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Too many negative comments here. This is just someone discovering something new and sharing it very excitedly. Almost 6-7 years ago, I read about a 30min chall
by unsungNovelty 10mo ago
Too many negative comments here. This is just someone discovering something new and sharing it very excitedly.
Almost 6-7 years ago, I read about a 30min challenge to sit upright without doing anything in a chair challenge. That changed how I think about distractions. If I had written about it, there surely will be people who would just like here say... What is so crazy about it? I do that all the time...
To me, this post is someone's joy and curiosity shared through a well written piece. Everybody discover certain things at different stages of their lives. What's so bad about that?
Was able to bring a smile on my face. A good post. :)
- cm2012 10mo agoTrying to sit still for 30 min without any stimulation at all (no talking, watching, reading) sounds like torture to me.
- dymk 10mo agoIt starts like that. Work up to 30 minutes, start with 5. The mind has an uncanny ability to entertain itself when it’s bored but paying attention.
- doublerabbit 10mo agoYou also find out how much noise your brain filters. You end up hearing conversations more clearly, environmental noises you wouldn't normally hear and I find more clarity for the environmental area.
- Tagbert 10mo agoIt can be at first until you get used to it. You can observe your surroundings, make up stories about what is happening. Ask yourself questions. Listen to yourself. This is a bit like excercise. When you first start, 30 minutes of exercise can be torture as your is out of shape and not used to the effort. Keep doing it and it feels better and you feel better. Work on becoming a source of thoughts rather than a consumer of thoughts.
- ugjjhgvjb 10mo agoSo… stimulate yourself? > Work on becoming a source of thoughts rather than a consumer of thoughts. This is the classic “sounds deep but actually means nothing” vague statement that’s only meant to massage one’s ego and try to reenforce an unsubstantiated idea in a faux-philosophical way. You are always “sourcing” thoughts even when “consuming”. Being able to sit still, quietly without having to stimulate oneself is, by all means, exactly that: avoid stimulating oneself. Looking around and trying to come up with small stimulations based on your surrounding is merely replacing one object (say, your phone) with another.
- bovermyer 10mo agoIn order to avoid all stimulation, there is but one recourse, and it is rather final. Generally, I prefer just sitting quietly and not worrying about the definition of stimulation or whether I'm doing it correctly.
- exe34 10mo ago> You can observe your surroundings, make up stories about what is happening. I had to sit still a lot as a child, since I wasn't allowed to have friends or go anywhere. I read a lot, but a lot of the time I was to tired or bored to read, so I'd just defocus my eyes, and disappear into my imagination. It would look like I'm reading, so I wouldn't get punished. In hindsight I'm not sure it's terribly healthy, as I now find it impossible to put up with boring people (which is basically everybody who has time to sit around chatting, almost by definition).
- amanaplanacanal 10mo agoWhen I was younger I used to visit a local zendo, and I think the meditation sessions were 40 minutes. It's definitely an experience. Very easy to fall asleep without external distractions. The idea was to just learn to concentrate on bodily sensations, skin, breathing, sound.
- cm2012 10mo agoI have tried sensory deprivation tanks a few times and always fall asleep within 5 min, like clockwork.
- unsungNovelty 10mo agoIt is. I did somewhere around ~10mins or something in my first try. Which I was told is very high for a first attempt. But it is indeed difficult. Like @dymk said, you work your way up. Also, a lot of folks think it's easy to do. Until you try it, that is. I also remember reading somewhere around the lines of handling the chaos in your-self. Or controlling the chaos within yourself. And always thought this exercise showed what that is about. (Sorry, forgot the expression. Been a while. It's definitely more nicely put than the above.)
- reg_dunlop 10mo agoMy therapist used to say: this means you must do it for 40 minutes
- cm2012 10mo agoId find that annoying and find a new therapist
- patrickmay 10mo agoMeditate for 30 minutes every morning. If you don't have time, meditate for 60 minutes.
- anotherevan 10mo agoI want to add that to my quotes database[1]. Would "Patrick May" be the right attribution? [1] https://q4td.blogspot.com/ https://q4td.blogspot.com/
- lifetimerubyist 10mo agoSome people just call this "meditation".
- Tarq0n 10mo agoNot if you freely engage in rumination. Meditation is not just sitting with your thoughts.
- thornewolf 10mo agosome forms of meditation can be. it's a very general term
- tzone 10mo agoI think it depends on what counts as doing nothing. Every time I cut my hair, I sit in a chair for ~30minutes silently without doing anything. My barber knows I don't like small talk so he just cuts my hair and that's it, there is no conversation. I would say it is very enjoyable 30 minutes every time I do it. I don't think anyone would describe that kind of experience as hard to do?
- chongli 10mo agoYou're still being stimulated by the act of the barber cutting your hair. Sitting in a chair doing nothing alone in a silent room is a different story.
- cm2012 10mo agoI enjoy the sensations at the barber very much.
- frutiger 10mo agoHow long has your barber been cutting hair?
- Cthulhu_ 10mo ago> I don't think anyone would describe that kind of experience as hard to do? Some would, especially the younger generation. Their attention span - or probably their brain chemistry - is strongly affected by constant stimulation, to the point where disconnecting from it causes anxiety and restlessness. Not just the younger generation either, millennials are probably the first generation to be affected.
- hansmayer 10mo agoThen dont sit still for 30 mins - try doing it for 3 minutes at first. If you feel like it, repeat the next day with either the same or longer length. Or dont do it at all. If you do - think of it as a kind of a meditation, without the extra steps. Some isolation from sensory stimulation is good for your brain - there is growing evidence we are all over exposed to attention-robbing mechanisms of the digital world.
- astura 10mo ago>Trying to sit still for 30 min without any stimulation at all (no talking, watching, reading) sounds like torture to me. Those of us over 40 have already had plenty of this in our lives, it used to be such a common part of life! Waiting for appointments, waiting for the bus, etc. before smartphones. My first job had two hours between lunch and dinner service. I only had about 15 minutes of work during that time, so it was hour plus of almost entirely idle time every shift.
- cm2012 10mo agoPre-smart phone era I would bring a book on the bus or sleep.
- 2ap 10mo agoPart of my job, is that I design protocols to help young children lie in MRI scanners for a living. We have all sorts of techniques to help with this. However, for each new scanning protocol, I like to have had it myself - so I know what the children go through. And, at times lying inside a MRI scanner, detached from the world, with only the noise of the scanner (very reduced with our new noise cancelling headphones), is almost meditative, and a welcome escape from the constant connection and pressures of being immediately available at work. Sounds like the writer achieves something similar in the coffee shop.
- jddj 10mo agoFascinating. How many MRIs have you had? I get a break from constant availability from air travel, but that's slowly eroding as it becomes more connected.
- normie3000 10mo agoI absolutely love going in the machine. Highly meditative and usually I fall asleep by the end. You can get the soundtrack on YouTube too, but it's not quite the same. What works to get children to stay still though?
- 2ap 10mo agoAh, depends on the child! But for kids over 8, a nice long form video works well. That, and having enough time so that they don't feel like we're in a rush, but also not taking to long to load them onto the scanner... For the younger ones, it's very much dependent on the child. So we take a bit of time to get to know them before we get them to attend. We have videos to prep them, and can follow a script when loading them (e.g. becoming an astronaut and blasting off into space...).
- yumraj 10mo agoSounds like meditation to me.
- FpUser 10mo ago>"Trying to sit still for 30 min without any stimulation at all (no talking, watching, reading) sounds like torture to me" I've done more than that. Summer time I often swim in open water up to 2 hour at once as one of the ways to stay fit. Obviously it becomes routine and not very entertaining. So I usually doing some high level software design work in my mind at this point, exploring some concepts, thinking business ideas etc. etc. So my body does monotonous work of not very high intensity and my brain is busy with everything else. Not board at all. I once spent 1.5 hour standing in a church listening to a priest for more than an hour (funeral). Same thing I mentally solved the problem why some piece of my code did not work. Without this ability I would go nuts. My brain always has to be busy with something. It is like a drug for me.
- notdang 10mo agoTry ultra running for at least 10 hours. You run out of things to think about, plus you are so tired that you cannot concentrate for long on the same subject. After some struggle you will enter into a weird state that I think should be similar to what they achieve through meditation.
- FpUser 10mo ago>"Try ultra running for at least 10 hours" Not my cup of tea. But I do get your point.
- vlod 10mo ago"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." - Blaise Pascal I try and think about this often.
- randycupertino 10mo agoReminds me of the trend of "raw dogging flights" - ie no book, no TV, no music, no headphones. https://www.travelweek.ca/news/airlines/what-is-raw-dogging-and-why-are-people-doing-it-on-planes/ https://www.travelweek.ca/news/airlines/what-is-raw-dogging-...
- anonymous908213 10mo agoI don't think it's very much worth thinking about. It's a pseudointellectual quip that sounds superficially insightful but which holds zero substance. The overwhelming majority of humanity's problems, such as they might be described, stem from the biological drive to survive and procreate. The quip presupposes that man naturally has a room to sit quietly in; this is not the case. The procurement of a room to sit in requires a significant amount of effort. It can entail the securing of territory and building of the shelter oneself, or it can entail the education, advanced skill development, and daily labour required to pay to reap the results of other people having secured the territory and built the shelter. To say nothing of food, mating, and rearing of offspring. Pascal was born well-to-do, so perhaps he was removed from the general human experience. He was provided with the room to sit quietly in by the efforts of others, and may never have had to work a day in his life, affording him the luxury to make that statement. He also did not marry or reproduce. If everyone had lived the life he lived, there would be no rooms to sit in and indeed no men to sit in them. Being charitable, I suppose it's true that if all mankind were to stop reproducing, there would shortly be no more problems for humanity on account of humanity no longer existing.
- anotherevan 10mo agoIf nothing else, having to go to church every Sunday in my youth taught be to be able to sit still while bored off my brain for an hour a week.
- cm2012 10mo agoMy mom used to say I made her seasick since I would fidget and sway so much when bored in church. I'd also pretend to go to the bathroom just to leave the service to walk around. Memories unlocked!
- mrmuagi 10mo agoEnduring boredom is the antithesis of mindless doomscrolling.
- epistasis 10mo agoI felt that for much of my life. Time without stimulation was, if not scary, at least a bit panic inducing. Learning to sit without stimulation, without any distractions from my worries, led to being able to realize that "hey, I'm OK, I don't even need those worries." Which led to handling the underlying pressures and stresses MUCH better, without panic, without stress, with a full clear mind. I could apply my full intellect to things that before were hard to deal with. It felt like a super power when I first started practicing sitting.
- jdkee 10mo agoThat is because the monkey mind is trying to create a narrative where none exists in the moment.
- abustamam 10mo agoI thought it was too, but when my daughter was born she had trouble regulating her temperature so I had to stay with her while she was under the warmer for an hour, then another hour swaddled in my arms. They didn't allow phones, so I got to spend two hours with her, no distraction. The time passed surprisingly quickly. I sang to her, I told her stories from my head. Nowadays when I'm feeding her or napping her I admittedly do have a phone behind her head, but I'll always cherish those two hours where it was just us two.
- r721 10mo ago>People Prefer Electric Shocks to Being Alone With Their Thoughts https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/07/people-prefer-electric-shocks-to-being-alone-with-their-thoughts/373936/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/07/people-pr...
- j45 10mo agoSolitude and once’s own company once learned is bliss. The mind finds entirely new areas of stimulation when it’s not being distracted or purely having sensory experiences.
- blitzar 10mo agoSounds like the morning standup for most people.
- beAbU 10mo agoTry rawdogging a train ride or short flight, and do nothing but take in the view. You might fool your body into accepting this state by actually doing something, but not really doing something.
- fuzzer371 10mo ago[flagged]
- begueradj 10mo agoWhen you sit in a café, even when you do nothing as the author said, you are still not alone because you are visually (looking at her, for example) and audibly (listening to them, for example) active. Like in any other public space, you are passively interacting with others, hence you are not "sitting alone".
- et-al 10mo ago> Too many negative comments here. This is just someone discovering something new and sharing it very excitedly. Some of the negativity is because many people out there were used to this slower way of living only for capitalist techbros to optimize every waking moment everything and hasten the rat race. So now the only people who can sit idly at a cafe would be those who've already have a few million in the bank. It's similar to the CEO goes to a yoga retreat in Bali (or Burning Man) trope to rediscover being part of society.
- zwnow 10mo agoI have 500€ in my bank account, 3k debt and 30 years of work left ahead of me and I take a lot of idle time in cafes or trains or the park. I don't see the issue. The sooner one realizes that working hard isn't the key to life the sooner one realizes you'll have plenty more time. If you get something out of working hard, like joy, sure go ahead. But dont lie to yourself and think that working hard will actually ever pay off. I do not earn enough to ever afford a house without going into debt for the rest of my life. As long as I can afford a cheap place, one new book a month and a hot shower in the morning I am content with never owning anything. As thats the world all the "hard working" people shoved us into.
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago>I take a lot of idle time in cafes or trains or the park. I don't see the issue. Well, it sounds like you're not american. You have trains to use and clean parks, for one. That's nice. >The sooner one realizes that working hard isn't the key to life the sooner one realizes you'll have plenty more time. We're given decreasingly less choices, sadly. Work hard and cheap or be unable to pay rent and be kicked to the streets. The Social network over here is so broken that many have zero safety net, in terms of both government and community. Let alone a new book and a shower (well, maybe you get a gym subscription. I've heard that as a "life hack" for homeless people).
- zwnow 10mo ago[flagged]
- dmead 10mo ago[flagged]
- analog8374 10mo agoI've done some sitting still and doing nothing. It's a deep subject. There's like a thousand things going on right now and you're reacting to all of them. And that reaction is reality.
- epistasis 10mo agoA cafe near me specializes in pu-erh tea, and has a strict 'no electronic devices' policy. Very conducive to that sort of sitting challenge, or meditative practices in general. When feeling too busy, I always make time to go to a sit at my local Vipassana center, spending an hour sitting actually frees up so much more time in my life that it's well worth it. Gandhi definitely had it right when he said "I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one"
- safety1st 10mo agoStillness isn't only enjoyable (for some), it's incredibly valuable. Stoicism and Buddhism both talk a lot about it and they're not the only ones. I make a point of sitting comfortably and doing nothing with no stimuli for 5-10 minutes every morning. Inevitably when you're still with no distractions, your subconscious starts surfacing various thoughts. There is a random element to what pops into your head, but there will also be patterns. Just sitting there and observing, and maybe asking yourself a few questions about what emerges, is an incredible way to become aware of your emotional state, stay grounded to your goals, and remember what truly matters to you. This exercise frequently reorders my plans for the rest of the day. There's also value in stillness when you're in public or with other people. Just shutting up and taking in your surroundings for 30-60 seconds is kind of like a mini superpower, you start noticing little things that other people don't see. Many of the little decisions you make automatically throughout the day get better if you just, y'know, sit there and think about them quietly for 1 minute. You end up going to a better restaurant, or remembering to call a loved one, because you simply took a moment to just pause and reflect. It's the best thing in the world really. All this mindfulness stuff has profound benefits.
- SoftTalker 10mo agoI do this in the sauna at my gym. 30 minutes with no talking, no phones, no screens. Just your own thoughts, and sweat.
- unsungNovelty 10mo agoAgree. And another way in Hinduism is - mantras. They kind of reset you brain. Saying them kind of helps you observe everything around you with ease. Suddenly, you connect with your body and surroundings. It helps you especially when stressed and anxious situations. I don't know the word in English, but it makes you achieve ekagrutha. My fam says the word is concentration. But not sure if it is the exact translation. And you have the added benefit being to able to pick the god of your choice that resonates with you and recite their mantras.
- j45 10mo agoAdditionally, neuroscience has some interesting visuals on when happens in the brain when you repeatedly have a thought, true or not.
- hanklazard 10mo ago> Too many negative comments here. On this post specifically or HN on the whole? ;)
- foobarbecue 10mo ago> a 30min challenge to sit upright without doing anything in a chair challenge Quakers call this "silent meeting."
- mdnahas 10mo agoFor those that don’t know, the Quakers are like Zen Buddhism met radical Protestant Christians in the 1600s. There is no creed, no minister/priest/leader. We sit together quietly for 60 minutes. If someone feels inspired, they stand up and speak. Then they sit down and the Meeting continues in silence. Some Meetings are silent from start to finish; others have speakers the whole time. While there is no creed, people often speak about truth, equality, peace, and simplicity. I found it when looking for a belief system to pass on to my kids, should I have some. If you’re curious, try it some Sunday. It’s an interesting experience.
- tkgally 10mo ago> Too many negative comments here. I wonder if the author’s use of “you” rubbed some people the wrong way: “You are alone and powerless. You encounter a deep challenge,” “When you let your thoughts wander, they take you on a journey you’ll never think possible,” etc. The pronoun seems intended to refer to the author’s own experiences, but I can see why some readers might think it refers to them. I had a bit of a negative reaction to those “you”s myself, as I experience cafés very differently from the author. I have a similar negative reaction to op-ed articles that use “we” to refer to some sort of personified zeitgeist. From some essays currently appearing in the Opinion section of the New York Times: “We are all in a constant state of grief, even though we don’t always admit it.” “But we spend much of our lives in weaker friendship markets, where people are open to conversation, but not connection.” “Over the past six decades or so, we chose autonomy, and as a result, we have been on a collective journey from autonomy to achievement to anxiety.”
- cik 10mo agoWithout knowing the author, I wonder if that's a natural construct in their native language. As I've moved from Canada, I find myself consciously having to check to see if I've written "I", or "one", given that my local language, places a preferred conjugation in the you imperative.
- nicbou 10mo agoCoincidentally, Quebec uses "we" a lot in their ads, especially as a way to say "this is how things ought to be done". For example, "this December, we vote". German also has "man" which almost directly translates to "one" (the pronoun).
- kqr 10mo agoSwedish also has the "man" and I hate when people use it to project feelings or experiences on me that I don't have. I know for some people it's just how they speak – instead of saying "I get the urge to scream" they say "one gets the urge to scream" and they mean themselves only. But my computer-diseased brain interprets it literally and I get the urge to contradict them and say, "No, I don't!"
- j45 10mo agoSolitude and stillness unlocks a completely different side of creativity and insight. Too many folks scroll right past the opportunities.
- Fnoord 10mo agoThanks for the perspective. I was looking for it in the comments. The thing with a café is. OK, it exists. But it just isn't for me. I like being on my own, and you don't go to a public place for that. I got coffee at home (not as good as in a half decent café). If I really do need coffee on the go it is while travelling, and then I don't sit inside (no, not on a crowdy terrace either). I could write you a post about the the unbearable joy of listening to hypnotic music while on a train or bus ride. I could write a post about sitting stoned in a squat with everyone going to bed slowly but surely, and this girl still playing her guitar smiling friendly at me, and eventually guiding me to a place where I could sleep. Cause at this point, I had no clue where to go. But in the end, it boils down to mindfulness and meditation.
- publicdebates 10mo agoI wonder how many of them have read xkcd's Ten Thousand.