tl;dr

Know what you want to do, but you don't actually do it? Try meditation.

What meditation is

Sit quietly for 5 - 20 minutes (or more) and pay attention to your breathing. That's it. It sounds stupid. You just sit there and think about how fast and how deep you are breathing. Inevitably, you'll make one of two mistakes.

  • You'll take over your breathing. You'll think to hard, and you're driving your breathing rather than pay attention to what your body is doing. Stop that, and go back to just paying attention.
  • You'll start thinking about other stuff. Bills to pay, old girlfriends, worrying about retirement, one great weekend 5 years ago. Stop that, and go back to just paying attention.

This sounds dumb.

Yeah, it does. If you're the kind of guy that gets sidetracked, i sure am, it teaches you to pay the fuck attention to what you're doing. Sitting at work? Dicking around on reddit? Stop doing that and get back to work.

The idea is, your mind starts to notice when you're not doing what you want to be doing. It's easy to distract yourself for hours just screwing around on the internet, or playing video games or whatever. Meditation gives you tools to recognize you're fucking around. Then you get to make a choice. Go back to what you want, or keep fucking around. There's nothing wrong with fucking around if that's really what you want out of life, but this gives you the chance to reevaluate, reassess and make a choice about how you want to live. Stop losing half a day to mindless bullshit.

Some examples

  • Mid workout, you remember you need to buy eggs when you go to the grocery store. You go off on this mental tangent thinking about grocery shopping and a cute girl you saw there. You're working out on autopilot. You suddenly notice you're not paying attention to form. You choose to draw your attention back. You notice a drop of sweat rolling down the back of your knee, tighten up your form and think about your workout. Nothing else.

  • You're at work, an email pops up. New project that will cause a ton of work, but not for a few weeks. You can freak out about how next month is going to suck, or realize that's off in the future. All you have to worry about is this moment right now. Take your attention back to what you're doing right now, and kick ass. Do what you need to do RIGHT NOW.

Be in the moment

Whatever you choose to do, do it all the way. Playing World of Warcraft? Fine. don't mindlessly grind out your dailies. Pay attention to every pixel. Make sure your toolbar is perfect for what you're doing right now. Lifting? Fine. Don't mindlessly stack the same weight on the bar you've been pushing for weeks. pay attention to every detail of the weight on the bar. Focus your whole mind on pushing that bar up, as hard as you can, with perfect form.

No matter what you do, you'll do it better.

Meditation helps keep you off of autopilot. You get distracted, your mind notices WTF? Pay attention to what you're doing.

How to get started

I took a class. There are a bunch. Mine was Zen meditation. I'm sure there are books, websites and a million resources. You're a smart guy, figure it out.

Lessons learned

I suck less. I still get distracted screwing around on the internet, but i notice. I get to make a choice about how i'm spending my life. Sometimes that choice is "fuck it" and i keep screwing around. More often, I do something I need to do. Life is getting better.