visualizations that juxtapose the basic cost of living with wage growth since the 1970s— life, in general, was SO much cheaper then. It was SO MUCH EASIER for young people to get their adult lives started. Then look for a visualization that shows, for each year, what the inflation-adjusted purchasing power of the federal minimum wage was since the 70s. Blue Collar wage growth peaked in 1981.
> There are WAY more opportunities to benefit from that now than there were in the 70's.
To whom, how many jobs are there vs the population size, and how long does one basically need to be floated to get into it surely enough to make it a career? One of the biggest correlating factors among people who successfully founded businesses was having enough family support (money, connections) to float them through multiple failures and get a foothold. Even if there are more people for whom that’s true, that does not mean it’s a generally viable path. It requires starting on second base.
The amount of wealth concentrating in the higher echelons and the widening chasm between them and everyone else show how little those opportunities avail themselves to most people.
Life has gotten much better for the wealthy. Everyone else is hurting and cheap flat screen TVs don’t change that.
That we should act like "self made men" when in reality it took entire multiple lifetimes worth of effort where people in power were finally allowed to create a society where a common trades worker could enjoy an upper middle class lifestyle?
That is not the claim being made though. The difference is between work done (and payment due) being defined by time spent, vs work done being defined by tasks completed.
A hundred years is not a long time ago. its post industrial revolution, so after the cultural (and often legal) switch to work being measured by time spent. What about a thousand years ago? A lot of claims I have read for more leisured times in the past go back to hunter-gatherer cultures so much further back still.
Sticking to a thousand years ago, it would be task driven. They also had cultures, and usually religions that encouraged time off work, and with practices that encouraged not focusing on work. Religious holidays, sabbath day rules, payer, especially meditative prayer, but also formulaic prayer and pauses, periods of silence, hymns and so on. Even the meditation described in the article sounds like a secular version of religious meditation.
> task-oriented jobs, like milking the cows, [...] or harvest the fields, [...] humans are more evolved to this kind of work given our 200'000 years of task-based genetics
The agricultural examples are not representative of the human past that forged our genetic structure.
Hominins are about 5 millions years old. Humans, 2m years. Modern humans, 300k years. Agriculture appeared around 10k years ago in the Middle-East, later in other parts of the world. So most of the human past is about hunting and gathering.
Apart from this detail, I wonder if there are well established scientific argument that make that "genetics of behavior" the main factor in our modern behavior. At first glance it looks like a wild theory, created by a journalist who wrote self-help books and held a psychology column.
> Apart from this detail, I wonder if there are well established scientific argument that make that "genetics of behavior" the main factor in our modern behavior. At first glance it looks like a wild theory, created by a journalist who wrote self-help books and held a psychology column.
The current pace of technological progress means that you cannot just sit and wait for the crops to grow. You need to constantly be learning a new skill on the side, diversifying your income streams, thinking and researching about how to optimize your costs and yields for the following year, etc.
This is because there is no guarantee that you can keep living the same routine till the day you die.
Also, humans are builders. Doing nothing and waiting for the seasons to change like cows in a field might not be in our DNA. Restlessness is our natural state, that's why we have all this stuff.
Interesting comment, but I'm thinking of the time scales involved. Farming 6 to 8 thousand years ago, simultaneous development in several areas. Before that millennia of hunter-gatherers (with technologies thrown in like stone shaping and metals?). Before that it is millions of years after chimps/bonobos/us diverged.
Something accelerated the restlessness, perhaps language?
The time scales are long enough for evolution itself to play out. It's very plausible that the percent of the human gene pool that has the "restless builder" genes simply increased over time. Just consider how much of an advantage being technologically superior gives one party in a war.
> In "Four thousand weeks" by Oliver Burkeman, he breaks down that this obsession with action
Great book, but I have pinned down my obsession with action to my daily single cup of coffee habit. The idea of relaxation doesn't exist. When I sit down, it takes a minute before my brain desperately tries to find something to do. Guilt soon overcomes me. Even in the extreme anhedonia of the first days of caffeine withdrawal, I am able to glimpse a state of mind where idleness is both natural and restorative. I strongly feel that my creativity suffers because I am unable to allow my mind to drift, daydream, laze around on the couch without immediate goals other than the contemplation of life. Too bad I am too brain-washed (and lazy) to go through the unpleasant mental phase to drop the brew.
It is no wonder that our caffeine-addicted society is all about action, and we are unable to truly relax.
Necessary disclaimers given the topic and the constant disinformation: yes, I have ADHD. No, caffeine does not relax anyone's brain due to its mode of action, and any claim of doing so is misunderstanding the chemical pathways involved. The vast majority of us are too addicted and not self-aware enough to notice the effect coffee has on our lives, yet are ready to claim it's the miracle brew that only has positive side-effects
Yes! I had exactly the same experience. Quitting habits like smoking, drinking coffee, or playing video games has always been much easier during those periods, and it felt like it happened on its own. It was mind-blowing to notice that after it happened a couple of times.
Yes, I know it's not that hard, but lately I've been going through a period of low mood, and I really cannot stomach the idea of diving deeper into the Abyss for a couple weeks while my receptors downregulate. It's hard enough already as it is.
I had some success systematically reducing it over time rather than cold turkey. YMMV. It may feel silly measuring out coffee and reducing it by just a small bit every day but it's worth it to avoid the fully withdrawal symptoms.
You just explained your cycle though. At least you can see it, up to you on how to get out of it. It sounds cliche but it's entirely in your power to change it.
The reason you can't is because in this sentence, you are saying you can't (or won't).
I’ve been contemplating giving up coffee for two years, sometimes wanting to switch to green tea alone, for the reasons you articulated. Hasn’t happened except for brief stretches, and I’ll mark my coffee free era as one of sustainable effort.
Green tea has l-theanine in it which calms the mind allegedly. Might work for you! Matcha and guayusa as well. Alternatively you can get l-theanine as a supplement if you want to keep your coffee habit
I'm kinda doing a self-experiment right now with coffee dosages, using how scatter-brained I feel during meditation as indicator.
It's amazing how productive I believe I am when I drink coffee, yet my attention is all over the place and I think a lot of that feeling of productivity is placebo and/or chemically induced euphoria. Next I want to try tea to compare.
One thing's for sure: I used to meditate best, for longer and deeper, when I was taking dexamfetamine medication and was abstaining from coffee. Caffeine for ADHD is overrated and I will gladly die on this hill.
David Graeber goes into this a lot in "Bullshit Jobs".
Farming will keep you very busy (as a few people have pointed out), but it's mostly caring for projects you personally own. As the title of the book suggests, Graeber is more concerned with why people don't seem to be content in hourly jobs, but he's an anthropologist not an economist so he says a lot about historical work too.
I think it’s way older than that. Evolution is all about adaptation and survival. When thick armour and large sharp teeth get replaced by soft skin and abstract thinking, anticipating danger and mitigating it and preparing for it becomes a full time job of every waking hour. Everything else is luxury and almost an act of mini-suicide
>anticipating danger and mitigating it and preparing for it becomes a full time job
For most of humanity's history, these tasks weren't so labor-intensive. So, evolutionarily, perception of these tasks evolved as a form of relaxation, not a job.
It is like you have a full time job of every waking hour, but that job on 80% consist of scrolling tik-tok, hanging out with friends and playing sports
If you enjoyed "4000 Weeks" historical analysis of labor I invite you to check out "Free Time" by Gary Cross. It expands on it greatly, taking it through the industrial age. Relevant to your comment Cross makes the case that another reason work was not done in excess was there were not many luxury goods to purchase. Only the extreme elites could afford what little there were. There was no real return on selling more of your time for money.
It's interesting how this compulsion to work spread even to people that don't need to do it. Just look at how many modern-day billionaires are still flaunting how many hours they work each week. Up to the modern era, work was not seen as an inherent virtue, and even something to be avoided. Even well into the modern era, Teddy Roosevelt went on multi day camping trips completely unconnected from civilization. Just imagine a world leader wanting to do that now.
Roman emperors routinely issued statements about how they were working so hard on behalf of their subjects that they barely had time to sleep. Evaluating the veracity of those statements is left as an exercise to the reader.
I kept hearing about meditation.
And at one point I tried it.
With one app that was given to me for free through my employer's benefits.
It had a counter of your current uninterrupted streak. (Meditating every day)
I kept at it.
First for 5 minutes a day.
Soon for 10m a day.
Then 20m
Then twice a day at 20m.
Then semi-guided, and in the end unguided (only a beep at the end).
I never felt anything from it. Truly. Nada. Not better, or worse or calmer or more present or really really nothing.
Yes while meditating I would catch my mind drift, I would come back to the breathing and continue the count.
After this has been on for over 6 months and my counter of my streak was nearing 200. I decided to skip a day, only to see if I would get back to it if my counter was back at 0.
Result?
I never meditated again.
Could it be that did it wrong? Possibly.
Could it be that it just doesn't work on me?
Possibly and this is the one explanation I'm going with
Thank you for sharing, I had the very same experience as you and also did some thinking about the why.
My theory: I'm a very non-anxious, relaxed person, hardly affected by stress. So mindfulness did nothing for me, I don't need more calming down.
What I tried next was transcedental meditation (I think it's also called mantra meditation, basically pick a word and kind of focus on it) and this was when meditation got really interesting for me. I fell into different states, and came back from it with intense focus and energy. This was the first time I felt something from meditation and it was way more interesting.
Unfortunately I also stopped that after a few months. Also talking to an experienced friend, wanting more interesting things or trying to achieve different states in meditation is an antipattern, you shouldn't wish for anything, so I guess it's just hard :)
As someone who used to meditate, I don't think you did it wrong. There are many right ways to do it, depending on what you seek.
Maybe it's not what you needed at the moment, especially if you're not an anxious person. But these days most people are anxious or stressed out, and the barest amount of meditation can help tremendously. Or it might do nothing, everyone is different.
Sam Harris discussed some people’s apparent inability to understand what meditation at the beginning of this podcast episode: https://overcast.fm/+ABSXUyW2VGI
I thought it was an interesting discussion.
It’s not to say that listing to it will help you or someone else to change anything about it. But it’s a known observed phenomenon that some people don’t get what meditation is and don’t get why would you do it.
In the west we tend to think of meditation as just the specific type of mindfulness practice that happened to catch on here, but there's really a whole plethora of meditative practices and traditions and different practices will resonate with different people. Its like how there's various different exercises and certain people might resonate with weightlifting while others resonate with calisthenics. Different practices are also meant to create a different effect.
Respects to you for being able to stick with meditation for that long without seeing a result, perhaps the plain mindfulness didn't do much for you since you already had a mentality that was capable in the way it would've helped.
If you were mainly focused on that one app though, if you have any remaining curiosity / patience for this what I'd suggest is experimenting with all sorts of practices for a short period of time each and just see if you feel particularly pulled to any of them. They all are "meditative" and involve specific ways of directing your attention/awareness/consciousness, they're all different paths to the same place, and I believe that different people are meant to take different paths.
Here's some areas you can look into and what you might be able to receive from it:
- There's contemplative practices of reflecting inward not to notice thoughts but to notice that which is doing the noticing. It's trying to seek out your true nature by taking the argument of "I can notice my thoughts therefore they are not me" further than that to "I can notice the noticing of thoughts too, so I'm not that either, so what am I?". The app "Waking Up" has some guided stuff in this area. Aside from simply an exercise in curiosity, there's a difference in how you move through the world and feel moved by the world as your understanding of what "you" are changes, just like how understanding that you are not your thoughts can be a radical change for someone. Advaita Vedanta is a whole field of philosophical inquiry around this type of thing if you're more attracted to that logical side.
- There's all sorts of breathing practices that can calm you or energize you or bring about all sorts of subtle changes that are really hard to put into words.
- There's chakra-based practices which rather than having to entertain chakras as a real thing you can interpret as just "this is a practice that is meant to produce a specific type of effect around what the chakra represents". You can think of them as categories of practices like exercising different muscle groups. Whether they work in the way they're described or not who knows, it's something you can just experiment with.
- There's practices that help with restfulness and sleep like Yoga Nidra, where it genuinely (scientifically proven, some people call it NSDR) can bring similar benefits to sleep
- There's the whole space of Yoga and Tai Chi if you want something more physical or flowy
So perhaps "the whole thing is just... nothing" is true for "the whole of what you tried for you", but the _real_ whole is much much more than just that.
Though in your position I'd be far too lazy to try these lol, I'm lucky in that starting off with the app _did_ feel like it produced a notable mental benefit so I had the reinforcement loop to keep exploring.
Another popular one is "forest bathing", being mindful and present in the moment while walking in a forest. Tai chi is quite an involved skill and is based on qigong, which I found much easier to get into on my own in an apartment. I've done some Vipasana style medication which helped reduce racing thoughts in bed (but unfortunately didn't help as much as I hoped at actually getting to sleep :/).
The one that had the most distinctive effect for me is zhan zhuang. Song Gao has a really excellent instructional video on YouTube about the basic method:
Remember that the people who teach this type of stuff (when they aren't fraudsters) put a huge amount of time into learning the technique well and need to find at least a few people that interested to pass on the technique but if you aren't working towards doing that you can get a lot of benefit in much less time. Song Gao recommends in a different video doing zhan zhuang for at least 30 mintues a day, but I would say (agreeing with the tai chi instructor whose blog pointed me to these videos) that just doing it once for 15-20 minutes (it may take some time to work up to that) provides a lot of benefit (in my case including both a distinctive feel of enhanced perception and eliminating, for at least a couple of months until it came back less intense than previously, the fairly minor pain I would get in my shoulders when I end up standing at a computer for a few hours nonstop, though of course I still try to move around more often). I started doing it a bit more often a few months after that first time so I can't say how long the pain reducing effect would retain some effect not doing it again but it is clear to me that you don't need to do it anywhere near daily to have major positive effects. While doing it I've noticed both muscle soreness in a number of places and had mild panic attacks but unless it gets too severe it seems like the brain can work through it just by holding the pose (I have a couple of times needed to stop due to increasing pain). I didn't the first time but since then often listen to music which I suspect like with qigong is not offically correct (though the videos I watched didn't say one way or another that I noticed) and likely reduces the meditative aspect in some ways but makes it easier and I enjoy it.
The article mentioned how we have a tendency to want to move on to the next thing even when doing something we enjoy, which I have definitely found to be the case (though I am disabled and have more time available than most people and already do almost everything more slowly than most people). One potentially impactful form of mindfulness would be to just focus on this part and try to be more present in the moment when doing whatever it is you enjoy. As I understand it this is a major focus of tantra (where the thing it is know for in the US is just one possible application, nothing intrinsic or even common). I haven't tried any formal methods around this but have found it valuable to intentionally be more mindful and at times consider and untangle the related ideas of satisfaction, fun, enjoyment, etc.
There are several different popular meditation techniques. It's not a single thing to try.
It's like saying you heard about this food thing and tried eating beans every day for months and didn't see what the fuss was about. But maybe you just needed to try bread and butter!
Every now and then I do one as well, while lying down in bed. Based on Wim Hof: 30 quick breaths, breathe out and wait until you get the urge to breathe (can take a while), inhale fully and tense all your muscles for 15 seconds, release your muscles and breathe out.
It can cause fainting. Maybe I don't sleep, maybe I just faint for 7 hours.
It doesn't sound like you did it wrong. It sounds like you practiced something more on the concentration[shamata] side of the spectrum and that you became rather adept at it.
There's a whole other vipassana side of the spectrum focused on insight. The way it's been described to me is that the concentration side, while having its own merits, is often used to support the insight work, rather than necessarily being a goal on its own.
Been doing this for 20 minutes in the morning for a few decades now. It has had an impact. I am a rather “high gain” person emotionally. I now tend to notice emotions and observe them, which helps when they threaten to suck me into a self-perpetuating ruminative vortex. Also, it has made me gentler, and an easier person to be around. I’m now well aware that whatever disturbances occur, there will be echoes and resonances tomorrow morning during my sit! Now for a moment of honesty: this is a religious practice for me. A prayer that “landed” for me: “Lord, I ask to be a conduit of grace.”
How do you know whether that's not just you growing as a person? A few decades is quite a long time, a lot of personal growth could happen in that time with or without this practice.
> and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts.
I see this study cited often, and I always reject this interpretation. I'm perfectly content sitting for long periods, with or without my thoughts, but if you give me an electric toy I've never seen before, of course I'll play with it! Can I make muscles twitch? Move my arm? Are some parts more sensitive/conductive? What happens at the limits?
For me, the pain would be the cost of playing with a new toy that gives me novel sensations. I would do it even if I had other, less painful activities available. It's not necessarily a way to avoid boredom or whatever else the common interpretation claims.
I like your take. I think I'd personally be in the same boat, if I was a participant in the study. Not sure if that take generalizes beyond us, though.
Counterpoint: every man that, upon being handed a taser, immediately tried (or was tempted to try) it on themselves. Maybe not a lightning machine, but safe electrical shocks? Probably not that uncommon.
I find just going for a walk in nature, after walking for 2 hours something happens with my brain. I'm more calm, relaxed, focused, and coherent in my inner thoughts.
I think it takes around 2 hours of inner monologue and thinking about all the problems I'm facing in my life until I feel like I'm done and I can let them go, or I've gone over them enough.
The closest I get to that is when I am getting a massage actually. If I get a 90 minute one, about halfway through my brain stops racing and I enter this, not quite hypnogogic, state where things are quiet and fluid and peaceful. The closest thing is waking up after a good night's sleep with an empty brain before the weight of the world comes crashing in.
My understanding is this is the default mode network allowing your brain to process things. I think modern life just completely inhibits any amount of this happening and that’s why these things are so important
One of the most concise and to-the-point explanations of meditation I've ever seen.
One thought I had while reading it: isn't trying to get more comfortable with doing nothing just another thing to do? isn't it another form of changing what already is?
EDIT: I'm advocating and practicing mindfulness but I always have this thought on the background and it's a real dilemma. Any thoughts?
Yes? Like trying hard to get into that state of meditation. Then you notice that you're getting tense and stressed about it not working, realize that this is not helpful, get angry at yourself for doing it wrong, try harder to do it right this time, etc.
It's my favourite puzzle about meditation. You have to approach it sideways, but if you really try that it won't work. So you try hard not to that instead, which won't work either. It's kind of funny how focusing on your breath tends to work, but... don't hold that thought.
It's a contradiction, and that's okay. Get comfortable with it ;-)
FWIW a good trick is to be aware of your thoughts, watch the tension/stress/realisation/anger/effort arising, the sort-of ignore them because they're thoughts and look for the way your mind tenses moving between them, then do the opposite of that tensing or let the tensing move you to a feeling of (say) extreme love or connection because if you're going to feel something that is more pleasant than stress. These things come and go, as you illustrate. Once you don't lean into them they tend to just go away.
None of those things are doing meditation wrong, they're just things minds do. The mistake is in focusing on them instead of focusing on the process generating the changes.
When I started meditating, I actively tried to ignore my thoughts, which was exhausting. So when I couldn't, I'd engage and ruminate instead, which was just as tiring.
The approach that finally worked for me (and one I still use today, years later) I learned from a book by Adrian Wells called Metacognitive Therapy. It's not self-help, actually; it's a clinical manual for therapists, but I read it anyway. The idea, in my own words, is not to engage with the thought but simply to recognize it, almost like greeting it and saying goodbye in the same breath. A thought comes, and you say, "Hmm, okay, I just thought that. That was a thought. That's fine." And you move on.
Of course, the book goes much deeper than that, but this simple approach helped me enormously with rumination and anxiety around intrusive thoughts.
This is a great point. This is why I don’t meditate :)
It became clear to me at some point that meditation was another way I was creating some standard for good or bad, and comparing myself to it. Would be annoyed at myself if I weren’t “mindful enough” etc. I think even if you don’t have this tendency, but you’re still meditating with the intent to be in a certain state or arrange things a certain way, you’re still doing a minor version of this - how I was before, not good, how I am now, better.
What I do now instead of meditating is to just sit without doing anything on purpose. I don’t try to prevent myself from thinking or direct my intention in any way. So I just am as I am - maybe my mind wanders, maybe it doesn’t. This way there’s no contradiction. When I’m anxious, I’m anxious. When my mind wanders, it wanders. When I think about cheese, I’m thinking about cheese. If I think “I’m feeling kind of present right now”, then there’s “I’m feeling kind of present right now”. And before I know it, it’s something different
> but you’re still meditating with the intent to be in a certain state
Then don't. It's exactly the point to not do that. Meditation needs non-attachment imho. Because when you're attached (I need this to feel a certain way, something must happen) you can't really be observant of your thoughts and sensations, you're one with them.
Yeah that’s fair, that’s why I put the “or arrange things in a certain way” - imo wanting to be observant of thoughts and sensations is a choice one makes that implies a value judgement, i.e. that it’s “better” to to be observant of thoughts and sensations, which I don’t think is necessarily true. For instance if I consider the best conversations I’ve had, it’s because I was “lost” in conversation - just having the conversation, not even aware that that’s what I’m doing. To me being nonjudgmental doesn’t mean viewing something and having a neutral view of it (which is still a judgement), it’s being entirely free from judgement by not being apart from it. This way when you’re judging something (“ugh I don’t like this coffee”) there’s no problem with that either.
All that said I think if someone wants to choose to meditate, or to spend time being aware of feelings or whatever form of meditation they choose, they’re totally welcome to do that. And I agree that if you do that, it’s helpful to focus on the process rather than the outcome.
That is called dualistic mindfulness. The feeling of the self (the thought “oh I am trying to meditate”) is just another thought. Pay close enough attention, and that dissipates as well.
One way to look at it is that the act of meditation is just the exercise part; it helps you practice to “be with what is” in the rest of your life’s experience, which translates into “whatever happens within or around me, I always have choices of action and can decide on my actions from a place of silence, the eye of the hurricane, with sufficient space between where I am and my own emotions and feelings, body sensations, and other sensory input”.
A side note: the experience of meditation alone and in groups is very different. There’s a reason why people who are “serious about it” (or seriously interested) do it in community.
The practice described there is close to shamatha (calm abiding). Just sit and when thoughts arrive, simply label it as “thinking” without prejudice or attachment and carry on.
A common occurrence is the thought that oneself is thinking or labeling too much. This is close to the recursion / self-reference you are referring to. The practice thereof is to simply accept that (and your labeling of inner activity and all wrapped up in that) and carry on abiding. The inner chatter that you are not meditating well enough is a funny one.
No. You're allowed to direct your attention. The problem would be in how you approach it. If you strive then you're doing it wrong.
Liken it to brushing your teeth: you can't really judge it. You probably did it good enough. It's more important to keep doing it steadily every day than to evaluate progress.
If you take seriously the notion that enlightenment isn't some separate state or goal to be reached but simply the actualization of things as they are, I find the goal- and outcome-oriented drives tend to subside. Instead one is left with all the minutae of how things unfold, which seems inextricable from the goings-on of mind/perception/whatever. Paying close attention to those goings-on is pretty nice, IME.
Buddha addressed this idea directly. Your instinct that "getting comfortable with nothing" is still doing something turns out to be exactly right, and Buddhism doesn't deny it. Its answer is basically: yes, you use one kind of wanting (the motivation to practice) to loosen a deeper kind of wanting (craving a specific outcome), like using fire to burn down a house, then the fire has nothing left to burn.
Meditation, in the Therevada tradition at least, never claimed to be nothing, it uses doing to undermine it.
I used to sit alone for 30-40 minutes, 100's of meters below ground, in absolute darkness, absolute silence, no life around, no movement around, not even a breeze of air. Only mild thoughts to stop myself from falling asleep. Above ground, I slept under the stars and sky, in the wild, with no buildings around.
What I learnt is, recent generations have too much of self awareness, causing the communities and groups to become weaker, compared to the tribal settlements that helped humans to dominate other species.
I think this makes as dominate other species even more. Society, and especially market capitalism, is like a giant optimization function for productivity. If you step off the treadmill, you will get dominated by those who are on it and have the latest ICBMs, AI models, infrastructure out the wazoo, can produce 10,000 drones a week, etc.
Too much self awareness is still a problem. Even if you have ICBMs and drones, a society that puts less emphasis on individuals than the community, can survive through offsprings and community traditions and beliefs. As long as the community lives on through its children, it's fine.
For example, people in my community are mostly known by their family name, and not by individual's name. Family name alone is used as far as possible. My grandpa never liked to be called by his own name.
The idea is, as long as there is someone to carry the family name, individuals should not matter.
The individual vs community dichotomy is a can of worms. The proponents of these terms often misunderstand each other.
The "individual" is short-hand for negative freedoms, and from this you can derive many of the same values as the "community" types want.
For example, you can say that carbon pollution is an infringement of an individual's negative freedoms. You can also say that it's bad for society's functioning and public health. This is one example where the lens of the individual and community give the same result.
Typically these two words point to different resolutions of analysis, one concerned with a unit of analysis that can be more easily understood and more credibly ascribed rights (the single suffering human), the other concerned with the global system dynamics where the analysis is more difficult but can also reveal some emergent phenomena (sociology, economics).
Too much self-awareness can cause you to become blind to the experiential part of life.
Like, when you're at a party, not having fun, but instead thinking: "I am drinking alcohol to lower my social inhibitions at the cost of worse sleep and long-term health benefits, because I think in the long run the possible connections made here and the subsequent rise in social status will be worth it"
Resembled with above experience. Wanting to be self aware, I spent couple of years in confusion. Rather only thinking about what I am doing at any point of time, and trying to be aware, not being involved fully and not able to enjoy. spent few years like that, it is really difficult situation to be in. At some point, I realized, the self-awareness is towards emotions that are arising in myself, mainly, not on particular thoughts. means while speaking with others, if there is any strong emotion particular negative emotion raising in oneself. just being aware about that strong emotion actually cools down, and then it becomes a habit. and over a period of time along with emotion awareness also comes. and then we can still continue to enjoy the whole party.
That's not self-awareness. You have it all backwards.
Awareness is about the senses, as well as having the experience to predict what will happen next, and plan accordingly. Awareness is 100% about balancing the sensing and the planning.
The sensing is important, but not for its own sake. If you overcorrect in that direction, it's just self-indulgence and hedonism.
Emil Cioran, in "A Short History of Decay", thinks that if humanity were deprived of work and sustained action for an indefinitely long "Sunday afternoon," boredom would become so unbearable that violence—crime in particular—would emerge as the principal means of escaping the oppressive emptiness of time.
"If Sunday afternoons were extended for months, where would humanity get to, liberated from sweat, from the weight of the first curse? The experiment would be worth the trouble. It is more than likely that crime would become the sole diversion, that debauchery would seem candor, shouting melody and jeers tenderness. The sensation of time's immensity would make each second into an intolerable torment, a sublime firing squad. In hearts imbued with poetry would appear a blasé cannibalism and a hyena's melancholy; butchers and executioners would die out—of lethargy; churches and brothels would split with sighs. The universe transformed into a Sunday afternoon... it is the very definition of ennui, and the end of the universe."
> It’s oddly difficult to do nothing, and while you’re doing nothing, it’s oddly difficult to feel at ease.
I don't have difficulty with this. Doing nothing, thinking about nothing, and simultaneously feeling perfectly at ease just comes naturally. I know that my experience is not universal and that many people do struggle with this. If you struggle with this and you were wondering, serenity really is very nice, and I wish I could share it, and I'm sorry that I can't.
I can only do it with instant satisfaction and ease on certain drugs or combinations of drugs, I assume it's a mechanical thing for me rather than spiritual, the brain functions, so could be both environmental and genetic, the body being like the ship for the spirit, though a spirit not at ease can disrupt an otherwise well oiled machine.
Consider that a lot of the resistance to just existing is external expectations. I feel like I should always be doing something because I'm pressured to, or that small things bother me because I feel I need to perform. Being content to exist has to do with becoming aware of expectations and not letting them take over your life, I think. Might be why meditation doesn't work for some, as it's a rather brute-force way of doing this.
Your brain is a prediction machine. I am afraid doing nothing is inhibiting that function. I think it's perfectly healthy to not want to be a vegetable. Maybe using that life force to focus on the things you're avoiding by rumination and escapism is good enough, and we don't have to be cosplaying the dead to get there?
Sure - no real argument but it's maybe worth examining the assumptions underlying this which you know exist because you say 'maybe' and 'I am afraid ...'. Accounts abound as to why 'doing nothing' is not necessarily a negative activity. If you're in good health, sometimes absolutely passivity after having drunk in the fact that 'For a while I am alive and consciousness in this inexplicably incredible universe and it's a massive privilege' is extraordinarily beneficial for the times you are not predicting.
> I am afraid doing nothing is inhibiting that function
It isn't.
> I think it's perfectly healthy to not want to be a vegetable
Not having an opinion about everything for 3 minutes != vegetable.
The author of the post is selling what he himself doesn't understand. Paying attention to your inner chatter without judgement is part of a much broader tradition. Westerners stealing bits from cultures they don't understand is nothing new. Neither is the polarizing fascination/dismissal it entails.
> The author of the post is selling what he himself doesn't understand. Paying attention to your inner chatter without judgement is part of a much broader tradition. Westerners stealing bits from cultures they don't understand is nothing new.
Quite the elitist thing to say and a bit obsolete in the type of overly-connected world we live in today. Perhaps the author just shared personal experience; they did in fact write that the word „meditation“ was deliberately omitted.
Your brain is also self-reflective. It can from the inside change its expectations. Reaching for the metaphor of evolved prediction machine implies you can't train in any other way, but you can. Let's say society collectively decides (or capitalism) that we need liesure living just like Europeans do, then that will be the system. Why are we following on Elon's footsteps of compressing 1000 years of progress into 100 years. No asteriod is coming to destroy us, so no rush.
I have this same cactus same thing, but later on I realized even when I do nothing, and even my tinnitus is there I realized it doesn’t bother me anyway. I miss that deep winter / snow silence now and then but kind of learned to live with it I think. I realize this is very different experience for everyone.
I noticed the more I do nothing (and think nothing) the more my tinnitus lessens. I think mine has something to do with permanent neck muscle tension, the result of everyday rush and stress.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't actually feel any discomfort while sitting for 3 minutes doing nothing. Do most people actually struggle with that like the article says?
I struggle, I think I'm most people: First, I procrastinate getting started because of all the things that I should be, want to be, or am doing. Then I start and its like taking the lid off a boiling pot of to-dos and thoughts that have been suppressed in the constant busyness of doing stuff. I want to attend to them all now, but I deny myself. Then I want to at least make sure to keep them all in mind so I can attend to them when the exercise ends, but I deny myself. This struggle boils up and down until the exercise is finally over. I get a few moments of peace of course.
Sure, I spontaneously zone out sometimes, but purposely meditating is always the experience above.
I think experiences vary depending on person and personality.
I'm fine with doing nothing for a long time[0], but know friends and family members that struggle with not filling idle time with their phone. I do think this is learned behavior that people can adjust over time with practice (i.e. meditation).
0: I'm a voracious reader, frequent solo traveler, and was a paid photographer for a bit. Sitting, observing, and thinking is something that I do on a daily basis and comes naturally to me.
After having kids content like this is so unrelatable. When I finally have my own time, I'm going to do something fun, not worry about existential stuff lol.
Before kids I was on and off into meditation,my place in the world, being calm or w/e.
Same lmao. Similarly, I don't want to be rude or assume things but I'm really annoyed with 20-something-year-olds giving out life advice.
(I don't know if the author is in 20s)
The article allows for breathing and blinking, but has an odd constraint of “don’t move”, which AFAIK will make one fight their own neural system trying to autoregulate arousal. I’m not an expert but in my limited understanding, remaining completely still is not “not doing anything”, it’s very active inhibitory action.
As an experiment, just get in a nice running shower, so your sensory system will get external stimulation. YMMV, but for me three minutes pass quick. I just did that and when I decided to check the time it was almost 5 minutes already.
Real “doing nothing” is just leaving things be, just chilling out and observing whatever is happening without actively participating - and three minutes is a pretty low mark for that, unless we’re talking about fellas with ADHD.
Remaining completely still takes tremendous effort. Its harder than any dead lift or 100m sprint. You can do those at pace. But being still is binary act. It takes all the faculties and even then it's almost impossible without a very large amount of intense practice.
> Real “doing nothing” is just leaving things be
Yes that's it. That's what Zen, wu wei etc all point to.
I've looked at this a lot and my current view point is any actual concept of enlightenment was probably something invented by an 'influencer' in meditation circles thousands of years ago.
The irony of this is that trying to be miserable is more likely to circle the square and become funny removing the misery. As a Brit I'm culturally familiar with this.
I got really into meditation a few years ago. At the height of my practice, I was doing 1-2 hours per day, and I did one 7-day retreat.
Since then, two things happened. One is that I completely lost interest in meditation. The second is that I feel I've become a lot better at emotional regulation and self-awareness. It's hard to tell whether meditation actually played a role in this, or whether it was other things I was doing, or just a natural consequence of aging and accumulated experience.
Now my thoughts on meditation are that it's probably moderately beneficial, especially for someone like me prone to anxiety and depression and lacking in healthy lifestyle habits. But I'm skeptical of claims that it has unique benefits when compared to any other focused, rigorous activity like physical training, serious reading and writing, or playing a musical instrument. Or for that matter, eating a healthy diet and getting enough sleep.
This version of doing nothing IMO is still “doing something”. It’s clearly not “just existing” to have a standard that you must hold still, not look around the room, not engage in thinking, notice how you’re feeling, etc.
It’s clear when you see the picture of the cat in the article that the cat has none of these concerns.
I’d consider this to be a form of meditation - still containing ideas of “this, not that”.
Something that has felt much more rewarding to me is to really just exist, but without any ideas of being present, or things you must do or not do. I just sit and take a break from doing anything on purpose. My mind might wander, or it might not. When it does “wander”, and I realize that it’s been wandering it almost feels like a miracle - how is this thing doing this on its own? But that’s not really the point either. Whatever is here now, is here now, whether you notice it or not. And by the time you notice it, it’s gone. So what difference is there between thinking and not thinking?
Seconded. For me "doing nothing" also means "doing nothing without following any rules" as you've stated. My version of doing nothing involves either just sitting outside watching the world go by or walking & wandering around. May poke at plants here or there, pick up a stone or throw it etc., But no, I'm not consciously trying to "calm my mind"
Right, I think commonly "doing nothing"/meditation is approached with the goal of "doing something", i.e. "getting the hell out of here" or changing instead of sitting with how you feel in the present moment. And, just as you say, that basically defeats the entire purpose.
Just because something is hard doesn't mean it's worth doing. Evolution selected impatience for a reason. Of course, the flip-side is fake supernormal stimuli like screens, etc. that does more harm than good. The new environment we live in is incompatible with our old brains. But that doesn't mean you literally do nothing. It's ok to not meditate--figure out the right balance for you. I believe before meditating try getting rid of things like junk-food, doomscrolling etc. What's the point in meditating 15 minutes a day just to be distracted with cheap dopamine several of your waking hours.
I think I might. In a past life I was a full time musician and had tons of time to kill. I was able to just go to places and simply exist. It wasn't to read or work or write or meet anyone (everyone was at work after all), it was simply "I want some coffee". I'd people watch and daydream for a bit and then I'd go do something else.
Whether or not that's what they had in mind idk, but it's what it immediately made me think of. I traded near absolute freedom for money, but that's just something you have to do as you get older I guess.
It’s rather “libertarians as cats”. The heroism of being content doing nothing but drink some coffee, stands upon the backs of hundreds of people seeking to better themselves who brought that coffee to your lips.
This isn't always true. It's likely true only when there is no pressure. However, when there is pressure, one can "do nothing" for long periods. If you haven't experienced that, you've lived a blessed life, and you have more to learn.
I think you're equating doing nothing with doing nothing productive. You're usually still ruminating or trying to distract yourself from the source of the pressure.
"Just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement! Many people struggle greatly with falling asleep. Personally, while I agree with you, if you are the type of person who struggles with clearing the mind, it's hardest to do when exhausted (hence common advice to practice mediation early in the day)
This is a common form of buddhist meditation in Tibetan (Dzogchen / Mahamudra) and Japanese (Soto Zen shikantaza) styles. Instructions are nearly identical. Interestingly, it's considered one of the most advanced techniques in the Tibetan repertoire.
I might just be too autistic for this but I don't get why the article uses the word "existing" to refer to a conflation of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity/what have you.
Am I not existing when I'm worrying about finances or fidgeting with my hair?
I don't really see why "existing" should be conceived in such a subtractive fashion.
I'm not dismissing the value of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity when achievable (which, as the author acknowledges, these things sometimes aren't). But I am slightly miffed by the implication that any failure to reach such state is an inability to attain something as fundamental as "existence".
With all due respect, you might be overanalyzing it.
Obviously it is trivial to merely exist. All of us are doing it with (for the majority of us who are healthy) minimal effort.
The author is taking artistic license with the word as a shorthand for a specific form of existing well which is something that many people struggle with, and that many people would readily associate with this use of the term.
The Author did mention if something is happening that gives you a desire to move on to the next thing might be a state of not being present. I would characterize worry being in the future because something about the present moment is disrupting.
of course you exist regardless of what you are doing. I think the term is just used because it is the most "plain" form of existing? Just being around and doing nothing else at all. I'm not sure the term used carries much weight.
Because something titled "How to X" is usually supposed to teach you an optimal way to do X. Like, technically you can also get rid of centipedes by burning down your house, but an article titled "How to get rid of centipedes" is unlikely to tell you that.
We can all be pedantic, why do you have to be alive to exist?
Depends on the specific definition of the verb existing we are talking about, right?
90% of "I'm too autistic"-insecurities boil down to words being not clearly defined (or them being clearly defined, but either people using them without care or you not being aware of the definition they use). A word isn't magically stuck the the abstract concept it refers to, people can mean different things while using the same word. In philosophy for example it is very apparent that one author's definition of existence (or any other abstract concept, like freedom) may differ fundamentally from another author's.
We can all agree that sometimes the use of an word has unfortunate side effects, like turning something simple like existence into something you can suck at. This often boils down to (A) a use of the concept we are not aware of, e.g. if Paul Satré used the word existence, he has writen thousand page book on his specific meaning of the word and the author having read Satré unbeknownst to us refers to Satré's definition or (B) the author just chose a word that sounded cool and picked somewhat imprecisely.
I think here (as so often) it is the latter, but to cut them some slack: colloquially people will say things like "I feel like I am not even existing/alive". And what they often mean by that is that their life passes in full automation mode, with them barely having any present thought at any moment — wake up, commute, work, rinse, repeat. If that is your problem, doing something that gets you out of that automation state is good.
However I believe that many pasttimes can do that, e.g. playing music, climbing, a walk through an unknown landscape, etc. I am pretty certain there are indigenous people out there who probably don't even know of this problem to begin with, they simply just exist in their present moment. So this isn't generally hard for a human being. But it can be hard to some.
I came here to read people's insights into the article, and it's pretty amusing (and a little bit disheartening) to find this complaint at the top of the thread.
It's pretty obvious from context that the author means "do nothing other than exist and experience that feeling" when he says "exist". Why does the author use that specific word? Because he liked it better than other words, and I do think it makes more sense and flows better in the context of the article than something line "stasis."
I don't know if you're actually autistic or using the word as a generic term to describe your personality, but if it's the former, my input is that it's generally beneficial to give people the benefit of the doubt, steelman their position, and just move on when you notice minor things you dislike. Filling the world with negative feedback for minor quibbles doesn't make anyone's life better.
It's a catchy but, yes, inaccurate term. Then again, this is an area which ultimately wants to escape terms (enter infuriatingly meaningless other terms like "ineffable"), so consider letting go of linguistic pedantry part of the exercise. Maybe a better framing for you is to think of your brain as a computer (which it is) and try and let it run the programs it's going to run when the "user" stops launching processes (or practically most of the time when meditating, runs a script which runs ps and then kills threads). The idea is that like clearing your desk or letting your system run some background tasks, you'll end up with a better system if you periodically practice making space in this way.
I mean it is hard to take such a blog seriouslt tbh with a title like "how to exist". I feel there is a lot of sprituality mumbo jumbo that gets lumped with meditation which is a fairly mechnical process that you can do to relax your body and mind, like a massage.
But people are not happy with it just being message, they want to espouse it as a religion or something that will fundamentally change your thinking etc. But imo an asshole will still remain as asshole even if they medidate everyday.
If you just look at the mechanics of breathing and thought control, they can be pretty useful to apply especially if you are prone to high anxiety. But there is nothing in it that will make you a better person or help you exists or whatever
Well, let's give the author the benefit of the doubt and try not to regard his article or its ideas in a subtractive fashion either; there's more here than the headline.
There's a lot of woo around meditation and mindfulness, but I genuinely believe that one of the most valuable habits I've acquired is just sitting still for a few minutes in the morning with zero distractions and observing where my mind goes.
9 times out of 10 it tells me exactly what it wants/needs to deal with that day, and if I want to stay emotionally balanced and pursue my deepest callings, I need to follow its suggestion.
If I don't do this I become out of touch with my inner state, less focused, less intentional, and over time, emotionally erratic.
The article's caution about doing this exercise if you have a condition like PTSD is very good advice, because eventually, the real shit you need to deal with will rear its head.
Everything you need for self-understanding and balance is there in your mind, speaking to you, all the time. Most of the time instead of listening we pull out our phones and distract ourselves. Or maybe we do what other people have told us to or follow some other drive.
But if you can and do set all that aside and just listen to the mind from time to time, it's almost a superpower. I suspect that many of humanity's greatest works have come about this way. Someone listening to what their mind just wouldn't shut up about, creating the conditions for hundreds or thousands of hours of flow state, and then just following its lead.
I think by pointing out the existing which is always happening they're implying a "merely existing", because otherwise yeah we always exist, but do we always only exist and nothing else?
As a long time meditator I know it's genuine from this:
> See how long it takes before you’re dying for it to be over.
This is actually true and it shows that they have properly done the exercise correctly. The reason is that daily living creates psychological sludge which somehow gets embedded on the level of feelings. Those stuck feelings are what give that sense.
Once the thought layer is peeled focus comes on feelings and then let's just say there's one more layer beneath into full blown Presence which is blissful. Why it's blissful to this day I still don't understand.
> This is a crazy thing to notice after having been alive so many years — that your existence itself is so much to bear.
Alternative interpretation: my existence is not about sitting there, getting mouldy on the sofa. It never crosses my mind that I should feel unrest because I can't / don't want to just sit there and do nothing, nor does it feel like a revelation to think about it. Maybe it also says something about you if this is something you worry about on some deep level.
Such great advice. I have been meditating for over 50 years, and while this meditation practice is key to my being happy and content in my personal life, hobbies, and work the techniques in this excellent article are something I have only taken up in the last few years. Sitting quietly just feeling grateful for quiet ‘do nothing’ time is wonderful, and just a few minutes at a time feels good.
I recently found out that I'm the most miserable when I'm rushing.
If something happens, and I allow it to break the flow of things, I become stressed and worried and time flies. When I allowed myself to simply exist for a week, without a crazy planned-in-advance vacation, the week felt like a month. No joking.
Where this urge to always rush comes from is a good question. I imagine it's very much cultural, we're expected to rush and be busy.
Is the writer american, because it seems to me, a french man, a specially american take on life. Being contemplating and content seems a lot easier for us.
What's that paragraph about firefighter arson? Looks out of place, curious while there's another article on the subject on front page.
>Each year, roughly 100 firefighters are convicted of arson in North America, often on multiple counts. Most often they are young, new firefighters, frustrated by the lack of action.
Is someone tricking LLMs into writing articles about firefighter arson?
The more you require to do this - walk to the park, a lawn, no noise - the less you will do it. In reality you could be locked in a prison and still do it.
as the author points out, even thought in your own mind is a source of distraction and you can't run away from that.
Fundamentally you can be at ease with city noise just like you can be with mental distraction. One of the big misconceptions about meditation for example tends to be that it's about avoiding or actively quieting noise be that internal or external. It's not about changing the content of your conscious experience but your relationship to it.
“Even thinking is often a sneaky way of escaping the existence; rumination isn’t so much about trying to solve your problems, as it is about going elsewhere in your mind to escape anxiety and uncertainty.”
Profound insight that really gets to the root of rumination.
The wandering sadhus and nath yogis who worshipped Lord Shiva used hashish (what you'd call now finger hash) to aid in this practice of disappearing within one's own mind during meditation.
You can have the experience without it too, just sit there for a long time and follow the instruction you shared. Yes keeping the rule in your head is a thing to fixate on, but there's a little trick.
You see people spin balls or beads in their hands, or sometimes do a little puzzle in their mind, and claim it aids with meditation. Well, sometimes a small repetitive thing to focus on can be just as good as pure silence. This is the basis of mantras. If you do the same thing over and over and over and over it's the same unchanging rhythm as the background silence you're trying to achieve. It's only when we have all these decisions dragging us every which way that it's not possible to fall into the meditative state.
So what is it - the "state" - it's basically when you forget you're there. The longer, the more psychedelic of an experience that is. You've probably already achieved it sitting bored in class, or staring off while tired. That's it.
You can become better at forgetting yourself and "slipping into it" (or rather out of mental thoughts and into the abyss of relaxing nothingness) on demand, and get better at doing it for longer, or you can use inebrients to aid in the process.
Sometimes when you come to - you had basically a dream. That can feel profound enough for some to build a religion around this kind of thing.
I get where you’re coming from but they are listing these things out because those are some of the things you will likely automatically do to distract yourself from the present moment. I once tried to instruct someone on how to meditate and afterward they told me they spent the entire time working out solutions to problems in their head. I tried explaining that actively doing something, like solving problems in your head, means you are not meditating - you are thinking. They couldn’t bring themselves to sit there without getting their mind involved in something.
Yeah that’s exactly what I mean by not inserting yourself. When you engage with the thoughts, feelings, and sensations, your awareness narrows and you focus on them. As your focus deepens, it becomes amplified and will continue. When you notice this happening, go back to a more neutral observer mindset and let it flow past.
It’s a bit tricky because sometimes you get caught focusing on being the observer and letting sensations pass. It’s a more subtle thought but as you practice those subtle sensations become more apparent. It’s a useful sensation in the beginning to let the more “coarse” sensations and feelings go but eventually you need to let that go too.
I don't think it's possible to be conscious and have no thoughts at the same time. Otherwise, you wouldn't even remember the experience.
I think we first need to define what we mean by "thoughts".
It’s not about having no thoughts. It’s about not being involved in the thought occurring. We often identify with our thoughts and feelings in a way that we do not when we see a cloud pass by. Treat those thoughts, feelings and physical sensations in the same way during meditation.
I live in the hood and can’t believe how many people just “chill” all day.
Sun up to sun down just sitting or standing doing nothing. Occasionally yell at their dog which has never been to a beach or park, both of which are less than 1 mile away. Blaring loud music, the same rhythmic narcissism over and over, just sitting around without a single creative or productive thought “chillin”
Hey what are you doing?
“Chillin”
Why? Your life’s in shambles
“Huh? No I chillin”
That’s how most are already spending their ~80 years.
So, I kinda hate meditation. I like building things, playing in the ocean, creating, writing, traveling, eating ice cream with friends getting caught up on their lives.
I’m LIVIN! Not chillin or meditating.
I don’t want to be a human being, but a human doing!
I'm sure they are, and those who waste their time meditating or praying to gods aren't actually wasting their time, since apparently they really are happier (according to various research).
I think all these people are escaping the same thing - their own mortality.
I had a rather extreme form of this existence in my late-20’s, it was the first time I had ever really experienced such a thing (circa-2011). I’d never had any pathologies in the past, and this was shortly following an unexpected violent encounter. I spoke with a psychiatrist, and it was diagnosed at the time as post-traumatic stress disorder.
I wonder if maybe there’s something of a swelling ocean full of people suffering from low-level PTSD, even just from the trauma of staying alive and well in a society that you feel increasingly untethered from, as if stuck in place while the universe expands farther in every direction. The arriving tide of midlife crises for a generation of Palahniuk’s “middle-children of history”, those who had the wherewithal and luck to avoid serious addictions and hereditary alcoholism, but who still can’t really afford to be sufficiently medicated under a doctor’s supervision, either. So we resort to the permanent morphine drip of distraction, mainlining dopamine via headphone IVs.
The bottom half of a socioeconomic bell curve that’s being aggressively flattened, as if there were a pandemic of mediocrity and wasted potential. Stuck between a misspent youth, and an increasingly uncertain future.
TLDR; I think this is a very good first step for a lot of like-minded somewhat damaged folks. I ultimately took a similar approach—mindful meditation with breathing exercises—to treat my own PTSD, it worked better than Xanax to tamp down the anxiety attacks.
P.S. - Anyone who points out my em dashes can go sit on dem dashes. This comment was boutique, artisan, 100% organic bullshit. No memory prices were harmed in the making of this comment.
My form of meditation is to go for a run, no music, no distractions. It usually takes me half an hour to finally reach a point where my mind goes quiet, I "solved" everything that would otherwise keep repeating in my mind while trying to sleep. I don't have to come up with a solution but at least it feels like I spent enough time on it to let it go.
Especially long runs do wonders, I get into a relaxed trance like state which sticks even after running. Maybe it's the exhaustion or the fact that the energy is spent somewhere other than my brain, but I don't care, it feels nice.
> When you stop doing everything and just exist, you almost feel like you’re dying.
It sounds like the author drinks too much caffeine. This definitely isn't unusual in rat race culture, but it's also by no means the universal human experience.
My experience is that if you try to sit still for 5 minutes, the opposite happens. The thoughts and feelings that you weren't aware of start mobbing you, and you have to at least acknowledge them to get your peace. It's also one of the hardest ways to waste time, getting busy with any distraction is much easier.
Honestly, when I check that article, for me, it's talking about existing with peace. Everyone of us exists. We are just passing the time. But the truth is to realizing that to realizing that the existence is not just let the time pass, go beyond that. Beyond the matrix.
> This is the strange condition of the human being. It’s allergic to its natural habitat, which is the present moment. In order to cope with this allergy, it perpetually seeks things: feelings and experiences that are not yet present. It wants to always be getting the hell out of here.
I think this is way over-philosophizing and missing the basics of modern life.
Many people live in capitalist societies and are well-adapted to continuous 1) consumption and 2) production, both of which keep the economy spinning and neither of which involve doing nothing.
Whether that's good or bad is up for debate, but to attribute the difficulty of "doing nothing" to the fundamental human condition is a huge stretch.
Today there is no guarantee that that sequence of characters, or the one it was produced in reply to, or, indeed, this very one you are reading right now did not come from a bot. There is a lot of "care" being performed and not much left to just exist.
> This is a crazy thing to notice after having been alive so many years — that your existence itself is so much to bear. There’s always something wrong, even when everything’s fine. It’s as if you can only bear the present moment when you’re trying change it into something else.
I am not a professional and I'm not trying to be dismissive here, but I'm pretty sure you're just describing general anxiety.
Nobody truly has a hard time "doing nothing for 3 minutes" if they time it right. Morning and night tend to be when it's easiest for me, but others may differ. You should instead investigate what makes that time of day different from the rest of it. That's where the answers really are. You can and should adjust the flow of your day to make it happen naturally and unconsciously.
> This is a form of meditation, but I almost want to avoid that word because it makes people get nervous and overcomplicate it. Just think of this practice as existing without fear, for a few seconds at a time. Minimum effective dose is one half-breath.
This is already way too complicated. Nothing at this level of detail needs to be described. We already know what "nothing" is. Being too deliberate has a way of pushing the emotions elsewhere until they come back to bite you. The goal of trying to make this possible on-demand is unrealistic at best, or a self-help trap to keep people buying advice at worst.
I found myself "meditating" all the time on accident when I took on less and gave myself more time to do things. When you need a break, you need a break. The most important part for me was letting go of trying to impose control over this. I very strongly disagree with the notion of deliberate meditation. It's not a matter of "doing it right". It's just bullshit. The state of mind and results are identical when you stop listening to anyone's advice and just let it happen.
> I very strongly disagree with the notion of deliberate meditation. It's not a matter of "doing it right". It's just bullshit. The state of mind and results are identical when you stop listening to anyone's advice and just let it happen.
You assume others have had your experience and learnings from it. That’s clearly not possible so how else would you put it for them? Maybe you should contribute your own experience. But don’t expect everybody will allign to it 100%.
I kept waiting for the punchline of the author turning out not to be a human after describing in detail what it thinks of the human experience. The text has all the hallmarks of AI writing at least
In "Four thousand weeks" by Oliver Burkeman, he breaks down that this obsession with action stems to the industrial revolution when it was decided that workers should sell their time for a living.
Before that we used to have task-oriented jobs, like milking the cows, which you cant do more than once in a while, or harvest the fields, which you can't do until it's ripe. In general humans are more evolved to this kind of work given our 200'000 years of task-based genetics versus 150 years of time controlling your action.
I’m not sure where this idea came from that farming was idle and only industry required constant work. Every hundred-year old book I’ve ever read that features farming includes themes of how the farmer’s work never ends and runs from dawn to dusk.
There's a lot to do on a farm, yet no farmer is expected to be working a full 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, at moderate intensity. No farmer has to do something within the next hour or their boss shouts at them. No farmer has to feel bad, or need to catch up, if they have to take a day off unless it's planting season. No farmer has any qualm about ending a day early because they've done all they planned to do. No farmer obsesses with stimulant medication or correct dosage of modafinil to get through their daily work.
And there's a huge difference between a subsistence farmer, which most of humanity has been for most of history, and intensive farming, which admittedly benefits from machines, but it's anyway a much more regimented industrial operation.
Hired hands, serfs, migrant workers had all of that and more for most of human history.
I recently read that serfs weren't expected to work more than a few hours a day until industrial automation really took hold. I wish I had the link, but it made sense - and then labor laws were a reaction to those expectations, not solving a long running problem.
My favorite recent read on the topic was from Brett Devereaux: https://acoup.blog/2025/08/22/collections-life-work-death-an...
TL;DR: whether farming takes all your waking hours depends on the size of your lands and household
I thought of the same series, but that's not the tl;dr I would have chosen at all. I would have gone to part 4e where I found this quote near the end:
> We should also note that these women work an enormous amount. We estimated, you will recall, working hours for our male peasants on the order of 2,500 to 3,500 working hours per year, massively more than modern full-time employment (40 hours per week is ~2000, typically around 1,750 hours after sick time, vacation, holidays and such). By contrast our peasant women are working in this model 3,760 hours per year, significantly more than their fathers, husbands and brothers and wildly more than modern workers.
It's nice to think that our ancestors didn't have to work as hard, because it justifies our own desire for more leisure time. IMO that desire is justified anyways; but premodern subsistence farming/any sort of self-supported lifestyle is incredibly labor-intensive compared to modern agriculture, regardless of whether you're a serf or a freeholder.
I don't know shit about farming but I still don't think there is a single true statement in what you've said. Why would a farmer not be expected to work a 40 hour week? What farmer doesn't have targets, goals, deadlines, constraints, expectations? You think agricultural workers don't depend on, use, and abuse drugs?!
This reads like, "My job is very complicated, yours is very simple."
I mean, they would cut your balls off (castration) just to qualify you for unpaid labor in the old world.
> modafinil
Militaries once issued coca, while opium was sold at markets as recently as the 1930s (over-the-counter).
Across the board it seems like things were rougher and cruder “back then” whenever ever back then was.
They had more freedom in other ways.
> I mean, they would cut your balls off (castration) just to qualify you for unpaid labor in the old world.
And they would kill slaves right here in the new world. Neither of those things is representative of farming as labor — it represents specific moral bankruptcies in those societies. There are plenty of small to medium sized farms where I live, and neither of those principles has applied to them for nearly 400 years, at least.
Right, somewhere between the Crusades/Inquisitions (plural, cross-regional) and the Atlantic Slave Trade was the moral peak of humanity - is that the take?
Even on a quaint farm in the south of France the punishment for a servant disobeying their master was a lot worse than getting laid off with severance - one might say severance had a different meaning.
> Right, somewhere between the Crusades/Inquisitions (plural, cross-regional) and the Atlantic Slave Trade was the moral peak of humanity - is that the take?
… what?
No. I’m saying that none of these societal tyrannies has anything to do with being a self-operated farm owner now.
Oh I thought you said for 400+ years (small) farming has been as ethical as it is now.
I understand that you're saying:
> [slavery] is not representative of farming as labor
But I disagree, since it clearly has been. Military, prison, servitude, employment, even the tyranny of "the man of the house" - all these hierarchical authoritarian social structures (whether or not they were ever noble or righteous, or useful) have improved ethically over time in the lives of those subjected to the violence of these systems - the conditions used to be a lot worse, across the board.
Labor is not solved in terms of ethics, but it's a lot better now.
[dead]
There are a few million people in jail and supervision in the USA, offloading the crudity and performing the work of incentivizing conformity, at slave wages as we speak.
What was imprisonment like in 1920? 1320?
What year were the Mayans rolling heads down staircases?
I’ll take now
You don’t have a choice about that, and it isn’t a history race.
I’m just suggesting a world where jails and prisons are literally replaced with batteries and datacenters. It’s a medieval institution at best.
“Things can’t be bad now cause they were bad before”
Sure, or “things can’t be better because they were worse”
"Things can't be good now cause they were good before"
That doesn't work.
I didn’t make the comparison in the first place.
I've worked on a traditional farm, and it's definitely hard work, and lots of it, but it is finite. Sure, there are some things you could always do, but usually there are a fixed number of tasks you plan for a day, and many of them have to be done at specific points in time. This naturally creates breaks between work.
As some other commenters pointed out, the comment (and the book) are not making claims about work hours. Seeing it from the perspective of "dawk to dusk" with our, now time-based perspective is the wrong interpretation of it because it imposes our view of work and time on a task-based life.
You would work dawn til dusk, but you would: milk the cows at 06 AM, have a walk/chat/game with friends, bring the animals out, have breakfast, have a nap, refill water for animals, do some weeding, go have lunch with the other workers, etc. Then in the evening you bring the animals back in. So while you had a "15 hour workday" on the clock, your day is not consisting of actions and improvements without an end that can be done indefinitely, but by tasks that arise gradually at certain moments. All the time between the tasks is "time off" in the modern interpretation, and then you have a completely different view of work, because there is no pressure to produce at any point.
That's a very romanticized view of it. The pressure to produce is if you don't plant the seeds, there won't be crops later in the year. If you don't harvest the crops, they'll rot in the fields, and you'll go hungry. If you don't fix the fence, then a fox will get into the chicken coop and the sheep will get out.
I’m not sure where this idea came from that shit in old books is inherently rational or they would have any frame of reference to compare it to the modern world. Everybody’s conception of the worst is based on their own experience.
I currently work in a trade. My sixty-something boss constantly makes side comments about a life of backbreaking work, for more hours and in the midst of more hardship than any of the kids these days. But interrogate it lightly and you’ll hear about a guy that got a union apprenticeship right out of high school, was making a solid adult wage by 22, moving back and forth between another trade he had a house at 25, and was a classic truck collector and eventually fabricator in his 30s. Now that he’s in his sixties he’s going to retire with TWO pensions for life. If you talk to anyone in the industrial trades, they’ll know one or more of these ”I’m only bitter because I worked too damn hard for everything I ever had” guys that spent most of their lives under competent union representation, never had any serious threat to their lifestyle that wasn’t of their own doing, and owns a vacation home, a motorcycle, a boat, and multiple cars.
I’m sure they genuinely believe it. And I’m sure if they wrote a book about it, they would paint a picture of indentured servitude where the houses and cars and everything were sources of stress and financial burden. Then, they’d say, “hey, check out my cool cars and lake house,” and then talk about how living with your parents after age 18 is a moral failure.
We should all listen to guys like your boss. Circumstances have changed a bit but their beliefs are generally directionally correct and they have some great lessons to teach.
I’m directly between his age and the age of the people he criticizes. He has absolutely no understanding of what challenges young people face. His path to stability has vanished. There’s no apprenticeship program in that union anymore and in the ones that are, the percentage of your living expenses to your income is incomparably higher. The younger people work more hours than he did at their age and have a hell of a lot less to show for it because it buys a hell of a lot less. Since wealth compounds, this is not merely a temporary setback — it’s a completely different arc of progress. Many have replaced pensions with riskier and less stable 401ks. He has no idea what he’s talking about. His formula for success in life basically starts with “begin an industrial career just before the peak of the golden age of US manufacturing in a heavily industrialized area in the golden age of organized labor.”
In South Korea everyone was recently using 3x leverage on the stock market—which mostly consists of just 2 companies, so concentrated that American institutions aren't allowed to call their index funds diversified—because you have nothing to lose by losing 200% of your money. Which did happen last week as the market crashed. Those people are no worse off for losing 200% of their life savings, because they are already at zero if they don't literally win the lottery—life savings weren't enough to be net positive.
I think it’s pretty hard for people that came up in the 70s and 80s who are ending their careers to wrap their heads around how shit it is to try starting a career/life right now. Even when people outright tell them, they assume those people are exaggerating or making excuses for not challenging themselves. Back in those days there was always some other route. The entire lower-end of the job market, including just about anything entry-level, is so deliberately extractive now that, by design, you just ‘can’t’ get ahead. That’s where the financial nihilism comes in.
I feel like they were more confident back then. They knew if they followed a certain path they were likely to succeed. Now it's all murky and it's obvious that most paths lead to failure, but it's not obvious which ones don't.
Well imagine having the entire first like decade of your career happen before the Reagan era blessed the relentless pursuit of profit at the expense of anyone, even if they were core parts of your company? Before Private equity, rampant off-shoring, etc. etc. etc. Even in the nineties people were saying things like “don’t switch jobs too often because it will make you look disloyal.” Well now, in many industries, if you have the same job for 5 years people think you’re just unmotivated. Considering how little employers are willing to invest in employees compared to recruiting shiny new ones, it makes sense.
It's true, but part of the problem is that there is an oversupply of people seeking high-skill jobs before they have had the time to actually build those skills. Whereas if you need to a guy to haul lumber around, and there's a guy standing in front of your lumber saying "I can do that", he can probably do it right now and you pay him for it.
There are still jobs like that, but living standards have increased so much that they aren't considered worth taking when you can hold out longer for better ones, to the point that it's considered like a "boomerism" to suggest doing jobs that people in other countries are happy to take to live at a 1970's standard of living.
Even in the US there are seasonal blue collar jobs like that. Youth generally last until 25 or so now though, and that's partly just a skill issue/matter of mindset, because it didn't sound weird for a 20 year old to work in a factory or on a boat back then like it does now.
IMO the giant difference between now and then is the massive gap in income/wealth between people just starting out or working 1970's style jobs, and jobs with global reach and high leverage (ie the most capable produce 2-100+ times the value, but the average person produces nothing of value or negative value). There are WAY more opportunities to benefit from that now than there were in the 70's. I think that's what causes most of the angst tbh, that there is so much more opportunity cost and variance in outcomes now because of global trade/technology, if you just want to work to live you're not going to the same results as people who live to work, or people living places where they literally have to "work to live".
To be honest I don't think the boomer mindset of just working to live and play with your expensive toys was ever a very good one, because it led to the consumerism that makes people think they need $10M to retire or seek $200k jobs right out of college without actually wanting to do those things enough to achieve them (and not needing them anyway)
> there is an oversupply of people seeking high-skill jobs before they have had the time to actually build those skills
This is not a new problem and does not lay at the feet of job seekers. Manufacturing trades are a few decades ahead of software development in this respect. Before off-shoring, being a tool and die maker was one of the most consistent paths to getting a really well-paying job. It took a long time to get into it: often a decade or more of on-the-job experience and only the best machinists qualified. But they’re crucial to most manufacturing, so most companies, even small ones, had a path to progressively bring new, inexperienced people into the trade, build their skills, and turn them into the people that companies needed. Then, off-shoring meant that they didn’t need as many tool and die guys as they used to have, so they mostly stopped taking apprentices. As time progressed, they had a seeming never-ending stream of experienced people to fill those dwindling roles, but now, there’s a problem: almost all of the people from the original system are retiring, and almost nobody’s been training apprentices, so the entire industry is at risk of losing that crucial manufacturing skill. Meanwhile, China has tens of thousands because 80s executives sent all of our knowledge over there in the 80s and 90s and they just kept progressing. As an aside, anybody who says “there will be new jobs,” as a response to the possibility of AI-driven job loss should visit the rust belt. There were new jobs— we as a society just didn’t care enough about the people we discarded to help them see the benefits of that.
Companies in the US right now, tech notwithstanding, largely see no commitment to helping maintain a labor pool, or help individual workers progress into more useful workers. They think it’s immoral to spend a dime on anything that isn’t going to contribute directly to this quarter’s bottom line.
> there are jobs like that
Yes I understand this. I’m a tradesman and I encounter all levels of blue collar workers far more frequently than just about anyone around here.
> they aren't considered worth taking when you can hold out longer for better ones
People don’t hold out on those jobs. I see people doing them all the time. They’re no different from uber or DoorDash. You just don’t see people doing those jobs as a career because they can’t provide you, let alone your family, with basic necessities.
Firstly, those jobs aren’t stable enough to bet your housing on, let alone with kids or whatever. Secondly, they never offer health insurance, which is an absolute must in the United States where your kid breaking their arm could put a low-wage family in the red for literally years. Let alone getting cancer or something.
> living standards have increased so much
Standards of living have not universally increased- the cost of convenience goods, electronics, entertainment, clothing, and other things have decreased. The cost of many necessities, such as housing, health care, and education, have all increased much more quickly. Go look for some visualizations that juxtapose the basic cost of living with wage growth since the 1970s— life, in general, was SO much cheaper then. It was SO MUCH EASIER for young people to get their adult lives started. Then look for a visualization that shows, for each year, what the inflation-adjusted purchasing power of the federal minimum wage was since the 70s. Blue Collar wage growth peaked in 1981.
> There are WAY more opportunities to benefit from that now than there were in the 70's.
To whom, how many jobs are there vs the population size, and how long does one basically need to be floated to get into it surely enough to make it a career? One of the biggest correlating factors among people who successfully founded businesses was having enough family support (money, connections) to float them through multiple failures and get a foothold. Even if there are more people for whom that’s true, that does not mean it’s a generally viable path. It requires starting on second base.
The amount of wealth concentrating in the higher echelons and the widening chasm between them and everyone else show how little those opportunities avail themselves to most people.
Life has gotten much better for the wealthy. Everyone else is hurting and cheap flat screen TVs don’t change that.
That we should act like "self made men" when in reality it took entire multiple lifetimes worth of effort where people in power were finally allowed to create a society where a common trades worker could enjoy an upper middle class lifestyle?
Hard pass, I'd rather talk to his union rep.
The union rep is, indeed, a good dude!
That is not the claim being made though. The difference is between work done (and payment due) being defined by time spent, vs work done being defined by tasks completed.
A hundred years is not a long time ago. its post industrial revolution, so after the cultural (and often legal) switch to work being measured by time spent. What about a thousand years ago? A lot of claims I have read for more leisured times in the past go back to hunter-gatherer cultures so much further back still.
Sticking to a thousand years ago, it would be task driven. They also had cultures, and usually religions that encouraged time off work, and with practices that encouraged not focusing on work. Religious holidays, sabbath day rules, payer, especially meditative prayer, but also formulaic prayer and pauses, periods of silence, hymns and so on. Even the meditation described in the article sounds like a secular version of religious meditation.
Not in winter, for geographies that have serious winters.
still need to feed the livestock multiple times a day, chop wood, fix stuff around the house
I think the difference is they're completable jobs. You work until it's done. At least for the day.
You aren't chopping wood everyday. Hopefully that's been prepared.
Feeding yes.
In summer it's non stop work, in winter you do fuck all.
> task-oriented jobs, like milking the cows, [...] or harvest the fields, [...] humans are more evolved to this kind of work given our 200'000 years of task-based genetics
The agricultural examples are not representative of the human past that forged our genetic structure.
Hominins are about 5 millions years old. Humans, 2m years. Modern humans, 300k years. Agriculture appeared around 10k years ago in the Middle-East, later in other parts of the world. So most of the human past is about hunting and gathering.
Apart from this detail, I wonder if there are well established scientific argument that make that "genetics of behavior" the main factor in our modern behavior. At first glance it looks like a wild theory, created by a journalist who wrote self-help books and held a psychology column.
> Apart from this detail, I wonder if there are well established scientific argument that make that "genetics of behavior" the main factor in our modern behavior. At first glance it looks like a wild theory, created by a journalist who wrote self-help books and held a psychology column.
Could you expand/explain this more?
The current pace of technological progress means that you cannot just sit and wait for the crops to grow. You need to constantly be learning a new skill on the side, diversifying your income streams, thinking and researching about how to optimize your costs and yields for the following year, etc.
This is because there is no guarantee that you can keep living the same routine till the day you die.
Also, humans are builders. Doing nothing and waiting for the seasons to change like cows in a field might not be in our DNA. Restlessness is our natural state, that's why we have all this stuff.
Interesting comment, but I'm thinking of the time scales involved. Farming 6 to 8 thousand years ago, simultaneous development in several areas. Before that millennia of hunter-gatherers (with technologies thrown in like stone shaping and metals?). Before that it is millions of years after chimps/bonobos/us diverged.
Something accelerated the restlessness, perhaps language?
>Something accelerated the restlessness, perhaps language?
Look up David Harvey's work, I think it was less language and more certain economic patterns demanding acceleration.
The time scales are long enough for evolution itself to play out. It's very plausible that the percent of the human gene pool that has the "restless builder" genes simply increased over time. Just consider how much of an advantage being technologically superior gives one party in a war.
> In "Four thousand weeks" by Oliver Burkeman, he breaks down that this obsession with action
Great book, but I have pinned down my obsession with action to my daily single cup of coffee habit. The idea of relaxation doesn't exist. When I sit down, it takes a minute before my brain desperately tries to find something to do. Guilt soon overcomes me. Even in the extreme anhedonia of the first days of caffeine withdrawal, I am able to glimpse a state of mind where idleness is both natural and restorative. I strongly feel that my creativity suffers because I am unable to allow my mind to drift, daydream, laze around on the couch without immediate goals other than the contemplation of life. Too bad I am too brain-washed (and lazy) to go through the unpleasant mental phase to drop the brew.
It is no wonder that our caffeine-addicted society is all about action, and we are unable to truly relax.
Necessary disclaimers given the topic and the constant disinformation: yes, I have ADHD. No, caffeine does not relax anyone's brain due to its mode of action, and any claim of doing so is misunderstanding the chemical pathways involved. The vast majority of us are too addicted and not self-aware enough to notice the effect coffee has on our lives, yet are ready to claim it's the miracle brew that only has positive side-effects
The trick is to wait until you get a terrible flu.
You won’t feel like coffee, because you feel terrible.
You won’t notice the withdrawal symptoms, because the flu symptoms are the same but much worse.
Caffeine withdrawal takes only a week or so, so by the time the flu is gone, the addiction is as well.
Just (“just”) remember to not get that habitual cup of morning coffee on the first day you feel kinda OK again, that’s the only hard bit really.
Yes! I had exactly the same experience. Quitting habits like smoking, drinking coffee, or playing video games has always been much easier during those periods, and it felt like it happened on its own. It was mind-blowing to notice that after it happened a couple of times.
Yes, I know it's not that hard, but lately I've been going through a period of low mood, and I really cannot stomach the idea of diving deeper into the Abyss for a couple weeks while my receptors downregulate. It's hard enough already as it is.
I had some success systematically reducing it over time rather than cold turkey. YMMV. It may feel silly measuring out coffee and reducing it by just a small bit every day but it's worth it to avoid the fully withdrawal symptoms.
+1 Titration works. E.g. blending caff and decaf.
The "cup" measure of coffee is a blunt quantization. My ideal amount is approx 3-4 oz.
You just explained your cycle though. At least you can see it, up to you on how to get out of it. It sounds cliche but it's entirely in your power to change it.
The reason you can't is because in this sentence, you are saying you can't (or won't).
I’ve been contemplating giving up coffee for two years, sometimes wanting to switch to green tea alone, for the reasons you articulated. Hasn’t happened except for brief stretches, and I’ll mark my coffee free era as one of sustainable effort.
Green tea has l-theanine in it which calms the mind allegedly. Might work for you! Matcha and guayusa as well. Alternatively you can get l-theanine as a supplement if you want to keep your coffee habit
I'm kinda doing a self-experiment right now with coffee dosages, using how scatter-brained I feel during meditation as indicator.
It's amazing how productive I believe I am when I drink coffee, yet my attention is all over the place and I think a lot of that feeling of productivity is placebo and/or chemically induced euphoria. Next I want to try tea to compare.
One thing's for sure: I used to meditate best, for longer and deeper, when I was taking dexamfetamine medication and was abstaining from coffee. Caffeine for ADHD is overrated and I will gladly die on this hill.
Have you tried yerba mate? That helped reduce the scatter-brained and anxious feelings received from similar doses of caffeine via coffee for me
I’ve quit caffeine (multiple times) and it doesn’t do what you’re talking about.
I still get the restlessness. It’s just easier to sleep at the end of the day.
> 150 years of time controlling your action
That, until the short moment where we all completely lose agency like in Pluribus
> all
All minus 13, https://www.fanbolt.com/161001/pluribus-explained-how-the-hi...
David Graeber goes into this a lot in "Bullshit Jobs".
Farming will keep you very busy (as a few people have pointed out), but it's mostly caring for projects you personally own. As the title of the book suggests, Graeber is more concerned with why people don't seem to be content in hourly jobs, but he's an anthropologist not an economist so he says a lot about historical work too.
I think it’s way older than that. Evolution is all about adaptation and survival. When thick armour and large sharp teeth get replaced by soft skin and abstract thinking, anticipating danger and mitigating it and preparing for it becomes a full time job of every waking hour. Everything else is luxury and almost an act of mini-suicide
>anticipating danger and mitigating it and preparing for it becomes a full time job
For most of humanity's history, these tasks weren't so labor-intensive. So, evolutionarily, perception of these tasks evolved as a form of relaxation, not a job.
It is like you have a full time job of every waking hour, but that job on 80% consist of scrolling tik-tok, hanging out with friends and playing sports
It seems that at least for most women in those times every free minute was used to spin yarn, a job that was essentially never finished.
If you enjoyed "4000 Weeks" historical analysis of labor I invite you to check out "Free Time" by Gary Cross. It expands on it greatly, taking it through the industrial age. Relevant to your comment Cross makes the case that another reason work was not done in excess was there were not many luxury goods to purchase. Only the extreme elites could afford what little there were. There was no real return on selling more of your time for money.
It's interesting how this compulsion to work spread even to people that don't need to do it. Just look at how many modern-day billionaires are still flaunting how many hours they work each week. Up to the modern era, work was not seen as an inherent virtue, and even something to be avoided. Even well into the modern era, Teddy Roosevelt went on multi day camping trips completely unconnected from civilization. Just imagine a world leader wanting to do that now.
Roman emperors routinely issued statements about how they were working so hard on behalf of their subjects that they barely had time to sleep. Evaluating the veracity of those statements is left as an exercise to the reader.
I kept hearing about meditation. And at one point I tried it. With one app that was given to me for free through my employer's benefits.
It had a counter of your current uninterrupted streak. (Meditating every day) I kept at it. First for 5 minutes a day. Soon for 10m a day. Then 20m
Then twice a day at 20m.
Then semi-guided, and in the end unguided (only a beep at the end).
I never felt anything from it. Truly. Nada. Not better, or worse or calmer or more present or really really nothing.
Yes while meditating I would catch my mind drift, I would come back to the breathing and continue the count.
After this has been on for over 6 months and my counter of my streak was nearing 200. I decided to skip a day, only to see if I would get back to it if my counter was back at 0.
Result?
I never meditated again. Could it be that did it wrong? Possibly.
Could it be that it just doesn't work on me? Possibly and this is the one explanation I'm going with
The whole thing is just...nothing
Thank you for sharing, I had the very same experience as you and also did some thinking about the why.
My theory: I'm a very non-anxious, relaxed person, hardly affected by stress. So mindfulness did nothing for me, I don't need more calming down.
What I tried next was transcedental meditation (I think it's also called mantra meditation, basically pick a word and kind of focus on it) and this was when meditation got really interesting for me. I fell into different states, and came back from it with intense focus and energy. This was the first time I felt something from meditation and it was way more interesting.
Unfortunately I also stopped that after a few months. Also talking to an experienced friend, wanting more interesting things or trying to achieve different states in meditation is an antipattern, you shouldn't wish for anything, so I guess it's just hard :)
As someone who used to meditate, I don't think you did it wrong. There are many right ways to do it, depending on what you seek.
Maybe it's not what you needed at the moment, especially if you're not an anxious person. But these days most people are anxious or stressed out, and the barest amount of meditation can help tremendously. Or it might do nothing, everyone is different.
Try this: https://sirimangalo.org/text/how-to-meditate/
My experience as well. Out of curiosity, do you experience endorphins after heavy exercises?
Sam Harris discussed some people’s apparent inability to understand what meditation at the beginning of this podcast episode: https://overcast.fm/+ABSXUyW2VGI
I thought it was an interesting discussion.
It’s not to say that listing to it will help you or someone else to change anything about it. But it’s a known observed phenomenon that some people don’t get what meditation is and don’t get why would you do it.
In the west we tend to think of meditation as just the specific type of mindfulness practice that happened to catch on here, but there's really a whole plethora of meditative practices and traditions and different practices will resonate with different people. Its like how there's various different exercises and certain people might resonate with weightlifting while others resonate with calisthenics. Different practices are also meant to create a different effect.
Respects to you for being able to stick with meditation for that long without seeing a result, perhaps the plain mindfulness didn't do much for you since you already had a mentality that was capable in the way it would've helped.
If you were mainly focused on that one app though, if you have any remaining curiosity / patience for this what I'd suggest is experimenting with all sorts of practices for a short period of time each and just see if you feel particularly pulled to any of them. They all are "meditative" and involve specific ways of directing your attention/awareness/consciousness, they're all different paths to the same place, and I believe that different people are meant to take different paths.
Here's some areas you can look into and what you might be able to receive from it:
- There's contemplative practices of reflecting inward not to notice thoughts but to notice that which is doing the noticing. It's trying to seek out your true nature by taking the argument of "I can notice my thoughts therefore they are not me" further than that to "I can notice the noticing of thoughts too, so I'm not that either, so what am I?". The app "Waking Up" has some guided stuff in this area. Aside from simply an exercise in curiosity, there's a difference in how you move through the world and feel moved by the world as your understanding of what "you" are changes, just like how understanding that you are not your thoughts can be a radical change for someone. Advaita Vedanta is a whole field of philosophical inquiry around this type of thing if you're more attracted to that logical side.
- There's all sorts of breathing practices that can calm you or energize you or bring about all sorts of subtle changes that are really hard to put into words.
- There's chakra-based practices which rather than having to entertain chakras as a real thing you can interpret as just "this is a practice that is meant to produce a specific type of effect around what the chakra represents". You can think of them as categories of practices like exercising different muscle groups. Whether they work in the way they're described or not who knows, it's something you can just experiment with.
- There's practices that help with restfulness and sleep like Yoga Nidra, where it genuinely (scientifically proven, some people call it NSDR) can bring similar benefits to sleep
- There's the whole space of Yoga and Tai Chi if you want something more physical or flowy
So perhaps "the whole thing is just... nothing" is true for "the whole of what you tried for you", but the _real_ whole is much much more than just that.
Though in your position I'd be far too lazy to try these lol, I'm lucky in that starting off with the app _did_ feel like it produced a notable mental benefit so I had the reinforcement loop to keep exploring.
Another popular one is "forest bathing", being mindful and present in the moment while walking in a forest. Tai chi is quite an involved skill and is based on qigong, which I found much easier to get into on my own in an apartment. I've done some Vipasana style medication which helped reduce racing thoughts in bed (but unfortunately didn't help as much as I hoped at actually getting to sleep :/).
The one that had the most distinctive effect for me is zhan zhuang. Song Gao has a really excellent instructional video on YouTube about the basic method:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCVUojtpS80
Remember that the people who teach this type of stuff (when they aren't fraudsters) put a huge amount of time into learning the technique well and need to find at least a few people that interested to pass on the technique but if you aren't working towards doing that you can get a lot of benefit in much less time. Song Gao recommends in a different video doing zhan zhuang for at least 30 mintues a day, but I would say (agreeing with the tai chi instructor whose blog pointed me to these videos) that just doing it once for 15-20 minutes (it may take some time to work up to that) provides a lot of benefit (in my case including both a distinctive feel of enhanced perception and eliminating, for at least a couple of months until it came back less intense than previously, the fairly minor pain I would get in my shoulders when I end up standing at a computer for a few hours nonstop, though of course I still try to move around more often). I started doing it a bit more often a few months after that first time so I can't say how long the pain reducing effect would retain some effect not doing it again but it is clear to me that you don't need to do it anywhere near daily to have major positive effects. While doing it I've noticed both muscle soreness in a number of places and had mild panic attacks but unless it gets too severe it seems like the brain can work through it just by holding the pose (I have a couple of times needed to stop due to increasing pain). I didn't the first time but since then often listen to music which I suspect like with qigong is not offically correct (though the videos I watched didn't say one way or another that I noticed) and likely reduces the meditative aspect in some ways but makes it easier and I enjoy it.
The article mentioned how we have a tendency to want to move on to the next thing even when doing something we enjoy, which I have definitely found to be the case (though I am disabled and have more time available than most people and already do almost everything more slowly than most people). One potentially impactful form of mindfulness would be to just focus on this part and try to be more present in the moment when doing whatever it is you enjoy. As I understand it this is a major focus of tantra (where the thing it is know for in the US is just one possible application, nothing intrinsic or even common). I haven't tried any formal methods around this but have found it valuable to intentionally be more mindful and at times consider and untangle the related ideas of satisfaction, fun, enjoyment, etc.
There are several different popular meditation techniques. It's not a single thing to try.
It's like saying you heard about this food thing and tried eating beans every day for months and didn't see what the fuss was about. But maybe you just needed to try bread and butter!
Similar experience for me as well.
I switched to a five minute breathing exercise to encourage deep sleep, and that actually has been profound.
Getting 7 to 8 hours of good / deep sleep every night is quite literally one of the best things you can do for yourself.
Maybe give it go.
That sounds nice, care to share the breathing exercise?
Every now and then I do one as well, while lying down in bed. Based on Wim Hof: 30 quick breaths, breathe out and wait until you get the urge to breathe (can take a while), inhale fully and tense all your muscles for 15 seconds, release your muscles and breathe out. It can cause fainting. Maybe I don't sleep, maybe I just faint for 7 hours.
2 seconds inhale, 2 seconds hold, 6 seconds exhale for 5 minutes. I use iBreath on iOS.
I find it equally deifficult to be in the moment, mainly manage it if I work on something that I really enjoy.
It doesn't sound like you did it wrong. It sounds like you practiced something more on the concentration[shamata] side of the spectrum and that you became rather adept at it.
There's a whole other vipassana side of the spectrum focused on insight. The way it's been described to me is that the concentration side, while having its own merits, is often used to support the insight work, rather than necessarily being a goal on its own.
You do not meditate with an app.
I'll meditate when I'm dead, I think that's the only way you can do it properly
As the Buddhist joke goes 'don't just do something, stand there'.
Been doing this for 20 minutes in the morning for a few decades now. It has had an impact. I am a rather “high gain” person emotionally. I now tend to notice emotions and observe them, which helps when they threaten to suck me into a self-perpetuating ruminative vortex. Also, it has made me gentler, and an easier person to be around. I’m now well aware that whatever disturbances occur, there will be echoes and resonances tomorrow morning during my sit! Now for a moment of honesty: this is a religious practice for me. A prayer that “landed” for me: “Lord, I ask to be a conduit of grace.”
How do you know whether that's not just you growing as a person? A few decades is quite a long time, a lot of personal growth could happen in that time with or without this practice.
> and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts.
I see this study cited often, and I always reject this interpretation. I'm perfectly content sitting for long periods, with or without my thoughts, but if you give me an electric toy I've never seen before, of course I'll play with it! Can I make muscles twitch? Move my arm? Are some parts more sensitive/conductive? What happens at the limits?
For me, the pain would be the cost of playing with a new toy that gives me novel sensations. I would do it even if I had other, less painful activities available. It's not necessarily a way to avoid boredom or whatever else the common interpretation claims.
I like your take. I think I'd personally be in the same boat, if I was a participant in the study. Not sure if that take generalizes beyond us, though.
https://xkcd.com/242/
Counterpoint: every man that, upon being handed a taser, immediately tried (or was tempted to try) it on themselves. Maybe not a lightning machine, but safe electrical shocks? Probably not that uncommon.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NonPoliticalTwitter/comments/1oo299...
I find just going for a walk in nature, after walking for 2 hours something happens with my brain. I'm more calm, relaxed, focused, and coherent in my inner thoughts. I think it takes around 2 hours of inner monologue and thinking about all the problems I'm facing in my life until I feel like I'm done and I can let them go, or I've gone over them enough.
The closest I get to that is when I am getting a massage actually. If I get a 90 minute one, about halfway through my brain stops racing and I enter this, not quite hypnogogic, state where things are quiet and fluid and peaceful. The closest thing is waking up after a good night's sleep with an empty brain before the weight of the world comes crashing in.
My understanding is this is the default mode network allowing your brain to process things. I think modern life just completely inhibits any amount of this happening and that’s why these things are so important
One of the most concise and to-the-point explanations of meditation I've ever seen.
One thought I had while reading it: isn't trying to get more comfortable with doing nothing just another thing to do? isn't it another form of changing what already is?
EDIT: I'm advocating and practicing mindfulness but I always have this thought on the background and it's a real dilemma. Any thoughts?
Yes? Like trying hard to get into that state of meditation. Then you notice that you're getting tense and stressed about it not working, realize that this is not helpful, get angry at yourself for doing it wrong, try harder to do it right this time, etc.
It's my favourite puzzle about meditation. You have to approach it sideways, but if you really try that it won't work. So you try hard not to that instead, which won't work either. It's kind of funny how focusing on your breath tends to work, but... don't hold that thought.
It's a contradiction, and that's okay. Get comfortable with it ;-)
FWIW a good trick is to be aware of your thoughts, watch the tension/stress/realisation/anger/effort arising, the sort-of ignore them because they're thoughts and look for the way your mind tenses moving between them, then do the opposite of that tensing or let the tensing move you to a feeling of (say) extreme love or connection because if you're going to feel something that is more pleasant than stress. These things come and go, as you illustrate. Once you don't lean into them they tend to just go away.
None of those things are doing meditation wrong, they're just things minds do. The mistake is in focusing on them instead of focusing on the process generating the changes.
When I started meditating, I actively tried to ignore my thoughts, which was exhausting. So when I couldn't, I'd engage and ruminate instead, which was just as tiring.
The approach that finally worked for me (and one I still use today, years later) I learned from a book by Adrian Wells called Metacognitive Therapy. It's not self-help, actually; it's a clinical manual for therapists, but I read it anyway. The idea, in my own words, is not to engage with the thought but simply to recognize it, almost like greeting it and saying goodbye in the same breath. A thought comes, and you say, "Hmm, okay, I just thought that. That was a thought. That's fine." And you move on.
Of course, the book goes much deeper than that, but this simple approach helped me enormously with rumination and anxiety around intrusive thoughts.
This is a great point. This is why I don’t meditate :)
It became clear to me at some point that meditation was another way I was creating some standard for good or bad, and comparing myself to it. Would be annoyed at myself if I weren’t “mindful enough” etc. I think even if you don’t have this tendency, but you’re still meditating with the intent to be in a certain state or arrange things a certain way, you’re still doing a minor version of this - how I was before, not good, how I am now, better.
What I do now instead of meditating is to just sit without doing anything on purpose. I don’t try to prevent myself from thinking or direct my intention in any way. So I just am as I am - maybe my mind wanders, maybe it doesn’t. This way there’s no contradiction. When I’m anxious, I’m anxious. When my mind wanders, it wanders. When I think about cheese, I’m thinking about cheese. If I think “I’m feeling kind of present right now”, then there’s “I’m feeling kind of present right now”. And before I know it, it’s something different
> but you’re still meditating with the intent to be in a certain state
Then don't. It's exactly the point to not do that. Meditation needs non-attachment imho. Because when you're attached (I need this to feel a certain way, something must happen) you can't really be observant of your thoughts and sensations, you're one with them.
Yeah that’s fair, that’s why I put the “or arrange things in a certain way” - imo wanting to be observant of thoughts and sensations is a choice one makes that implies a value judgement, i.e. that it’s “better” to to be observant of thoughts and sensations, which I don’t think is necessarily true. For instance if I consider the best conversations I’ve had, it’s because I was “lost” in conversation - just having the conversation, not even aware that that’s what I’m doing. To me being nonjudgmental doesn’t mean viewing something and having a neutral view of it (which is still a judgement), it’s being entirely free from judgement by not being apart from it. This way when you’re judging something (“ugh I don’t like this coffee”) there’s no problem with that either.
All that said I think if someone wants to choose to meditate, or to spend time being aware of feelings or whatever form of meditation they choose, they’re totally welcome to do that. And I agree that if you do that, it’s helpful to focus on the process rather than the outcome.
That is called dualistic mindfulness. The feeling of the self (the thought “oh I am trying to meditate”) is just another thought. Pay close enough attention, and that dissipates as well.
One way to look at it is that the act of meditation is just the exercise part; it helps you practice to “be with what is” in the rest of your life’s experience, which translates into “whatever happens within or around me, I always have choices of action and can decide on my actions from a place of silence, the eye of the hurricane, with sufficient space between where I am and my own emotions and feelings, body sensations, and other sensory input”.
A side note: the experience of meditation alone and in groups is very different. There’s a reason why people who are “serious about it” (or seriously interested) do it in community.
The practice described there is close to shamatha (calm abiding). Just sit and when thoughts arrive, simply label it as “thinking” without prejudice or attachment and carry on.
A common occurrence is the thought that oneself is thinking or labeling too much. This is close to the recursion / self-reference you are referring to. The practice thereof is to simply accept that (and your labeling of inner activity and all wrapped up in that) and carry on abiding. The inner chatter that you are not meditating well enough is a funny one.
No. You're allowed to direct your attention. The problem would be in how you approach it. If you strive then you're doing it wrong.
Liken it to brushing your teeth: you can't really judge it. You probably did it good enough. It's more important to keep doing it steadily every day than to evaluate progress.
Zen talks about this frequently. It's not a issue unless you make it one. Don't let it be an excuse not to be mindful.
If you take seriously the notion that enlightenment isn't some separate state or goal to be reached but simply the actualization of things as they are, I find the goal- and outcome-oriented drives tend to subside. Instead one is left with all the minutae of how things unfold, which seems inextricable from the goings-on of mind/perception/whatever. Paying close attention to those goings-on is pretty nice, IME.
Buddha addressed this idea directly. Your instinct that "getting comfortable with nothing" is still doing something turns out to be exactly right, and Buddhism doesn't deny it. Its answer is basically: yes, you use one kind of wanting (the motivation to practice) to loosen a deeper kind of wanting (craving a specific outcome), like using fire to burn down a house, then the fire has nothing left to burn.
Meditation, in the Therevada tradition at least, never claimed to be nothing, it uses doing to undermine it.
I used to sit alone for 30-40 minutes, 100's of meters below ground, in absolute darkness, absolute silence, no life around, no movement around, not even a breeze of air. Only mild thoughts to stop myself from falling asleep. Above ground, I slept under the stars and sky, in the wild, with no buildings around.
What I learnt is, recent generations have too much of self awareness, causing the communities and groups to become weaker, compared to the tribal settlements that helped humans to dominate other species.
> I used to sit alone for 30-40 minutes, 100's of meters below ground, in absolute darkness, absolute silence, no life around
do you happen to be the narrator of notes from the underground?
[dead]
I think this makes as dominate other species even more. Society, and especially market capitalism, is like a giant optimization function for productivity. If you step off the treadmill, you will get dominated by those who are on it and have the latest ICBMs, AI models, infrastructure out the wazoo, can produce 10,000 drones a week, etc.
Too much self awareness is still a problem. Even if you have ICBMs and drones, a society that puts less emphasis on individuals than the community, can survive through offsprings and community traditions and beliefs. As long as the community lives on through its children, it's fine.
For example, people in my community are mostly known by their family name, and not by individual's name. Family name alone is used as far as possible. My grandpa never liked to be called by his own name.
The idea is, as long as there is someone to carry the family name, individuals should not matter.
The individual vs community dichotomy is a can of worms. The proponents of these terms often misunderstand each other.
The "individual" is short-hand for negative freedoms, and from this you can derive many of the same values as the "community" types want.
For example, you can say that carbon pollution is an infringement of an individual's negative freedoms. You can also say that it's bad for society's functioning and public health. This is one example where the lens of the individual and community give the same result.
Typically these two words point to different resolutions of analysis, one concerned with a unit of analysis that can be more easily understood and more credibly ascribed rights (the single suffering human), the other concerned with the global system dynamics where the analysis is more difficult but can also reveal some emergent phenomena (sociology, economics).
How can one possibly have ‘too much self-awareness?’
under what circumstances is it beneficial to have less awareness of oneself?
Too much self-awareness can cause you to become blind to the experiential part of life.
Like, when you're at a party, not having fun, but instead thinking: "I am drinking alcohol to lower my social inhibitions at the cost of worse sleep and long-term health benefits, because I think in the long run the possible connections made here and the subsequent rise in social status will be worth it"
Resembled with above experience. Wanting to be self aware, I spent couple of years in confusion. Rather only thinking about what I am doing at any point of time, and trying to be aware, not being involved fully and not able to enjoy. spent few years like that, it is really difficult situation to be in. At some point, I realized, the self-awareness is towards emotions that are arising in myself, mainly, not on particular thoughts. means while speaking with others, if there is any strong emotion particular negative emotion raising in oneself. just being aware about that strong emotion actually cools down, and then it becomes a habit. and over a period of time along with emotion awareness also comes. and then we can still continue to enjoy the whole party.
That's not self-awareness. You have it all backwards.
Awareness is about the senses, as well as having the experience to predict what will happen next, and plan accordingly. Awareness is 100% about balancing the sensing and the planning.
The sensing is important, but not for its own sake. If you overcorrect in that direction, it's just self-indulgence and hedonism.
Emil Cioran, in "A Short History of Decay", thinks that if humanity were deprived of work and sustained action for an indefinitely long "Sunday afternoon," boredom would become so unbearable that violence—crime in particular—would emerge as the principal means of escaping the oppressive emptiness of time.
"If Sunday afternoons were extended for months, where would humanity get to, liberated from sweat, from the weight of the first curse? The experiment would be worth the trouble. It is more than likely that crime would become the sole diversion, that debauchery would seem candor, shouting melody and jeers tenderness. The sensation of time's immensity would make each second into an intolerable torment, a sublime firing squad. In hearts imbued with poetry would appear a blasé cannibalism and a hyena's melancholy; butchers and executioners would die out—of lethargy; churches and brothels would split with sighs. The universe transformed into a Sunday afternoon... it is the very definition of ennui, and the end of the universe."
> It’s oddly difficult to do nothing, and while you’re doing nothing, it’s oddly difficult to feel at ease.
I don't have difficulty with this. Doing nothing, thinking about nothing, and simultaneously feeling perfectly at ease just comes naturally. I know that my experience is not universal and that many people do struggle with this. If you struggle with this and you were wondering, serenity really is very nice, and I wish I could share it, and I'm sorry that I can't.
I can only do it with instant satisfaction and ease on certain drugs or combinations of drugs, I assume it's a mechanical thing for me rather than spiritual, the brain functions, so could be both environmental and genetic, the body being like the ship for the spirit, though a spirit not at ease can disrupt an otherwise well oiled machine.
Consider that a lot of the resistance to just existing is external expectations. I feel like I should always be doing something because I'm pressured to, or that small things bother me because I feel I need to perform. Being content to exist has to do with becoming aware of expectations and not letting them take over your life, I think. Might be why meditation doesn't work for some, as it's a rather brute-force way of doing this.
Your brain is a prediction machine. I am afraid doing nothing is inhibiting that function. I think it's perfectly healthy to not want to be a vegetable. Maybe using that life force to focus on the things you're avoiding by rumination and escapism is good enough, and we don't have to be cosplaying the dead to get there?
Sure - no real argument but it's maybe worth examining the assumptions underlying this which you know exist because you say 'maybe' and 'I am afraid ...'. Accounts abound as to why 'doing nothing' is not necessarily a negative activity. If you're in good health, sometimes absolutely passivity after having drunk in the fact that 'For a while I am alive and consciousness in this inexplicably incredible universe and it's a massive privilege' is extraordinarily beneficial for the times you are not predicting.
> Your brain is a prediction machine
It's not.
> I am afraid doing nothing is inhibiting that function
It isn't.
> I think it's perfectly healthy to not want to be a vegetable
Not having an opinion about everything for 3 minutes != vegetable.
The author of the post is selling what he himself doesn't understand. Paying attention to your inner chatter without judgement is part of a much broader tradition. Westerners stealing bits from cultures they don't understand is nothing new. Neither is the polarizing fascination/dismissal it entails.
> The author of the post is selling what he himself doesn't understand. Paying attention to your inner chatter without judgement is part of a much broader tradition. Westerners stealing bits from cultures they don't understand is nothing new.
Quite the elitist thing to say and a bit obsolete in the type of overly-connected world we live in today. Perhaps the author just shared personal experience; they did in fact write that the word „meditation“ was deliberately omitted.
Your brain is also self-reflective. It can from the inside change its expectations. Reaching for the metaphor of evolved prediction machine implies you can't train in any other way, but you can. Let's say society collectively decides (or capitalism) that we need liesure living just like Europeans do, then that will be the system. Why are we following on Elon's footsteps of compressing 1000 years of progress into 100 years. No asteriod is coming to destroy us, so no rush.
I'm lucky enough to not notice my tinnitus except when I try to do nothing.
I have this same cactus same thing, but later on I realized even when I do nothing, and even my tinnitus is there I realized it doesn’t bother me anyway. I miss that deep winter / snow silence now and then but kind of learned to live with it I think. I realize this is very different experience for everyone.
I noticed the more I do nothing (and think nothing) the more my tinnitus lessens. I think mine has something to do with permanent neck muscle tension, the result of everyday rush and stress.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't actually feel any discomfort while sitting for 3 minutes doing nothing. Do most people actually struggle with that like the article says?
I struggle, I think I'm most people: First, I procrastinate getting started because of all the things that I should be, want to be, or am doing. Then I start and its like taking the lid off a boiling pot of to-dos and thoughts that have been suppressed in the constant busyness of doing stuff. I want to attend to them all now, but I deny myself. Then I want to at least make sure to keep them all in mind so I can attend to them when the exercise ends, but I deny myself. This struggle boils up and down until the exercise is finally over. I get a few moments of peace of course.
Sure, I spontaneously zone out sometimes, but purposely meditating is always the experience above.
I think experiences vary depending on person and personality.
I'm fine with doing nothing for a long time[0], but know friends and family members that struggle with not filling idle time with their phone. I do think this is learned behavior that people can adjust over time with practice (i.e. meditation).
0: I'm a voracious reader, frequent solo traveler, and was a paid photographer for a bit. Sitting, observing, and thinking is something that I do on a daily basis and comes naturally to me.
After having kids content like this is so unrelatable. When I finally have my own time, I'm going to do something fun, not worry about existential stuff lol.
Before kids I was on and off into meditation,my place in the world, being calm or w/e.
Same lmao. Similarly, I don't want to be rude or assume things but I'm really annoyed with 20-something-year-olds giving out life advice. (I don't know if the author is in 20s)
Such a boomer sentiment. Good advice is good advice no matter how old the mouth that utters it
1. Don't do anything 2. Be content
The second rule conflicts with the first making this impossible.
Any experienced meditator knows that to 'be content' isn't a passive action. You have to think to do it.
If you truly practice no thought, there is no 'content' to be.
The article allows for breathing and blinking, but has an odd constraint of “don’t move”, which AFAIK will make one fight their own neural system trying to autoregulate arousal. I’m not an expert but in my limited understanding, remaining completely still is not “not doing anything”, it’s very active inhibitory action.
As an experiment, just get in a nice running shower, so your sensory system will get external stimulation. YMMV, but for me three minutes pass quick. I just did that and when I decided to check the time it was almost 5 minutes already.
Real “doing nothing” is just leaving things be, just chilling out and observing whatever is happening without actively participating - and three minutes is a pretty low mark for that, unless we’re talking about fellas with ADHD.
Remaining completely still takes tremendous effort. Its harder than any dead lift or 100m sprint. You can do those at pace. But being still is binary act. It takes all the faculties and even then it's almost impossible without a very large amount of intense practice.
> Real “doing nothing” is just leaving things be
Yes that's it. That's what Zen, wu wei etc all point to.
I've looked at this a lot and my current view point is any actual concept of enlightenment was probably something invented by an 'influencer' in meditation circles thousands of years ago.
Maybe they mean something closer to “do nothing and try not to be miserable”
The irony of this is that trying to be miserable is more likely to circle the square and become funny removing the misery. As a Brit I'm culturally familiar with this.
I got really into meditation a few years ago. At the height of my practice, I was doing 1-2 hours per day, and I did one 7-day retreat.
Since then, two things happened. One is that I completely lost interest in meditation. The second is that I feel I've become a lot better at emotional regulation and self-awareness. It's hard to tell whether meditation actually played a role in this, or whether it was other things I was doing, or just a natural consequence of aging and accumulated experience.
Now my thoughts on meditation are that it's probably moderately beneficial, especially for someone like me prone to anxiety and depression and lacking in healthy lifestyle habits. But I'm skeptical of claims that it has unique benefits when compared to any other focused, rigorous activity like physical training, serious reading and writing, or playing a musical instrument. Or for that matter, eating a healthy diet and getting enough sleep.
This version of doing nothing IMO is still “doing something”. It’s clearly not “just existing” to have a standard that you must hold still, not look around the room, not engage in thinking, notice how you’re feeling, etc.
It’s clear when you see the picture of the cat in the article that the cat has none of these concerns.
I’d consider this to be a form of meditation - still containing ideas of “this, not that”.
Something that has felt much more rewarding to me is to really just exist, but without any ideas of being present, or things you must do or not do. I just sit and take a break from doing anything on purpose. My mind might wander, or it might not. When it does “wander”, and I realize that it’s been wandering it almost feels like a miracle - how is this thing doing this on its own? But that’s not really the point either. Whatever is here now, is here now, whether you notice it or not. And by the time you notice it, it’s gone. So what difference is there between thinking and not thinking?
Seconded. For me "doing nothing" also means "doing nothing without following any rules" as you've stated. My version of doing nothing involves either just sitting outside watching the world go by or walking & wandering around. May poke at plants here or there, pick up a stone or throw it etc., But no, I'm not consciously trying to "calm my mind"
Leave it to hacker news to bitch about how “meditation is wrong” just because it requires a tiny bit of effort to understand.
No one ever implied, let alone said, that, but if it makes you happy to have a strawman please carry on
“..for me..”, “…my version…”
Right, I think commonly "doing nothing"/meditation is approached with the goal of "doing something", i.e. "getting the hell out of here" or changing instead of sitting with how you feel in the present moment. And, just as you say, that basically defeats the entire purpose.
Just because something is hard doesn't mean it's worth doing. Evolution selected impatience for a reason. Of course, the flip-side is fake supernormal stimuli like screens, etc. that does more harm than good. The new environment we live in is incompatible with our old brains. But that doesn't mean you literally do nothing. It's ok to not meditate--figure out the right balance for you. I believe before meditating try getting rid of things like junk-food, doomscrolling etc. What's the point in meditating 15 minutes a day just to be distracted with cheap dopamine several of your waking hours.
I don't understand the hero image of hipsters sipping espresso in a cafe.
Is that an example of how to exist? How not to exist? I can see an argument for either one lol.
I think I might. In a past life I was a full time musician and had tons of time to kill. I was able to just go to places and simply exist. It wasn't to read or work or write or meet anyone (everyone was at work after all), it was simply "I want some coffee". I'd people watch and daydream for a bit and then I'd go do something else.
Whether or not that's what they had in mind idk, but it's what it immediately made me think of. I traded near absolute freedom for money, but that's just something you have to do as you get older I guess.
It’s rather “libertarians as cats”. The heroism of being content doing nothing but drink some coffee, stands upon the backs of hundreds of people seeking to better themselves who brought that coffee to your lips.
"It’s oddly difficult to do nothing"
This isn't always true. It's likely true only when there is no pressure. However, when there is pressure, one can "do nothing" for long periods. If you haven't experienced that, you've lived a blessed life, and you have more to learn.
I think you're equating doing nothing with doing nothing productive. You're usually still ruminating or trying to distract yourself from the source of the pressure.
What is an example? I can only think of a root canal procedure.
Isn't that just how one falls asleep? I've been doing this every evening for decades.
"Just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement! Many people struggle greatly with falling asleep. Personally, while I agree with you, if you are the type of person who struggles with clearing the mind, it's hardest to do when exhausted (hence common advice to practice mediation early in the day)
This is a common form of buddhist meditation in Tibetan (Dzogchen / Mahamudra) and Japanese (Soto Zen shikantaza) styles. Instructions are nearly identical. Interestingly, it's considered one of the most advanced techniques in the Tibetan repertoire.
I might just be too autistic for this but I don't get why the article uses the word "existing" to refer to a conflation of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity/what have you.
Am I not existing when I'm worrying about finances or fidgeting with my hair?
I don't really see why "existing" should be conceived in such a subtractive fashion.
I'm not dismissing the value of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity when achievable (which, as the author acknowledges, these things sometimes aren't). But I am slightly miffed by the implication that any failure to reach such state is an inability to attain something as fundamental as "existence".
(end rant)
With all due respect, you might be overanalyzing it.
Obviously it is trivial to merely exist. All of us are doing it with (for the majority of us who are healthy) minimal effort.
The author is taking artistic license with the word as a shorthand for a specific form of existing well which is something that many people struggle with, and that many people would readily associate with this use of the term.
The Author did mention if something is happening that gives you a desire to move on to the next thing might be a state of not being present. I would characterize worry being in the future because something about the present moment is disrupting.
of course you exist regardless of what you are doing. I think the term is just used because it is the most "plain" form of existing? Just being around and doing nothing else at all. I'm not sure the term used carries much weight.
It’s a result of people being less literate. “Existing” is used to describe passing time without meaning. What author should have used is “being”.
That word isn't any better. I am regardless of what I'm doing or how I'm feeling.
Because something titled "How to X" is usually supposed to teach you an optimal way to do X. Like, technically you can also get rid of centipedes by burning down your house, but an article titled "How to get rid of centipedes" is unlikely to tell you that.
We can all be pedantic, why do you have to be alive to exist?
Depends on the specific definition of the verb existing we are talking about, right?
90% of "I'm too autistic"-insecurities boil down to words being not clearly defined (or them being clearly defined, but either people using them without care or you not being aware of the definition they use). A word isn't magically stuck the the abstract concept it refers to, people can mean different things while using the same word. In philosophy for example it is very apparent that one author's definition of existence (or any other abstract concept, like freedom) may differ fundamentally from another author's.
We can all agree that sometimes the use of an word has unfortunate side effects, like turning something simple like existence into something you can suck at. This often boils down to (A) a use of the concept we are not aware of, e.g. if Paul Satré used the word existence, he has writen thousand page book on his specific meaning of the word and the author having read Satré unbeknownst to us refers to Satré's definition or (B) the author just chose a word that sounded cool and picked somewhat imprecisely.
I think here (as so often) it is the latter, but to cut them some slack: colloquially people will say things like "I feel like I am not even existing/alive". And what they often mean by that is that their life passes in full automation mode, with them barely having any present thought at any moment — wake up, commute, work, rinse, repeat. If that is your problem, doing something that gets you out of that automation state is good.
However I believe that many pasttimes can do that, e.g. playing music, climbing, a walk through an unknown landscape, etc. I am pretty certain there are indigenous people out there who probably don't even know of this problem to begin with, they simply just exist in their present moment. So this isn't generally hard for a human being. But it can be hard to some.
I came here to read people's insights into the article, and it's pretty amusing (and a little bit disheartening) to find this complaint at the top of the thread.
It's pretty obvious from context that the author means "do nothing other than exist and experience that feeling" when he says "exist". Why does the author use that specific word? Because he liked it better than other words, and I do think it makes more sense and flows better in the context of the article than something line "stasis."
I don't know if you're actually autistic or using the word as a generic term to describe your personality, but if it's the former, my input is that it's generally beneficial to give people the benefit of the doubt, steelman their position, and just move on when you notice minor things you dislike. Filling the world with negative feedback for minor quibbles doesn't make anyone's life better.
It's a catchy but, yes, inaccurate term. Then again, this is an area which ultimately wants to escape terms (enter infuriatingly meaningless other terms like "ineffable"), so consider letting go of linguistic pedantry part of the exercise. Maybe a better framing for you is to think of your brain as a computer (which it is) and try and let it run the programs it's going to run when the "user" stops launching processes (or practically most of the time when meditating, runs a script which runs ps and then kills threads). The idea is that like clearing your desk or letting your system run some background tasks, you'll end up with a better system if you periodically practice making space in this way.
I mean it is hard to take such a blog seriouslt tbh with a title like "how to exist". I feel there is a lot of sprituality mumbo jumbo that gets lumped with meditation which is a fairly mechnical process that you can do to relax your body and mind, like a massage.
But people are not happy with it just being message, they want to espouse it as a religion or something that will fundamentally change your thinking etc. But imo an asshole will still remain as asshole even if they medidate everyday.
If you just look at the mechanics of breathing and thought control, they can be pretty useful to apply especially if you are prone to high anxiety. But there is nothing in it that will make you a better person or help you exists or whatever
You are onto something, brother. Nirvana is samsara, samsara is nirvana. Buddha mind is every day mind.
Well, let's give the author the benefit of the doubt and try not to regard his article or its ideas in a subtractive fashion either; there's more here than the headline.
There's a lot of woo around meditation and mindfulness, but I genuinely believe that one of the most valuable habits I've acquired is just sitting still for a few minutes in the morning with zero distractions and observing where my mind goes.
9 times out of 10 it tells me exactly what it wants/needs to deal with that day, and if I want to stay emotionally balanced and pursue my deepest callings, I need to follow its suggestion.
If I don't do this I become out of touch with my inner state, less focused, less intentional, and over time, emotionally erratic.
The article's caution about doing this exercise if you have a condition like PTSD is very good advice, because eventually, the real shit you need to deal with will rear its head.
Everything you need for self-understanding and balance is there in your mind, speaking to you, all the time. Most of the time instead of listening we pull out our phones and distract ourselves. Or maybe we do what other people have told us to or follow some other drive.
But if you can and do set all that aside and just listen to the mind from time to time, it's almost a superpower. I suspect that many of humanity's greatest works have come about this way. Someone listening to what their mind just wouldn't shut up about, creating the conditions for hundreds or thousands of hours of flow state, and then just following its lead.
To me the title just read like: how to exist skillfully.
I think by pointing out the existing which is always happening they're implying a "merely existing", because otherwise yeah we always exist, but do we always only exist and nothing else?
As a long time meditator I know it's genuine from this:
> See how long it takes before you’re dying for it to be over.
This is actually true and it shows that they have properly done the exercise correctly. The reason is that daily living creates psychological sludge which somehow gets embedded on the level of feelings. Those stuck feelings are what give that sense.
Once the thought layer is peeled focus comes on feelings and then let's just say there's one more layer beneath into full blown Presence which is blissful. Why it's blissful to this day I still don't understand.
> This is a crazy thing to notice after having been alive so many years — that your existence itself is so much to bear.
Alternative interpretation: my existence is not about sitting there, getting mouldy on the sofa. It never crosses my mind that I should feel unrest because I can't / don't want to just sit there and do nothing, nor does it feel like a revelation to think about it. Maybe it also says something about you if this is something you worry about on some deep level.
Such great advice. I have been meditating for over 50 years, and while this meditation practice is key to my being happy and content in my personal life, hobbies, and work the techniques in this excellent article are something I have only taken up in the last few years. Sitting quietly just feeling grateful for quiet ‘do nothing’ time is wonderful, and just a few minutes at a time feels good.
I recently found out that I'm the most miserable when I'm rushing.
If something happens, and I allow it to break the flow of things, I become stressed and worried and time flies. When I allowed myself to simply exist for a week, without a crazy planned-in-advance vacation, the week felt like a month. No joking.
Where this urge to always rush comes from is a good question. I imagine it's very much cultural, we're expected to rush and be busy.
Is the writer american, because it seems to me, a french man, a specially american take on life. Being contemplating and content seems a lot easier for us.
Americans do seem to be a rather compulsive and anxious sort.
What's that paragraph about firefighter arson? Looks out of place, curious while there's another article on the subject on front page.
>Each year, roughly 100 firefighters are convicted of arson in North America, often on multiple counts. Most often they are young, new firefighters, frustrated by the lack of action.
Is someone tricking LLMs into writing articles about firefighter arson?
I guess I could imagine this being tricky if you're stuck in a city apartment with no yard and no park nearby ...
The more you require to do this - walk to the park, a lawn, no noise - the less you will do it. In reality you could be locked in a prison and still do it.
as the author points out, even thought in your own mind is a source of distraction and you can't run away from that.
Fundamentally you can be at ease with city noise just like you can be with mental distraction. One of the big misconceptions about meditation for example tends to be that it's about avoiding or actively quieting noise be that internal or external. It's not about changing the content of your conscious experience but your relationship to it.
You can close your eyes. Tricky if it's noisy - but then that's an issue in itself.
The foundation of this practice is just sitting still and observing in acceptance, which also works when it is noisy.
Oxygenated air is all you need
“Even thinking is often a sneaky way of escaping the existence; rumination isn’t so much about trying to solve your problems, as it is about going elsewhere in your mind to escape anxiety and uncertainty.”
Profound insight that really gets to the root of rumination.
The wandering sadhus and nath yogis who worshipped Lord Shiva used hashish (what you'd call now finger hash) to aid in this practice of disappearing within one's own mind during meditation.
You can have the experience without it too, just sit there for a long time and follow the instruction you shared. Yes keeping the rule in your head is a thing to fixate on, but there's a little trick.
You see people spin balls or beads in their hands, or sometimes do a little puzzle in their mind, and claim it aids with meditation. Well, sometimes a small repetitive thing to focus on can be just as good as pure silence. This is the basis of mantras. If you do the same thing over and over and over and over it's the same unchanging rhythm as the background silence you're trying to achieve. It's only when we have all these decisions dragging us every which way that it's not possible to fall into the meditative state.
So what is it - the "state" - it's basically when you forget you're there. The longer, the more psychedelic of an experience that is. You've probably already achieved it sitting bored in class, or staring off while tired. That's it.
You can become better at forgetting yourself and "slipping into it" (or rather out of mental thoughts and into the abyss of relaxing nothingness) on demand, and get better at doing it for longer, or you can use inebrients to aid in the process.
Sometimes when you come to - you had basically a dream. That can feel profound enough for some to build a religion around this kind of thing.
I get where you’re coming from but they are listing these things out because those are some of the things you will likely automatically do to distract yourself from the present moment. I once tried to instruct someone on how to meditate and afterward they told me they spent the entire time working out solutions to problems in their head. I tried explaining that actively doing something, like solving problems in your head, means you are not meditating - you are thinking. They couldn’t bring themselves to sit there without getting their mind involved in something.
So, instead of solving problems, you want them to solve the problem of not thinking about solving problems?
I sense the snark but no. Just fully experience your current moment as it changes without inserting yourself.
IMO, a more logical approach is to let your thoughts flow and simply observe them instead of trying to control them (that never worked for me.)
Yeah that’s exactly what I mean by not inserting yourself. When you engage with the thoughts, feelings, and sensations, your awareness narrows and you focus on them. As your focus deepens, it becomes amplified and will continue. When you notice this happening, go back to a more neutral observer mindset and let it flow past.
It’s a bit tricky because sometimes you get caught focusing on being the observer and letting sensations pass. It’s a more subtle thought but as you practice those subtle sensations become more apparent. It’s a useful sensation in the beginning to let the more “coarse” sensations and feelings go but eventually you need to let that go too.
I don't think it's possible to be conscious and have no thoughts at the same time. Otherwise, you wouldn't even remember the experience. I think we first need to define what we mean by "thoughts".
It’s not about having no thoughts. It’s about not being involved in the thought occurring. We often identify with our thoughts and feelings in a way that we do not when we see a cloud pass by. Treat those thoughts, feelings and physical sensations in the same way during meditation.
This seems more like an awareness practice than a "being" practice as I was led to believe by "exist" in the title.
I used to read this blog over a decade ago and I'm very surprised to see it's still going.
I live in the hood and can’t believe how many people just “chill” all day.
Sun up to sun down just sitting or standing doing nothing. Occasionally yell at their dog which has never been to a beach or park, both of which are less than 1 mile away. Blaring loud music, the same rhythmic narcissism over and over, just sitting around without a single creative or productive thought “chillin”
Hey what are you doing?
“Chillin”
Why? Your life’s in shambles
“Huh? No I chillin”
That’s how most are already spending their ~80 years.
So, I kinda hate meditation. I like building things, playing in the ocean, creating, writing, traveling, eating ice cream with friends getting caught up on their lives.
I’m LIVIN! Not chillin or meditating.
I don’t want to be a human being, but a human doing!
Maybe they’re happier that way
I'm sure they are, and those who waste their time meditating or praying to gods aren't actually wasting their time, since apparently they really are happier (according to various research).
I think all these people are escaping the same thing - their own mortality.
I had a rather extreme form of this existence in my late-20’s, it was the first time I had ever really experienced such a thing (circa-2011). I’d never had any pathologies in the past, and this was shortly following an unexpected violent encounter. I spoke with a psychiatrist, and it was diagnosed at the time as post-traumatic stress disorder.
I wonder if maybe there’s something of a swelling ocean full of people suffering from low-level PTSD, even just from the trauma of staying alive and well in a society that you feel increasingly untethered from, as if stuck in place while the universe expands farther in every direction. The arriving tide of midlife crises for a generation of Palahniuk’s “middle-children of history”, those who had the wherewithal and luck to avoid serious addictions and hereditary alcoholism, but who still can’t really afford to be sufficiently medicated under a doctor’s supervision, either. So we resort to the permanent morphine drip of distraction, mainlining dopamine via headphone IVs.
The bottom half of a socioeconomic bell curve that’s being aggressively flattened, as if there were a pandemic of mediocrity and wasted potential. Stuck between a misspent youth, and an increasingly uncertain future.
TLDR; I think this is a very good first step for a lot of like-minded somewhat damaged folks. I ultimately took a similar approach—mindful meditation with breathing exercises—to treat my own PTSD, it worked better than Xanax to tamp down the anxiety attacks.
P.S. - Anyone who points out my em dashes can go sit on dem dashes. This comment was boutique, artisan, 100% organic bullshit. No memory prices were harmed in the making of this comment.
Why do this? Is there any evidence that this has actual benefits?
Not everything must be stats and numbers. You either try it and find out if it works for you or you don‘t. As simple as that.
I know what the author means, but I don't share the experience.
My form of meditation is to go for a run, no music, no distractions. It usually takes me half an hour to finally reach a point where my mind goes quiet, I "solved" everything that would otherwise keep repeating in my mind while trying to sleep. I don't have to come up with a solution but at least it feels like I spent enough time on it to let it go.
Especially long runs do wonders, I get into a relaxed trance like state which sticks even after running. Maybe it's the exhaustion or the fact that the energy is spent somewhere other than my brain, but I don't care, it feels nice.
> When you stop doing everything and just exist, you almost feel like you’re dying.
It sounds like the author drinks too much caffeine. This definitely isn't unusual in rat race culture, but it's also by no means the universal human experience.
Maybe "not unusual" is enough.
Doing nothing? You’ll still have to breathe. ;)
I feel like people are already pretty great at dissociating and ignoring their own thoughts and feelings just to exist today.
My experience is that if you try to sit still for 5 minutes, the opposite happens. The thoughts and feelings that you weren't aware of start mobbing you, and you have to at least acknowledge them to get your peace. It's also one of the hardest ways to waste time, getting busy with any distraction is much easier.
Someone has discovered existential dread.
No, he’s discovered a temporary way out of it.
Honestly, when I check that article, for me, it's talking about existing with peace. Everyone of us exists. We are just passing the time. But the truth is to realizing that to realizing that the existence is not just let the time pass, go beyond that. Beyond the matrix.
There is no internet in heaven.
It is, after all, the cloud.
Simple idea, big payoff
"cogito ergo sum"
- Rene Descartes
A limitation Descartes did not overcome!
> This is the strange condition of the human being. It’s allergic to its natural habitat, which is the present moment. In order to cope with this allergy, it perpetually seeks things: feelings and experiences that are not yet present. It wants to always be getting the hell out of here.
I think this is way over-philosophizing and missing the basics of modern life.
Many people live in capitalist societies and are well-adapted to continuous 1) consumption and 2) production, both of which keep the economy spinning and neither of which involve doing nothing.
Whether that's good or bad is up for debate, but to attribute the difficulty of "doing nothing" to the fundamental human condition is a huge stretch.
Wow if a page ever needed reader mode, this would be it… Light grey on white !nice
doing nothing wouldnt have created the microprocessor.
[dead]
I’ve never met another person who can “sit like a frog” who didn’t have to go through something unbearable
That has been my experience at least
"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
--Pascal
This sounds a lot like:
"Try doing this thing."
"No."
"You can't do it because of your deficiencies."
"I won't do it because all you've done is spout a bunch of pseudoscience."
a lot of the previous posts on the site are all about doing all sorts of things and squeezing the juice out of them :)
Great post. The author sounds like he loves life. Not a lot of BS to it.
no
Not really sure how to feel about this post. I guess I will try still..
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TLDR
I'm just trying to Exit.
If you are stuck in vim, it's :q. If you are stuck in life, stay with us, we want you to stay.
I came here to say this. You beat me to it.
Who's "we"?
Don't give up, friend. People care for you. If no one else, this person online does! I hope you are able to find help.
it's possible that he was making a joke about exiting a startup
but I appreciate your comment regardless
Today there is no guarantee that that sequence of characters, or the one it was produced in reply to, or, indeed, this very one you are reading right now did not come from a bot. There is a lot of "care" being performed and not much left to just exist.
This is hacker news so there's a good chance they mean "have a successful acquisition of their business", in which case I hope they can Exit.
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> This is a crazy thing to notice after having been alive so many years — that your existence itself is so much to bear. There’s always something wrong, even when everything’s fine. It’s as if you can only bear the present moment when you’re trying change it into something else.
I am not a professional and I'm not trying to be dismissive here, but I'm pretty sure you're just describing general anxiety.
Nobody truly has a hard time "doing nothing for 3 minutes" if they time it right. Morning and night tend to be when it's easiest for me, but others may differ. You should instead investigate what makes that time of day different from the rest of it. That's where the answers really are. You can and should adjust the flow of your day to make it happen naturally and unconsciously.
> This is a form of meditation, but I almost want to avoid that word because it makes people get nervous and overcomplicate it. Just think of this practice as existing without fear, for a few seconds at a time. Minimum effective dose is one half-breath.
This is already way too complicated. Nothing at this level of detail needs to be described. We already know what "nothing" is. Being too deliberate has a way of pushing the emotions elsewhere until they come back to bite you. The goal of trying to make this possible on-demand is unrealistic at best, or a self-help trap to keep people buying advice at worst.
I found myself "meditating" all the time on accident when I took on less and gave myself more time to do things. When you need a break, you need a break. The most important part for me was letting go of trying to impose control over this. I very strongly disagree with the notion of deliberate meditation. It's not a matter of "doing it right". It's just bullshit. The state of mind and results are identical when you stop listening to anyone's advice and just let it happen.
> I very strongly disagree with the notion of deliberate meditation. It's not a matter of "doing it right". It's just bullshit. The state of mind and results are identical when you stop listening to anyone's advice and just let it happen.
You assume others have had your experience and learnings from it. That’s clearly not possible so how else would you put it for them? Maybe you should contribute your own experience. But don’t expect everybody will allign to it 100%.
I kept waiting for the punchline of the author turning out not to be a human after describing in detail what it thinks of the human experience. The text has all the hallmarks of AI writing at least
I'm pretty sensitive to slop and didn't get it from this one. This blog's existed since 2009.