Evaluating meditation: 20 days x 15 min

Intro

It's weirdly hard to appreciate

. A big part of me is convinced about its gains, another can easily skip it. After years of meditating, I still find parts of me confused:

What might this not-doing offer that doing does not?

I also think gains from meditation are visible after two-three weeks of sustained practice and because of

Normalcy bias

are easy to miss.

Steps 1 and 3 are optional, but I believe including them is beneficial as they offer a comparison between two states, helping to counteract flawed memory,

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My-side bias

and
Confirmation bias

Step 1

On day one, write a short self-evaluation to compare it after the process. Take these aspects and score them from one to ten.

a) Low-Anxiety – how much anxiety you feel in your life

b) Clarity – Do you feel clarity? Self-wisdom? What are your complex problem-solving skills?

c) Focus – How focused do you feel? How patient you are? How much are you lured by immediate gratification?

d) Harmony – How much peace, acceptance and harmony is there in your life?

Take each point from the previous themes and provide examples from your experiences in the past two weeks or so. I guarantee you that you will forget your current state in twenty days. Feel free to list both small and significant examples related to each topic. You can choose to create a stream of consciousness or record a voice memo for each theme.

Step 2

2. For 20 days do at least 15 minutes of meditation every day. (You don't need to know more than: Sit and try to stay in the present moment as much as possible. Know that everybody fails at not-thinking. When you notice that you are thinking just come back to the present moment. You may read more in:

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Meditation

)

Step 3

On the day 20th take ten minutes, read the previous notes. And create a quick evaluation. Consider the following themes:

a) Low-anxiety – lowering both mild and deep-seated anxieties

b) Clarity – enhancing wisdom and improving complex problem-solving

c) Focus – Increasing focus, patience and reducing the lure of immediate gratification

d) Harmony – experiencing feelings of harmony, peace and acceptance

and evaluate your state from the last couple of days using the following scale:

0 – no change

1 – tiny improvement

2 – improvement

3 – very strong improvement

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My findings

I did two tests

Evaluating meditation: 20 days x 15 min

and saw clear gains described here. I recommend 15 min session. I also think 10 min sessions will be fine and potentially transformational. 20 min may be optimal, however people without previous meditation may experience them as too long to go through.

@November 28, 2023 Currently, I did a third test and scored myself, my mom, and my friend Karolina this is how I asses the improvements: a – 1.75; b – 2.25; c – 1.5; d – 1.25;

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