Bubble

In yesterday’s post, I talked about how I often occupy my mind by watching ‘low effort’ YouTube shows whilst I cook, or clean, or eat, or even try to get to sleep.

There are a lot of other ways that I have occupied my mind whilst doing day to day tasks; like listening to music whilst walking somewhere, or listening to music whilst working out or running, or even listening to a podcast whilst sitting on a bus, flight, or train.

I once had a friend tell me that he was disappointing with how many people listen to music whilst they wander around. We were sitting together on my university’s campus, and a majority of people that you could see were wearing headphones or earbuds.

I didn’t understand what his problem was at the time; it seemed fine to me. I felt like he was just buying into that trope of ‘our kids are turning into zombies because of mobile phones!’ …but I’m starting to understand what he meant.

Unless you start ignoring whatever it is that you are ‘listening to’, you’re not going notice the things going on around you. You’ve put yourself in this little bubble that not even your thoughts can penetrate.

I’m sure that there is value in letting my mind be on it’s own for once, without constantly trying to pump stimulation into it. Letting your mind be on it’s own with your thoughts is basically meditation.

And there are a ton of benefits of meditation. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that; you’re sick of hearing about it by now.

Whilst talking to Naval, Joe Rogan mentions that during a 20 minute wait for the doctor, he used his time the meditate. There’s an implication that he fills a lot of his ‘dead time’ with short bursts of meditation like that, too.

There isn’t any reason that you couldn’t apply that to doing chores, or whilst walking from place to place. In fact, I know there isn’t; people go on walks specifically to think about things, and to discover how they really feel.

I’m probably not making the best use of my time by occupying my mind in every little moment of down-time.

Something to think about.