Tag: productivity

Impact of mindfulness meditation on wellbeing and productivity: preliminary results

~ elityre ~ 1 Comment

[epistemic status: semi-formal lab report.

This is all about me. Probably of interest only to the people that want to observe some of my process. This is also not all that well organized. It’s partly stream of conciseness.]

Intro:

Over that past few months (and the past 2 years, before that), I’ve been conflicted about the importance of having a regular meditation practice. There are good arguments for the high importance of concentration and metacognition, and meditation supposedly boosts those skills. Furthermore, I’ve directly observed some effects on my cognition that seems to be the result of having meditated that morning: being more apt to notice my thoughts as they’re happening, feeling more settled, being less reactive [I still need to write about “reactivity”], etc.

However, there’s clear and plausible confound. My life is often hectic, and maybe I only get around to meditating on days and weeks when I’m generally on top of everything. That is maybe the causality is reversed: instead of meditation making my life better, it that when my life is already going pretty well, I sit down to meditate.

So, I’m doing a randomized trial.

Two Mondays ago I flipped a (digital) coin. If it came up “1” then I would make a diligent effort to meditate every day for 20 minutes each day for the next 14 days, regardless of what else happening in my life. If it came up “0” I would meditate only when I felt like it.

It came up “1”, and for the past week and a half I’ve been meditating every day. (On one of the days, I meditated for only 18 minutes instead fo 20, but I don’t think that invalidates the experiment.)

I haven’t even finished my two weeks of meditation yet, but these are my preliminary results.

(Note that this experiment is just for observing the effects on my overall wellbeing and productivity. I may do other experiments with more explicit measurements for the psychological axes that I expect meditation to improve, but this isn’t that.)

Results:

This is going to be kind of informal. I don’t have rigorous proof for any of these conclusions. I’m partially sharing my “this is what it seems like to me”. Obviously, I’ll do further followup on all of these.

Briefly, meditation is definitely less important for my overall wellbeing than 1) Good sleep 2) getting regular intense exercise 3) being oriented on my goals and having my tasks “loaded up” and maybe 4) regularly taking a rest day.

Last week, the first part of my week was especially (95th percentile) good and productive, and then the later part of my my week (Wednesday on) was kind draggy and low-motivation (Being gentle on myself, I fell back to doing only one major task each day).

I’m chocking this up to 1) having a good rest day on Sunday, and 2) outlining my day in detail the night before for each of the days of the week (something I sometimes do). My subjective impression is that doing that self-organization in a deep (vs. a cursory or superficial way) makes a big difference for my productivity.

(My current hypotheses are that this is due to “loading up” my goals in my peripheral attention (or something) / making me (peripherally) aware of the full context of my goals and therefore the real tradeoffs and costs, and/or future-pacing providing some sort of sub-verbal nudge at decision point junctures throughout the day. [I should theorize about this].)

In the later part of the week, I had some major shoulder tension (a first for me), that persisted for days. After about 5 days, I spend an hour doing Focusing, and hanging with it, and “going inside of it”. It dissolved.

I think there was also an issue of not exercising (I was going on long walks, but I didn’t do anything intense, like strength training) making it harder for me to get to sleep. At least, I wasn’t strength training and I was getting less than 8 hours of sleep. (Around 7. Always more than 5.)

All of these seem like bigger factors than my meditation practice. Though I’ll also note that my meditation sessions weren’t particularly good. I sometimes am on-point, returning to my breath with high frequency, and getting into a sort aggressive flow with meditation. That didn’t happen this week. When the other factors are taken care of, I might meditate better, and meditation might then provide a boost over and above.

 

My current model of Anxiety

~ elityre ~ 5 Comments

[epistemic status: untested first draft model

Part of my Psychological Principles of Productivity series]

This is a brief post on my current working model of what “anxiety” is. (More specifically, this is my current model of what’s going on when I experience a state characterized by high energy, distraction, and a kind of “jittery-ness”/ agitation. I think other people may use the handle “anxiety” for other different states.)

I came up with this a few weeks ago, durring that period of anxiety and procrastination. (It was at least partial inspired by my reading a draft of Kaj’s recent post on IFS. I don’t usually have “pain” as an element of my psychological theorizing.)

The model

Basically, the state that I’m calling anxiety is characterized by two responses moving “perpendicular” to each other: increased physiological arousal, mobilizing for action, and a flinch response redirecting attention to decrease pain.

Here’s the causal diagram:

 

IMG_2554.JPG

The parts of the model

It starts with some fear or belief about the state of the world. Specially, this fear is an alief about an outcome that 1) would be bad and 2) is uncertain.

For instance:

  • Maybe I’ve waited too late to start, and I won’t be able to get the paper in by the deadline.
  • Maybe this workshop won’t be good and I’m going to make a fool of myself.
  • Maybe this post doesn’t make as much sense as I thought.

(I’m not sure about this, but I think that the uncertainty is crucial. At least in my experience, at least some of the time, if there’s certainty about the bad outcome, my resources are mobilized to deal with it. This “mobilization and action” has an intensity to it, but it isn’t anxiety.)

This fear is painful, insofar as it represents the possibility of something bad happening to you or your goals.

The fear triggers physiological arousal, or SNS activation. You become “energized”. This is part of your mind getting you ready to act, activating the fight-or-flight response, to deal with the possible bad-thing.

(Note: I originally drew the diagram with the pain causing the arousal. My current guess is that it makes more sense to talk about the fear causing the arousal directly. Pain doesn’t trigger fight-or-flight responses (think about being stabbed, or having a stomach ache). It’s when their’s danger, but not certain harm, that we get ready to move.)

However, because the fear includes pain, there are other parts of the mind that have a flinch response. There’s a sub-verbal reflex away from the painful fear-thought.

In particular, there’s often an urge towards distraction. Distractions like…

  • Flipping to facebook
  • Flipping to LessWrong
  • Flipping to Youtube
  • Flipping to [webcomic of your choice]
  • Flipping over to look at your finances
  • Going to get something to eat
  • Going to the bathroom
  • Walking around “thinking about something”

This is often accompanied by rationalization thought, that is justifying the distraction behavior to yourself.

So we end up with the fear causing both high levels of physiological SNS activation, and distraction behaviors.

Consequences

The distraction-seeking is what gives rise to the “reactivity” (I should write about this sometime) of anxiety, and the heightened SNS gives rise to the jittery “high energy” of anxiety.

Of course, these responses work at cross purposes: the SNS energy is mobilizing for action, (and will be released when action has been taken and the situation is improved) and and the flinch is trying not to think the bad possibility.

I think the heightened physiological arousal might be part of why  anxiety is hard to dialogue with. Doing focusing requires (? Is helped by?) calm and relaxation.

I think this might also explain a phenomenon that I’ve observed in myself: both watching TV and masturbating defuse anxiety. (That is, I can be highly anxious and unproductive, but if if I watch youtube clips for and hour and a half, or masturbate, I’ll feel more settled and able to focus afterwards).

This might be because both of these activities can grab my attention so that I loose track of the originating fear thought, but I don’t think that’s right. I think that these activities just defuse the heightened SNS, which clears space so that I can orient on making progress.

This suggests that any activity that reduces my SNS activation will be similarly effective. That matches my experience (exercise, for instance, is a standard excellent response to anxiety), but I’ll want to play with modulating my physiological arousal a bit and see.

Note for application

In case this isn’t obvious from the post, this model suggests that you want to learn to notice your flinches and (the easier one) your distraction behaviors, so that they can be triggers for self-dialogue. If you’re looking to increase your productivity, this is one of the huge improvements that is on the table for many people. (I’ll maybe say more about this sometime.)

Some ways to “clear space”

~ elityre ~ 3 Comments

[Epistemic status: pursuing ideas, no clear conclusion]

Part of the thinking of my Psychology and Phenomenology of Productivity

Followup to: What to do with should/flinches: TDT-stable internal incentives

So there’s a problem.  When I’m agitated, the thing that most helps is doing Focusing on the agitation, to dialogue with it and get clarity about which goals are threatened. But when I’m most agitated, my mind tends to glance off of my agitation. I can’t stabilize my intention on the agitation enough to start doing Focusing.

So I have a circular dependency. I want to do Focusing, to help the agitation. I can’t do Focusing, because I’m agitated.

I think resolving this is what is meant by the “clearing a space” step in Gendlin’s 6 steps, and may be isomorphic to “unblending”.

Personally, I really want to have a systematic solution to this problem.

These are somethings that I know help boost me out of the circular dependency.

  • Grab another person to be my focusing companion. This one helps hugely, for reasons that are unknown to me. (Extra working memory? I don’t think that’s it. Maybe, having another person looking at me creates a slight pressure towards coherent trains of thought, instead of my mind/attention jumping around from stimulus to stimulus? That seems closer.
  • Start writing. This seems like it also anchors my attention, so that it’s easier to be in contact with the anxiety/agitation, without slipping off.

These are some things that might help, but I haven’t tried in depth yet.

  • Some explicit practice with the unblending step of Focusing? (It’s my understanding that some Focusing teachers train this explicitly
  • Top down regulating my SNS activity using something like Val’s old Againstness, or my suggestion serenity routine from 2014?

 

Note that I need my solution that itself avoids the problem of the circular dependency. Whatever the technique I use to to make space to do Focusing on the agitation has to be easy to do when agitated, or what’s the point?

But ideally, I could have a TAP sequence that looked like…

[Notice the agitation] -> [Snap my fingers (or something, to reify and time-condence the noticing] -> [Clear space somehow] -> [Do Focusing on the root of my agitation]

Some varieties of feeling “out of it”

~ elityre ~ 1 Comment

[Epistemic status: phenomenology. I don’t know if this is true for anyone other than me. Some of my “responses” are wrong, but I don’t know which ones yet.

Part of some post on the phenomenology and psychology of productivity. There are a lot of stubs, places for me to write more.

This is badly organized. A draft.]

One important skill of maintaining productivity through phenomenology is distinguishing between the different kinds of low energy states. I think that people typically conflate a large number of mental states under the label of “tired” or that of “don’t feel like working.” The problem with this is, that the phenomenology of these different states points to different underlying mechanisms, and each one should be responded to differently.

If you can distinguish between these flavors of experience, then each one can be the trigger for a TAP, to bring you back to a more optimal state.

I don’t think I’ve learned to make all relevant state-distinctions here, but these are some that I can recognize.

Sleep deprivation: Feels like like a kind of buzzy feeling in my head that goes with “low energy”.

The best response is a nap. If that doesn’t work, then maybe try a stimulant. You can also just wait: after a while your circadian system will be strongly countering your sleep pressure, and you’ll feel more alert.

Fuzzy-headed: Often from overeating, or not having gotten enough physical activity in the past few days.

The best response is exercise. (Maybe sufficiently intense exercise, that you have an endorphin response?)

Hungry: You probably know what this is. I think maybe the best response is to ignore it?

Running out of thinking-steam due to need to eat: This feels distinctly different from the one above. Sort of like my thoughts running out, due to something like an empty head?

Usually, eating entails some drop in energy level, but if you time it right, both not eating and eating can be energizing. Though I’ve never done this for long periods and I don’t know if it sustainable.

Cognitive exhaustion: This is the one I understand the least. I don’t know what it is. Maybe needing to process, or consolidate info, or do subconscious processing? I don’t know if emotional exhaustion is the meaningfully different (my guess is no?).

The default thing to do here is to take a break, but I’m not sure if that’s the best thing to do. I think maybe you can just switch tasks and get the same effect?

Aversions

I’ll write about aversions more sometime, because they are the ones that are most critical to productivity. Aversions come in two different types: Anxiety/Fear/Stress aversions and “glancing off” aversions.

Anxiety/Fear/Stress/Belief Aversion: This sort of aversion is almost always accompanied by a tension-feeling in the gut and stems from some flavor-of-fear about the thing I’m averse to. A common template for the fear is “I’ve already failed / I’ve already fucked up.” Another is a fear of being judged.

The response to this one is to use Focusing to bring the concern that your body is holding on to into conscious attention, and to figure out a way to handle it.

“Glancing off” Aversions: This is closer to the feeling of slipping off a task, or “just not feeling like doing it”, or finding your attention going elsewhere. This is often due to a task that is aversive not do to it’s goal relevant qualities, but due to it’s ambiguity, or it being to big to hold in mind.

The response, as I’ll write about later, is to chunk out the smallest concrete next action and to visualize doing it.

Ego deletion: Feels sort of like my brain is tired? This feels kind of like cognitive exhaustion, and they might be the same thing. I think this is due to other subsystems in me wanting something other than work.

The correct response, I think, is to take a break and do whatever I feel like doing in that moment, though I don’t have a good understanding of mental energy, and it maybe that I’m supposed to do something that has clear and satisfying reward signals? (I don’t think that’s right, though. Feels a bit too mechanical.)

Urgy-ness: Also have to write more about this another time. This is a feeling compulsion for short term gratification, often of several verities in sequence, without satisfaction. This is often a second order response to an anxiety or fear aversions, and can also be about some goal that’s un handled or an unmet need. See also: the reactiveness scaler (which I also haven’t written about yet.)

Response: exercise, then Focusing

I wrote this fast. Questions are welcome.