Comment by unsungNovelty
3 days 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. :)
Stillness 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.
A great exercise while being still is to put your attention to various parts of your body: what does the air smell like? What do you hear? How does the chair under your butt and the ground under your feet feel like? Try not to think too much, let the thoughts come and go like cars on a motorway, but observe closely in and around you.
My ADHD brain recoils at the thought of this, which probably means I would benefit even more from doing so.
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Agree. 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.
Additionally, neuroscience has some interesting visuals on when happens in the brain when you repeatedly have a thought, true or not.
I do this in the sauna at my gym. 30 minutes with no talking, no phones, no screens. Just your own thoughts, and sweat.
Far more effective for me personally is walking. No headphones, somewhere fairly quiet.
Walking in green spaces, specifically, has been shown to have positive effects on one's wellbeing. I personally have always noticed a difference.
There's an argument to be made that what alcohol achieves, and what meditation aims to achieve (and often fails) is the same thing: disengaging the prefrontal cortex. Once our basic needs are met, our higher brain functions can become an impediment to happiness, since they have neither a shut off switch nor a goal threshold -- it is insatiable, and will continue to analyze threats and manufacture problems to solve.
I am not sure I would consider those two things substitutable goods but I do advocate for social recreational use of alcohol for this reason, and at a certain point in life a creed along the lines of "if you don't practice mindfulness, go drink" probably moved me a lot farther forward than most people would give it credit for.
It’s always a personal choice, but I wouldn’t equate the two in any way because alcohol is a neurotoxin, carcinogen and doesn’t scale or compound the more it’s practiced.
It doesn’t mean I might not have a drink, but I’m aware it’s triggers a “get the poison out” response from my body.
Disengaging the prefrontal cortex is one thing, lowering the inhibitions and increasing emotional volatility in the rest of the brain is hugely different.
Those things can vary between people.
Understanding we chan shift our default mode network is critical.
Meditation actually increased the connection between areas like the amygdala and prefrontal cortex allowing you to have greater calm, focus while at peace minus the racing thoughts and emotions.
Having an overdeveloped amygdala is fairly common resulting in an under developed prefrontal cortex.
Luckily neuroscience is showing the past few years that neuroplasticity is available to everyone to continue improving for their entire life.
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> 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.”
Oh, this one is difficult. I vacillated a lot in my early writing between I, we, and you.
Too many "I" sounds self-fixated and irrelevant for the reader. "You" is way too presumptive, unless addressing a specific person or specific group with actual evidence. "We" can also read as too presumptive, but I feel like it works in the case of processes the reader could volunteer to be part of. However, it must not be used to project emotions or experiences onto the reader.
For now, I've personally settled on "we" for most things (because the reader could hypothetically choose to follow along actively), but switching into "I" if I need to discuss something negative or a failing of my own. In other words, I would never project "a constant state of grief" on my readers – that I can only attribute to myself.
When I refer to something that cannot be experienced by myself, only by my readership (e.g. because it happens only to people who do not know where the article is going), I prefer "the reader" over "you", because while it might be true for the median reader, it might not be true for each and every individual reading.
I'm glad someone else also cares about this! I don't find it discussed very much.
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Here's a decent example of what I mean: https://entropicthoughts.com/packaging-perl-and-shell-for-ni...
(1) It starts out with "I" having trouble packaging – my readers are generally more intelligent and experienced than I am, so I won't assume they have the same trouble.
(2) Then we go into my experience, but phrased in a way where the reader could hypothetically follow along. Thus, I ask the reader to imagine "we" have a Perl script.
(3) Somewhere in the middle, the article refers to something that might be noticed by "the very attentive reader". I do not expect everyone to, not even the median reader, but I realise some readers might.
(4) The appendix contains a note in case "you" are very curious, because here I do address each and every reader individually.
Technical writing should be third person passive, so forget all those pesky pronouns.
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Without 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.
Coincidentally, 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).
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Personally I found the writing style unpleasant, because people on LinkedIn write the same way. I associate it to a specific kind of low-value content.
In this case, the use of "we" is also funny, because the opening sentence is such an unusual take.
A 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"
Trying to sit still for 30 min without any stimulation at all (no talking, watching, reading) sounds like torture to me.
It 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.
> 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).
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People talk about this with exercise and I’ve never understood it. As someone who has exercised continuously for years - it has never gotten better.
Which, to me, makes sense because you’re supposed to always be pushing yourself. You’re not supposed to ever feel comfortable or feel better from it. You should always feel shitty because if it doesn’t hurt then you’re probably not making optimal development.
The only thing I ever “feel” good about is purely a mental thing. Eg I hit a new PR (progress), didn’t skip a lift (perseverance), or whatever. The act of exercising itself is always painful and it’s why I always dread it.
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I end up being consumed by depressive thoughts and lots of body scanning. I hate it.
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So… 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.
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Part 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.
This reminds me: I experience a similar "welcome escape" sensation when I'm hospitalized. My work responsibilities are manifold and tend to intrude into my thoughts even when I'm at leisure. But when I'm in the hospital, there seem to be some sort of physical and psychological clean break. Hard to describe.
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I was a subject in an fMRI study when I was in college and I found the experience quite tranquil (although this was before smartphones). The hum of the machine was kind of calming. I felt I probably would have fallen asleep if not for the sense of responsibility required to pay attention to the task.
I 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?
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Doing something where you get to say "bugger everything" and just do what you're doing for a while is amazing. It's one of the things I actually like about the (otherwise not very relaxing) ultra-distance racing.
2-6 days of just riding your bike, eating, sleeping outside. Yeah it can be hard but nothing makes the MS Teams chime in the woods.
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I had a very different experience with my last MRI. I had brain slices (temporal lobe Epilepsy) and my head buzzed/vibrated and could not relax.
Fascinating. 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.
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What keeps me from going claustrophobic inside an MRI is the sound. It is very loud, yes, but at least I have that to focus on.
I 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?
You'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.
> 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.
How long has your barber been cutting hair?
I enjoy the sensations at the barber very much.
"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.
Me too. I heard this phrase at maybe too young and age and took it completely literally, so it clouds my judgement of it a bit, but I still cannot shake the view that it is 100% on the money. The brain wants to "solve" your issues, ideas, hang-ups, anxieties, ("solve" because sometimes having no solution is the solution and that is valid) it just needs us to give it the space to meander through it. But we keep finding more and more novel ways to interfere and stop it from doing that most noblest of things.
As a related aside, that's why I continue to find it odd that many people take their phones when they're using the bathroom. Just further limiting the few places (with the shower being #1) where circumstances does force your brain to review and assess like it clearly wants to do.
Reminds 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-...
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I 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.
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It 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.)
>"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.
Try 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.
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I 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.
It 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.
You 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.
>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.
Pre-smart phone era I would bring a book on the bus or sleep.
Then 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.
If 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.
My 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!
I 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.
Some people just call this "meditation".
Not if you freely engage in rumination. Meditation is not just sitting with your thoughts.
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My therapist used to say: this means you must do it for 40 minutes
Meditate for 30 minutes every morning. If you don't have time, meditate for 60 minutes.
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Id find that annoying and find a new therapist
>People Prefer Electric Shocks to Being Alone With Their Thoughts
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/07/people-pr...
Try 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.
When 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.
I have tried sensory deprivation tanks a few times and always fall asleep within 5 min, like clockwork.
Sounds like meditation to me.
It's meditation, but on the internet!
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Solitude 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.
That is because the monkey mind is trying to create a narrative where none exists in the moment.
Enduring boredom is the antithesis of mindless doomscrolling.
Sounds like the morning standup for most people.
Thanks 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.
I'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.
Solitude and stillness unlocks a completely different side of creativity and insight.
Too many folks scroll right past the opportunities.
When 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".
> a 30min challenge to sit upright without doing anything in a chair challenge
Quakers call this "silent meeting."
For 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.
> Too many negative comments here.
On this post specifically or HN on the whole? ;)
I wonder how many of them have read xkcd's Ten Thousand.
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> 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.
I 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.
>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).
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You don't see the issue because you're not squeezed yet.
Imagine there are no more cheap places to rent anymore and American work culture invades Europe. Shops are no longer closed on Sunday, you're expected to be on call on weekends, and you have a paltry 14 days of vacation for the year.
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Sitting with your own thoughts is privileged now? Interesting. I'll keep this in mind until there is seven digits in my bank account.
Where do you live? I've travelled quite a bit and cafes and pubs are constantly filled with regular folks enjoying an idle moment. Why would so many cafes exist if only that tiny demographic patronised them?
Capitalist techbros didn't force anyone to do anything. You need to take responsibility for your own life.