My life feels like a giant Marvel movie right now, there are so many interconnected things happening simultaneously and the more I pay attention the more I realize how dependent each one is on another. It’s like a compounding effect on massive scale.
During Covid my productivity dropped significantly, so I started looking up how others are managing and learn a thing or two, but oh boy it was a deep rabbit hole I was getting myself into. In the beginning it was quite benign like best note taking, calender and organization apps, some suggested using physical notebooks over digital tools, writing at nights, taking regular breaks etc. And then I started venturing into “bio-hacking”. Prominently sourcing my knowledge from active professors and researchers from elite university like Cal Newport, Lex Fridman, Andrew Huberman, Timothy Ferriss and recently Bryan Johnson. A common theme amongst all of them was emphasis on meditation or adjacent activities like Yog Nidra.
So to recap, I wanted to listen Music and it pretty much required me to be in a meditative state of mind; I was frustrated with the nuance of life and the answer was Dharma, which needs meditation to discover it; I was also trying to understand love and that needed meditation to bring back my heart’s sincerity and devotion; and I now needed to focus on work and surprise surprise… this needs meditation too! All roads do indeed lead to Rome.
Now I have been practicing meditation on and off since I was a kid, because in Sikhi meditation is highest form of sewa, and lot of my family members have been practicing it for their whole lives basically. But just meditating randomly is very different from doing it correctly. The same way going to the gym just doesn’t make you fitter, you need a proper plan, training and most importantly a coach.
I often see people talking about the negative effects of Meditation, some even reaching worse mental states than what they began with. This is definitely true, and has been very well documented in lot of religious texts for thousands of years by now. Some practices, like Ashtang Yog, go far as completely prohibiting beginners from even attempting it.
To me it seems very disingenuous to use meditation for simply improving your work productivity. This is akin to training for a 1000Kg squat when all you wanted was to climb a flight of stairs without huffing. Sure, you will be able to climb stair easily if you can lift 1000Kg, but was it worth really all that risk? Could have easily reached the same goal if you just skipped rope for 15 minutes every day.
ਸਰਬ ਰੋਗ ਕਾ ਅਉਖਦੁ ਨਾਮੁ ॥ ਕਲਿਆਣ ਰੂਪ ਮੰਗਲ ਗੁਣ ਗਾਮ ॥