131–140 of 263 posts
I'm lucky enough to not notice my tinnitus except when I try to do nothing.
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> In "Four thousand weeks" by Oliver Burkeman, he breaks down that this obsession with action Great book, but I have pinned down my obsession with action to my daily single cup of coffee habit. The idea of relaxation doesn't exist. When I sit down, it takes a minute before my brain desperately tries to find something to do. Guilt soon overcomes me. Even in the extreme anhedonia of the first days of caffeine withdrawa…
The trick is to wait until you get a terrible flu. You won’t feel like coffee, because you feel terrible. You won’t notice the withdrawal symptoms, because the flu symptoms are the same but much worse. Caffeine withdrawal takes only a week or so, so by the time the flu is gone, the addiction is as well. Just (“just”) remember to not get that habitual cup of morning coffee on the first day you feel kinda OK again, tha…
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I’m not sure where this idea came from that farming was idle and only industry required constant work. Every hundred-year old book I’ve ever read that features farming includes themes of how the farmer’s work never ends and runs from dawn to dusk.
There's a lot to do on a farm, yet no farmer is expected to be working a full 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, at moderate intensity. No farmer has to do something within the next hour or their boss shouts at them. No farmer has to feel bad, or need to catch up, if they have to take a day off unless it's planting season. No farmer has any qualm about ending a day early because they've done all they planned to do. No f…
In "Four thousand weeks" by Oliver Burkeman, he breaks down that this obsession with action stems to the industrial revolution when it was decided that workers should sell their time for a living. Before that we used to have task-oriented jobs, like milking the cows, which you cant do more than once in a while, or harvest the fields, which you can't do until it's ripe. In general humans are more evolved to this kind…
I think it’s way older than that. Evolution is all about adaptation and survival. When thick armour and large sharp teeth get replaced by soft skin and abstract thinking, anticipating danger and mitigating it and preparing for it becomes a full time job of every waking hour. Everything else is luxury and almost an act of mini-suicide
For most of humanity's history, these tasks weren't so labor-intensive. So, evolutionarily, perception of these tasks evolved as a form of relaxation, not a job.
It is like you have a full time job of every waking hour, but that job on 80% consist of scrolling tik-tok, hanging out with friends and playing sports
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I’ve been contemplating giving up coffee for two years, sometimes wanting to switch to green tea alone, for the reasons you articulated. Hasn’t happened except for brief stretches, and I’ll mark my coffee free era as one of sustainable effort.
I'm kinda doing a self-experiment right now with coffee dosages, using how scatter-brained I feel during meditation as indicator. It's amazing how productive I believe I am when I drink coffee, yet my attention is all over the place and I think a lot of that feeling of productivity is placebo and/or chemically induced euphoria. Next I want to try tea to compare. One thing's for sure: I used to meditate best, for long…
One of the most concise and to-the-point explanations of meditation I've ever seen. One thought I had while reading it: isn't trying to get more comfortable with doing nothing just another thing to do? isn't it another form of changing what already is? EDIT: I'm advocating and practicing mindfulness but I always have this thought on the background and it's a real dilemma. Any thoughts?
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The trick is to wait until you get a terrible flu. You won’t feel like coffee, because you feel terrible. You won’t notice the withdrawal symptoms, because the flu symptoms are the same but much worse. Caffeine withdrawal takes only a week or so, so by the time the flu is gone, the addiction is as well. Just (“just”) remember to not get that habitual cup of morning coffee on the first day you feel kinda OK again, tha…
Yes, I know it's not that hard, but lately I've been going through a period of low mood, and I really cannot stomach the idea of diving deeper into the Abyss for a couple weeks while my receptors downregulate. It's hard enough already as it is.
The reason you can't is because in this sentence, you are saying you can't (or won't).
One of the most concise and to-the-point explanations of meditation I've ever seen. One thought I had while reading it: isn't trying to get more comfortable with doing nothing just another thing to do? isn't it another form of changing what already is? EDIT: I'm advocating and practicing mindfulness but I always have this thought on the background and it's a real dilemma. Any thoughts?
One of the most concise and to-the-point explanations of meditation I've ever seen. One thought I had while reading it: isn't trying to get more comfortable with doing nothing just another thing to do? isn't it another form of changing what already is? EDIT: I'm advocating and practicing mindfulness but I always have this thought on the background and it's a real dilemma. Any thoughts?
Yes? Like trying hard to get into that state of meditation. Then you notice that you're getting tense and stressed about it not working, realize that this is not helpful, get angry at yourself for doing it wrong, try harder to do it right this time, etc. It's my favourite puzzle about meditation. You have to approach it sideways, but if you really try that it won't work. So you try hard not to that instead, which won…
None of those things are doing meditation wrong, they're just things minds do. The mistake is in focusing on them instead of focusing on the process generating the changes.