I’m experimenting with a new way to meditate that is based on two observations:
1. It’s difficult to get started meditating because it’s frankly painful and boring
2. It’s fun to think about ideas in the shower and on long walks
Thread:
The idea here is to remove the painful parts and go with whatever you want. Maybe this is not “real” meditation but I find it awesome.
Here’s how I do it
First, sit in a comfy position in a quiet room, ideally cross-legged on a pillow on your couch.
Have a phone nearby with a mediation timer set with intervals. (eg 20 minute meditation with a bell ringing every 5 minutes)
If you want, make a cup of tea and sip it during your session. No judgments here, we want to make it open, fun, creative, and relaxing.
When you get started, focus on your breath and enter a mindful state. Check in on your body.
When thoughts come, here’s what you do
Think about them, mindfully, maintaining an awareness of your body and the room.
Explore them all you like. Play with them. Ask them why they came to visit and try to learn from them.
You don’t have to ignore them!
In fact, if you like, actively conjure them! Brainstorm ideas! Write them down in your notes app or in a paper notebook if you like! Just make sure you maintain mindful awareness at all times.
For me it feels like I’m activating “shower creativity mode” but on command.
I find this form of meditation (if you can even call it that, idk 😅) to be much more fun and easy to get started with than the method most people seem to use where you have to close your eyes and sit still and try not to think about anything.
And I’ve noticed that the longer I do it, the more comfortable I am with longer blocks of non-thinking.
So think of it as a complement to more traditional meditation, or a gateway drug.
Also, I really like having a cup of tea while I do this. There’s something fascinating about observing my mental states and noticing the exact moment when I feel an urge to take a sip and my motor functions start whirring without me even noticing or “deciding.”
I’m sure I’m not the only person to try something like this, but I haven’t found any official tradition for this kind of mindfulness practice. I’d love any pointers to information about others who do it this way!
Another important thing I forgot to add: if you’re feeling uncomfortable in your sitting position, mindfully notice the urge to act, then feel free to shift around, stretch, stand up, etc!
Anything is kosher as long as you don’t lose the mindful awareness state
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Facebook has ~$60b in the bank now, and generated $12b in cash over the past 12 months.
TikTok represents a nascent user behavior, but the category is likely to support a pretty huge business over the long run, easily tens of billions of incremental ad revenue.
How big of an impact would adding ~40% of the top 100 TikTok users be?
I think it'd be a pretty massive event. They are the tentpoles. People will still use TikTok, but Reels/Instagram is no longer optional. The existing IG network will make it even more compelling.
A short thread on my creative / personal breakthroughs this month:
I've always struggled with being a good member of a team. It felt like I had to either be a "yes man", and suppress my thoughts and feelings, or I would get into "debate mode" and make collaborators feel bad.
I realized a very basic flaw in my communication style:
I was trying to get other people to understand me before showing that I was interested in understanding *them*
This turns out to be incredibly important.
I think I really did always just want to understand people and be understood, but my communication style didn't make people feel that way. Once I fixed this, I started to learn and grow a lot faster.
People are more interested in collaborating when you make it feel good!
On Monday, I knew nothing about native iOS development.
Today, I wrote this. (It's only ~150 lines of code.)
PS, if you're into SwiftUI and you want to talk shop, I would love to talk shop!
I get the sense this is a really new thing and everybody is figuring it out at the same time
Lots of devs in my mentions saying “But SwiftUI isn’t cross-platform! You can’t compare them!”
You actually can, because the incentive to take on the many problems associated with cross-platform frameworks is greatly reduced when you can build native so easily.
If you're not familiar, he's a former Vine star turned YouTuber.
His videos revolve around the stunts / pranks / jokes / misadventures of his "friend group" ("the vlog squad"—consisting mostly of former viners like him).
Each video gets ~10m views
David's videos are each 4:21 minutes long. They're extremely fast / chaotic. The density of "wow that was crazy" or "i'm laughing out loud" moments is honestly disorienting.