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To you, what does it mean to “not work”? Or what would it mean for it to “work”? I’ve meditated on and off, and find it sometimes helpful, but I can’t conceive

To you, what does it mean to “not work”? Or what would it mean for it to “work”? I’ve meditated on and off, and find it sometimes helpful, but I can’t conceive of what it would mean for it to work, or not work.

taneq 3y ago
I was being told it would help me to feel calmer, help me feel more peaceful, give me amazing insights, etc. so I'd define "work" as "fulfil one or more of those claims in some perceptible way." It did not. I never felt any real benefit from it and I didn't enjoy the process. So to me, that's "not working." What's your motivation for meditating? Is it something that you can tell afterwards whether you achieved it or not? And I'm not talking 'achieve' like some sigma grindset maximizing gains type BS, I mean the way if I play a video game, I'm doing it because I expect to have fun, and afterwards I can ask myself "was that fun?" and gauge the degree to which I had fun.
- halfcat 3y ago
  To me it’s somewhat analogous to exercise, eating well, and sleeping well. The benefits are “small” in one sense, but highly leveraged in another sense. I don’t necessarily feel that I get a lot out of any single session, aside from a mental interrupt (which could also be achieved by going for a walk, or whatever). It’s more like, doing it consistently over time moves the needle in some very small way, almost imperceptible. Like, I’ll notice I’m a little more patient with my kids, a little less anxious during a work meeting, a little slower to get angry, a little quicker to let anger dissipate. And if I wasn’t paying attention, these changes might be so subtle that I wouldn’t even say anything had changed, and I could easily be one who says it “doesn’t work”. But while those changes are all small and subtle, the downstream impact can be enormous. The difference between staying angry for a minute versus an hour is often the difference between good long term relationships and divorce, or the difference between going to prison, or not. Lots of long-tail negative outcomes get avoided. And the benefit of having a lower idle anxiety level seems to have a cumulative impact, or a thing that kicks off a virtuous cycle. Like, I feel a little less anxious, so I make a less worse decision to not medicate with junk food, so I sleep a little better, and make another better decision the next day, and so on. It’s hard to really convey, because it’s very subtle but the principle is, I think, that the difference between doing a little, and doing zero, has a way larger impact than the arithmetic calculation would suggest. Like the difference between spending a dollar more than you earn, versus spending a dollar less than you earn. It’s a $2 difference and seems insignificant, but it’s the difference between debt and a path to wealth.

taneq 3y ago

I was being told it would help me to feel calmer, help me feel more peaceful, give me amazing insights, etc. so I'd define "work" as "fulfil one or more of those claims in some perceptible way." It did not. I never felt any real benefit from it and I didn't enjoy the process. So to me, that's "not working." What's your motivation for meditating? Is it something that you can tell afterwards whether you achieved it or not? And I'm not talking 'achieve' like some sigma grindset maximizing gains type BS, I mean the way if I play a video game, I'm doing it because I expect to have fun, and afterwards I can ask myself "was that fun?" and gauge the degree to which I had fun.

halfcat 3y ago
To me it’s somewhat analogous to exercise, eating well, and sleeping well. The benefits are “small” in one sense, but highly leveraged in another sense. I don’t necessarily feel that I get a lot out of any single session, aside from a mental interrupt (which could also be achieved by going for a walk, or whatever). It’s more like, doing it consistently over time moves the needle in some very small way, almost imperceptible. Like, I’ll notice I’m a little more patient with my kids, a little less anxious during a work meeting, a little slower to get angry, a little quicker to let anger dissipate. And if I wasn’t paying attention, these changes might be so subtle that I wouldn’t even say anything had changed, and I could easily be one who says it “doesn’t work”. But while those changes are all small and subtle, the downstream impact can be enormous. The difference between staying angry for a minute versus an hour is often the difference between good long term relationships and divorce, or the difference between going to prison, or not. Lots of long-tail negative outcomes get avoided. And the benefit of having a lower idle anxiety level seems to have a cumulative impact, or a thing that kicks off a virtuous cycle. Like, I feel a little less anxious, so I make a less worse decision to not medicate with junk food, so I sleep a little better, and make another better decision the next day, and so on. It’s hard to really convey, because it’s very subtle but the principle is, I think, that the difference between doing a little, and doing zero, has a way larger impact than the arithmetic calculation would suggest. Like the difference between spending a dollar more than you earn, versus spending a dollar less than you earn. It’s a $2 difference and seems insignificant, but it’s the difference between debt and a path to wealth.