Happiness: 10 Years of Day-on-Day Obsession
The man behind the app, Headspace, that I’ll listen to 365 times this year, is Andy Puddicombe. Until recently I hadn’t realized he did a classic 10-minute Ted Talk back in 2012. Take a moment to watch it!
Tiled repetition soothes, doesn’t it?
For five days in a row, mostly in the second half of the afternoon, I’ve plonked myself in this chair or that, and done my 10 minutes of meditation using the superb Headspace app. I managed a greater number of days in a row a couple of times last year, but this time is different. I feel committed and that spirit of involvement finds me looking forward to my 360 seconds of stillness. If the next 360 Headspace experiences is as good as my first five, I’ve stumbled onto something most enjoyable.
As part of 2018’s Stillness Big Year, I’ll flail around the topics of meditation, peacefulness, “mindfulness,” and calmness. Nothing systematic, just keeping my antennae raised because I’m spending ten minutes daily on Headspace.
Hurry Slowly is Jocelyn Glei’s just-launched podcast “about how you can be more productive, creative, and resilient through the simple act of slowing down.” I’m type A/C, alternatively manic and torpid, always fussing over whether to work too hard or to creatively laze around, so I’ll tune in.
The first episode is an interview with Jason Fried, an astute software company head who, for one thing, keeps his company’s working hours to 40 (32 in summer!). For me, where I am right now, the take home message is my power to allocate my own time in many different ways. Don’t let others take time from you, that’s another idea (not a new one but innovatively and vigorously expressed and implemented). Check it out, I’m sure you’ll find something useful.
Is it ridiculous to obsess for 10 minutes a day? In this case, no. Over various periods, I have enjoyed the marvellous Headspace meditation app, but I’ve never stuck at it. Something in me resists all the entreaties about mindfulness – I like my restless brain – but I recognize the need to find some peace in every packed 2018 day. So I’m going to listen to the app, 10 minutes is all it takes, every day of the year. I can cart it with me even when on the road, so there is no reason (other than my inconstancy) why I should miss a day.
I’m calling this Stillness, around the notion of finding quiet and peace and repose amidst the storm of life, and I’ll use the Stillness Big Year as an excuse to ponder the role and efficacy of meditation.
I can’t wait for 2018! So much is going on in the lives of me and my family and friends. For the third Big Year (I’m turning 63 next year) in my Big Decade, I’ll swing at four obsessions. They range from all-consuming to “should be simple to fit in.” Not all details are settled yet but here’s 2018’s framework (beyond the joy of life itself):
The nuclear power history book is still my albatross. After a maddeningly ineffective 2017 attempt to frame my writing push, in 2018 I focus on process and output. For each day in 43 weeks*, I draft 1,000 words (4 pages); draft uninterrupted between 5 AM and noon; ban morning Facebook and emails; micro plan, monitor & review.
You’ll note none of the “finish this or that by such-and-such date” project plans I’ve issued over the last two years and then clawed back. That doesn’t mean I won’t plan. I will and I’ll publicize in order to increase my accountability.
Huh, you say? The working title for the book is Reactor but you don’t suck the life out of a title by using it all year. Hence Tractor, rhymes with Reactor? For each day in 43 weeks, I spend an afternoon hour researching, planning, readying for, and executing publication of Reactor.
In 2016 I jogged a lot. This year I’ve tackled “fitness” by introducing cycling and arriving at an “exercise daily” regimen that works. Next year I’ll still exercise daily but at slightly lower intensity, plus I’ll address alcohol, diet, and insomnia.
“Freshness” is code for wellness, energy, and vigor. Note that 2018 can’t be the year to cycle huge distances, to do much tough or long-distance hiking (with one notable exception), to race, or to speed up. Instead I’m setting artificially strict regulations for 52 or 43 or 39 weeks (depending on which rule). I’m sure you’ll be amused at this quirky list:
“Stillness” is code for mindfulness, meditation, peacefulness, etc., etc. I could have called this the Headspace Big Year, but Headspace is a commercial product. I commit to spending 10 minutes each and every day following guided meditation according to the Headspace app.
Doing four Big Years flirts with overstretching but I believe I’ve structured the obsessions suitably. One big year, the most important one, carries a massive time commitment. Two of the four require an hour or two a day. The final one only takes ten minutes a day.
I’m now deep into practice for each of 2018’s four challenges, so that I can leap out of the gates on January 1.
2018 is bound to be a fascinating twelve months. I’ll do my best to make sure it’s also joyous, effective, and balanced.
* Travel and family commitments mean that, depending on which Big Year is involved, 2018 is 52 weeks or 43 weeks or 39 weeks.
This year one of my Big Years involved only three quarters of an hour each and every day, namely listening to an album. What impressed me was that squeezing in a daily activity of this short duration proved very practical. And it brought with it a healthy sense of discipline, perhaps even imbued with a hue of devotion.
Why not take this further? Is there something else I should be doing, or yearn to do, that need only take ten minutes a day?
But that would be trivial, I hear you scoff. Why bother? Well, when I say the Rock Music Year was “practical,” it certainly wasn’t “trivial.” I still had to consciously plan to insert the activity into the cacophony of life and work. We all have things we’d love to do, things that seem simplistic, but that we never seem to fit in.
Okay, I hear myself chuckling, let’s give the idea a spin in 2018.
Photo by Agê Barros on Unsplash