To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved

In my experience, the feelings that arise leading up to the practice time were exactly the feelings that arise leading to procrastination. One day, I found myself putzing around, avoiding the cushion, and knew that the practice has already started.

What worked for me were a number of small things:

(1) Dedicating a space for practice. When I first started, I dropped a cushion right next to my bed so I would trip over it when I woke up and trip over it when I slept. Formally dedicating a space, even if it is a small corner, helps a lot when you are first trying to establish a discipline.

(2) Dedicating a time. When I first started out, I was a night owl. I still am; but a lot of the night owl thing comes from -- you guessed it -- procrastinating on sleep. So I formally dedicated the time right before bed for practice; that, no matter how late, how tired, how fuzzy I was, I was going to sit before I crawled into bed. (A year or two in, I naturally shifted to a morning practice; by then, I feel off if I didn't practice something each day).

(3) Gamification worked well for me, though beware going to the extreme. Eventually, one of the things you start stripping away from your mind is responding to the reward/punishment triggers. I used a streak calendar. I took page from Kickstarter. I knew that I have a tendency to go overboard in excitement and then try to do as much the next day, fail, feel ashamed/guilty about failing, and the dropping off from the practice. So I would have three levels of practice:

The nominal practice time. In the beginning that was 5 minutes. I might not be able to do 10, or 20, but how hard it is to do "just" 5 minutes right before bed?

Stretch goals: if I went further, I'd consider it a stretch goal. Completely optional. In other words, the next day, the practice goal still resets to my nominal goal. If it happens I reach that stretch goal, then that's ok, but it's ok if I didn't. (If you practice correctly, you would know that there are a lot of things that arises from waiting to achieve stretch goals -- anxiety, shame, guilt, etc. the usual suspects).

Token effort: over time (months), I started ratcheting up my nominal practice to longer and longer lengths of time. I tend to do it when I'm regularly hitting stretch goals effortlessly. However, I left room to be lazy. I allowed myself a "token effort", the absolute minimum I can do. It's set around 5 minutes. (These days, "token effort" has more to do with the quality of my mindfulness rather than length of time). I knew early on that, just like stretch goals, some days ... my mind is tricking me into persuading me into skipping for the day, and I counter with "well, why not just do a token effort". Then when I do it, end up going past the token effort and it turns into a regular sit length.

(4) Other side of gamification -- social cues. (Ever read a book called "The Talent Code"? If Malcolm Gladwell popularized the notion of "10,000" hours of practice, "The Talent Code" speaks about how to get there). In the Buddhist tradition, this would be the sangha, that is, fellow like-minded people also on this journey, although they might not be traveling the same path. Opensit.com is a great example. You log your time there and people help each other stay with the sit, as well as comment on when difficulties start arising.

If you seriously want to establish a practice, my suggestion is to start at the basic: just getting yourself on the cushion consistently every day. Focus on the process, not the results. No one will ever give you a gold star for attaining enlightenment (seriously, no one will give you a gold star for attaining enlightenment). There are interesting states you can reach in meditation, but if you cling to those states and you're not aware that you are clinging to those states, you're not really practicing impeccably, are you? (You could also cling to the process, turn it into an empty ritual, but for most people, the issue usually lies in getting started).

Hope that helps.

Emotion is a constant stream of something real that emerges from within. We proceed to express them with thought, dance, music, etc. Without them we would have very little to express or digest. Most thought and contemplation can be traced to an emotion that we had or that isn't going away. eg. Hunger begs for the experience of ingestion and we naturally obsess about obtaining food while we are hungry. But reasoning with hunger doesn't work, etc etc. just some food for thought ;)

I've found that most of the time, people don't want to know what you are feeling. They want to know that you are feeling what they are feeling. The most crudest form of that is mirroring techniques, but that's actually not necessary and can be detrimental. It's a bandaid because the person is ignorant or unskilled in healing.

There is a Sanskrit word called "dukkha" that doesn't have an easy English cognate. The closest would be "existential anguish", something that lies underneath every single experience.

There is a particular way of opening yourself up to someone else's dukkha that I've found extremely effective. It's at that point, you forget about yourself ("this isn't about you"), and you drop all your psychological armoring, shielding, interpretations, etc. When I am mindful enough to remember to do that, people tend to walk away feeling better, even if I never say anything. Just listen.

Being able to do that requires meditation, and you first start with observing emotions as they come and go. It does not end there. At some point, you directly experience the insight that your self is an illusion, that this existential misery underlies everything and you cannot escape, and that the ground of being is emptiness. It's at that point you can listen to the dukkha.