Re-starting the chain

I try to meditate every day. Sometimes I don’t. The other day I had reasons for why it just didn’t happen, and I broke a 90 day streak.

I’m supposed to feel bad, right? That’s what a lot of people tell you — That if something is important to you and you don’t do it every day, without fail, then maybe it’s not actually important to you and you’re bad at it.

But look at what one missed day really means.

Here’s one week.

You see the missing day, and that 1/7 (or 14%) looks meaningful.

It’s not a majority. It’s not even a plurality of my week.

But it looks like something to take note of.

Until you look at the view from one month and three months back.

At one month, it looks like a big dip. Remember how I said I had a 90 day chain going?

Now pull back to three months, and you can barely tell where the dip is. It’s just one small curve on a fairly smooth line.

Then look at six months of records.

That dip furthest to the right? That’s the missing day.

It’s nowhere near the biggest dip on this chart. It’s not significant in any real way.

Now look at a full year of keeping track of my meditation:

That single missed day? That’s nothing. Barely worth noticing.

Thinking back to how even the best professional baseball players have “low” batting averages, this looks like further evidence toward the point that there’s value in being gentle to yourself and setting realistic expectations.

Discipline for the sake of discipline isn’t a virtue.

A single bad day or bad portion of a day comes out in the wash.

Executing on the purpose of the habit can be just as meaningful on executing on the habit itself. I don’t meditate to unlock a trophy in my meditation app. I do it because it helps ground me, and it’s part of how I do the work of surviving with depression. The product of the habit is a better version of me.

There’s a world of difference between giving up on a habit and its benefits versus letting go of the compulsion to keep up a habit at any cost when you have a need to give yourself space for other things.

It’s part of why I like James Clear’s take on missing days from a habit:

Whenever this happens to me, I try to remind myself of a simple rule: never miss twice.

The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.

Atomic Habits

I try to remind myself to always be willing to chuck out what I’ve written, but not refer to my writing as garbage.

Deleting something removes it from view, but it doesn’t erase the work I did or what I learned from it.

Allowing for a little mess

Button hit an independent streak a little earlier than Sprout did. He refuses to be fed.

And he refuses to be coached on how to use forks or spoons.

How’s that going? He’s getting more frequent baths.

But there is the benefit of eating our own meals without having to grow an extra arm to feed him.

If he would let us feed him, it wouldn’t be as messy. But he can do it himself. Pretty much.

I try to remind myself that giving up control isn’t always a terrible idea. Just because I can do something better doesn’t mean I need to be the one to do it.

And it’s a good reminder about not demanding perfection from someone who’s learning. He may have some difficulty with it all, but he gets a little better with every meal.

Calculating Intention Debt

I’d love a to-do list app that totals up the estimated time for the tasks I have planned for the day so I know if I’m overextending myself. Even better: It tracks my time and suggests better estimates based on previous work.

I’d like a podcast app that tallies how much listening I’ve committed to with the episodes I’ve downloaded. Or to have streaming services tell me, based on the data they have about my viewing habits, how long it will take me to watch everything in my queue.

Or a toolbar widget in my browser that calculates how long it would take to read my open tabs. A Read Later app that shows the estimated reading time for my saved articles.

Tools like this would make it easier to stop creating Intention Debt, that long list of things that I think I’ll get to, but that just creates digital clutter.

A Netflix queue that you only sometimes see in the app isn’t the same as a stack of unread books on a table. One is tangible and the other can be ignored with a quick tap or click.

Knowing where I’m setting the finish line could be helpful. A concrete number could change my decisions about how to spend time in ways a vague sense of “I don’t have the bandwidth for this” won’t.

I woke up feeling congested. When I sat down to meditate, my nostril whistled like a kettle begging for attention.

I sat with it for a minute, thinking about Pema Chödrön’s words on removing discomfort:

“Scrambling for security has never brought anything but momentary joy. It’s like changing the position of our legs in meditation. Our legs hurt from sitting cross-legged, so we move them. And then we feel, “Phew! What a relief!” But two and a half minutes later, we want to move them again. We keep moving around seeking pleasure, seeking comfort, and the satisfaction that we get is very short-lived.”
― Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart

I tried to focus on the air getting through instead of the force required; the air in my lungs and not the blockage in my nostril.

Then I asked the question: “How is blowing my nose not the dharma?” How is removing this impediment any different than labeling a thought as “thinking” and letting it pass?

I got up, blew my nose, and sat back on the cushion.

I’m not sure if it was the correct response, but I made the decision and moved on.

And isn’t a point of mindful attention to not dwell on things, but to try and see them as they are?

Sometimes a booger is an invitation to practice patience, and sometimes it’s snot.