sam harris – Harrison Hansford

My New Morning Routine

After several months of having little control over my time, I have decided to make the most of not being at work full time. I thought long and hard how I wanted to start my day, and came up with: twenty minutes of meditation just after I wake up, forty minutes of reading and thirty minutes of writing. This takes an hour and a half and I think I could fit it in even when I start honours and am going into ‘work’ five days a week. So why was this the schedule I came up with?

Twenty minutes of meditation (6 am)

I have liked the idea of making a habit of meditating for almost a year now but I thought deep down that it was a waste of time, because you aren’t ‘doing’ or achieving anything by doing it. I’m not sure when the switch flicked but once I finished placement I meditated for an hour every day for a week. I soon realised that this was a very long time to meditate and I simply couldn’t stop myself getting distracted during it. I cut the time back to twenty minutes and have done that every day for the two weeks since. I’ve really enjoyed meditating, I am using Sam Harris’ ‘Waking Up’ app, which is pretty pricey but undoubtedly worth it. I was always resistant to the idea of meditating because of the religious and spiritual connotations but Sam walks you through it very agnostically and this really had me hooked.

Forty minutes of reading (6:20 am)

I love reading and I read every night before going to bed. Reading at night is very different to reading at any other point in the day. It is meant to relax you, give your mind a rest and ultimately put you to sleep. I’ve often been so excited by what I’m reading that I struggle to go to bed, defeating the purpose of reading in the first place! I decided to read in the morning because there is so much I want to read and my current 30minutes isn’t letting me read as much as i’d like. Reading in the morning also has the benefit that it doesn’t have to be strictly ‘enjoyable’ and can involve journal articles and other more didactic works. I’ve decided it might be a good idea to have, every week or fortnight, a new topic to read up on and familiarise myself. By doing this, in theory I’ll be well versed in at least 26 different topics by the end of the year, which sounds ridiculous, but is actually very achievable. I’m not too sure what these topics will be just yet, but I’m going to start planning this the week before (ie. now) and then every Sunday, review what I learned in a blog post; consolidating my newly attained knowledge.

Thirty minutes of writing (7am)

Writing is something I’ve enjoyed doing throughout the later years of high school and university although it was my least favourite thing to do prior to year 10. I was convinced I simply couldn’t write creatively and I hated it, until a teacher convinced me I could make myself a better writer. That is exactly what I did and my year 12 creative writing piece was then used as an example for other classes. Throughout university I fell out of practice and my essays were always okay and would get good marks but they were never amazing. I noticed probably a year ago when studying for the GAMSAT that my punctuation was absolutely shocking and this made me realise that I need to start some deliberate practice. I remember sitting down for the first time to write a blog post and had the classic writers block and couldn’t think to write anything. I had this several times in the first week of writing every day but since pushing through that, I’ve had no issues writing; a testament to the idea from Seth Godin that practice is what breeds creativity, not the other way round. So i’ve decided to practice every day and see what comes of it, if nothing else I’ll improve my writing.

This is a routine that will definitely change overtime, especially once I go back to university full time, but one of my goals for 2020 is to keep time reserved for doing what I want, even when I’m most busy; these are the things I want to continue doing.

Meditation and the half-life of your emotions

I’ve been doing Sam Harris’ Waking Up course on meditation on and off for several weeks but regularly for the last week and a concept that he has continued to return to is identifying your emotions and observing them. He does this by encouraging you to imagine a situation which made you angry, or sad, or happy, and observes where that emotion comes from. Spoiler, it is all created within your head, thus, is under your control.

What I’ve found when I observe the emotion is that it dissipates because, at the end of the day, emotions are produced from your consciousness, which can be entirely in your control. The reason I say can be is because this control comes from practice, I know it isn’t innate because I used to feel as though every initial reaction of mine was out of control. This was until I began meditating and practising observing what goes on in your consciousness. This leads to the understanding that whilst you cannot control the stimulus which enters your consciousness, be it a loud noise, an unpleasant scenario or someone bumping into you when walking, your reaction to that stimulus is entirely within your control. Sam mentions the ‘half-life’ of your emotions, which is simply the amount of time you intensely feel that emotion; that is, the time the sadness consumes you, or how long you stay angry for. He acknowledges that often your gut or immediate reaction may still occur, but it doesn’t have to be something that persists for more than a few moments, and certainly shouldn’t hang around for hours.

I’ve only begun to develop this skill but even so, I have noticed a lot of change already. I am less likely to be spiteful when I’m annoyed, I’m less likely to be angry for any period of time and I generally have greater insight into the emotions I’m feeling and can examining why I may be feeling them; helping me remove the stimulus quicker.

There is another saying which goes something along the lines “You cannot expect to be happy with somebody else if you are not happy alone,” essentially saying that you need to be content in your own skin before you can be truly happy in a relationship. This is also something I’ve really resonated with because I can see the truth in it. If you are ill at ease with yourself, nobody and nothing will be able to plug that hole, fixing that issue. This is another area where meditation can help because it allows you to get used to spending time in your own head, without distraction. It also allows you to realise what is actually going on in there and you can adjust your lifestyle accordingly.

This has been slightly abstract but it is hard for me to convey the benefits meditation can provide. I think the biggest benefits are the control over your feelings and reactions because this is how you interact with the world around you and dictates a lot of the quality of your relationships. Because of this, meditation is definitely something worth investing just 10mins a day into. It is surprisingly difficult at the start, but the exercise is bringing yourself back from distraction, not the time spent undistracted (This will make sense once you’ve started meditating).

Stress and Anxiety: Don’t Suffer Twice

This week, I listened to a great podcast about mindfulness and anxiety from Sam Harris and Tim Ferris. Whilst writing my weekly review I realised I experienced some stressful situations in the short, medium and long term which the podcast helped me control, with varying degrees of success. If you just want to see the techniques I use, jump to here

Short Term Stress

I had a very difficult exam (my final one for university!) which seemed to be designed to push you for time. I had roughly 30mins to go, with 30 marks unfinished (out of a 100 mark, 2hr exam), all long responses and I noticed myself getting frazzled and spending time thinking about how I was not going to finish, and flipping between questions.

After about 30 seconds of fueling the fire of anxiety, I identified my stress and thought, “it doesn’t matter how many questions I’ve got to go, I just need to keep powering through them and finish them the best I can,” and that’s exactly what I did. I put this ability to identify and put aside my stress down to my meditation, which I poorly adhere to but have still seen the benefits, this being one.

Medium Term Stress

My medium term stress was having a busy week ahead with Friday, Saturday and Sunday being full of work, and a lot of research to do. The way I managed this stress was ensuring I had a to do list of the essential pieces I needed to have finished, and just worked hard to get them finished by thursday so on the days I was working I was able to switch off afterwards so it still felt like I had a weekend; worked a charm.

Writing the tasks down and blocking out time in my calendar has been a great way to show me how much I really do need to get done because the worry about having a lot of work to do is always worse than the actual work.

Long Term Stress

My long term stress is more about the career I want to pursue, I am coming to the end of my degree and have several options but unsure which one to take. I’m still figuring out how best to approach this, but I currently have two heuristics:

Which path will be more fun to do
Which path has the most options afterwards

So far this led me to choose my degree (Exercise Physiology is more fun than Engineering) my jobs and the research projects I’ve been involved in as well. It is working out pretty well so far.

You can never know whether the decisions you make are the right ones, so by choosing a path which has the most options and will be fun in the short term removes a lot of the stress around making significant live decisions. Tim Ferriss’ fear setting exercise is also really useful for life-altering decisions as well.

Strategies to Stress Less

It’s not that I don’t stress, I do, but I’ve really learned over the past few years how to better manage my stress so that it doesn’t distract me from what is important.

For short term, in the moment stress, like in an exam, you have to understand your stress, allowing it to be put away and ignored so you can deal with the problem at hand. Mindfulness Meditation (with Sam Harris’ ‘Waking Up’ app) has helped in identifying this stress, allowing you to not be consumed by it.

For medium term, stress about the coming days or weeks, writing a list and scheduling your time in a calendar helps to make you realise that the stressor is probably not as time consuming as it seems, and by blocking out time for it, Steve Jobs’ ‘Imaginary time’ comes in and with a pressing enough deadline, clearly set out in a calendar and a list, you can achieve almost anything. What happens when your tasks aren’t time bound is called Parkinson’s Law, where “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion” so block off the time you need and have no more, trust me, you’ll finish it.

Finally long term stress. Making life decisions suck, you can never be sure of what result your decision will have, but there are ways to ensure you enjoy it. Choose something that you’ll enjoy doing, the worst thing that happens is you enjoy yourself, then do something else. Choose something which doesn’t close doors, or even opens them, nobody knows what they want to be doing in 5 or 10 years, so don’t limit yourself with your choices.

Finally, the main takeaway from this post should be that the object of your stress will never be as bad as what you think it will be, so don’t suffer twice by stressing about it. Just saying ‘don’t stress’ doesn’t help so I’ve given some thoughts on how I manage my stress so I’m not wasting my energy on my ruminations.

I’d love to know what you do to manage your stress and any techniques which have worked for you, leave a comment down below and get in touch if you’d like to chat through your stresses with me!

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