Meditation "Master Document"

I aim to meditate for at least twenty minutes every day of my life.

I define meditation as deliberate awareness of an "uninvolved" stimulus, maintained for a minute or more.

Deliberate awareness - there is a certain "posture" that the mind must take to consider it true meditation, it is one where a real commitment is being made to notice the true nature of experience.

"Uninvolved" stimulus - although I believe one could meditate during e.g. a movie, or a conversation, I want to acknowledge that certain environments are conducive to especially insightful meditation. These are environments in which, in my experience, the meditator does not need to actively contribute in any way, and is also not being "pulled in" to the environment. So, for example, the meditator is not experiencing active social expectations from other people in the environment, and is also not overhearing conversation. The environment can be noisy or quiet, the meditation can be guided or unguided, the meditation can be eyes-closed or eyes-open, but it is nice to have an "uninvolved" stimulus.

Maintained for a minute or more - this is arbitrarily chosen, to indicate that meditation can be done at almost any point during the day, however it is important to make it a practice or real measurable significance. Permeating mindfulness in all moments throughout the day is a separate but very much related endeavour.

What I have learned so far from a habit-robustness perspective is the following:

• It is best to do the twenty minutes of meditation as one of the first things in the morning, after a shower and a walk outside. It must come before starting working or heading out into the world, as it is impossible to predict how distracting or disruptive the day will be thereafter.

• It is especially convenient to do the twenty minute meditation using the daily meditation option on Waking Up. It is best to do this with my laptop, rather than my phone, as my phone is inherently more distracting, but this is a smaller detail.