I made it! 200 days of daily meditation – starting at 10 minutes a day and now up to 20 minutes a day, every day. It’s become a part of the morning agenda in a very concrete way. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a difference struggle with it every day – I’m as blessed as anyone else with a monkey mind that jumps around all over the place. There have been plenty of days where 20 minutes of meditation feels like an hour, and others where it blasts past in but a moment, and still more where I’ve felt like that 20 minutes of my life is gone never to be recovered.
I do however find a certain peace in completing it each day – and that’s my only expectation of myself, that I get it done every day without fail. So far so good and I haven’t come close to missing it. The mechanics of the meditations – they are guided after all using the “Headspace” application, are interesting and putting them in to practice as been tricky. Stepping back from general life and being aware of how you feel and what you’re thinking is as hard as it sounds. There are days I have exactly 0% chance of making this work, so I just have to go with it. These are usually the days I’m so busy that there isn’t much chance for any kind of thinking to be done.
There is a major uptick though – my productivity, which has been impacted by several factors – has increased significantly. Back to 4 days a week there for a while and I was outputting at rate slightly higher than a 5-day week. This isn’t sustainable into a 5-day week (i.e. working at over 120% of my usual level) but it did mean that I was less distractible and more focused on what had to get done. I was working (in particular) on ISO27001 certification for the company I work for – which is a demanding exercise at the best of times, and made more so with the additional requirement of addressing over 600 extra controls helpfully supplied by the Australian Government. I completed far more of this work than I thought I would and the focus I bring to this work I attribute to the meditation practice. The outcome therefore of my 200 days of meditation has been quite positive.
I’m aiming for 300 now. Let’s see if I can get there!
Angus' Blog 