Sometimes navigating life’s complexities can feel a bit like wandering through an unfamiliar landscape in the dark. You know—vaguely—where you’d like to end up, that is, you have goals you want to achieve and aspirations you’re striving for. But if they’re ambitious enough, it’s not clear exactly what path you need to take to get there. You also have—at least intuitively—a general sense of direction; you have moral and ethical values, behaviors, and attitudes you consider right or wrong, which give you guidance on an abstract level. But for me, neither goals nor values are specific and actionable enough to help me make better decisions every day. Yet life constantly challenges us with immediate choices, big and small, that need to be made: Turn right? Turn left? Go uphill? Go downhill? Each small action (or lack thereof) can have a profound impact down the road on us and the people we care about. But as uncomfortable as it can be to take decisive action, we need to choose thoughtfully and with intention—or else, others will make choices for us that may not always be in our best interests.

During my first visit to Tokyo, on a business trip in 2016, I took a long walk in the lavish park that surrounds Meiji Shrine. It was a glorious Sunday morning and the inevitable crowds had not yet intruded on this island of calm at the center of the bustling metropolis. I was enveloped by the tranquility of the place when suddenly, maybe two hundred meters ahead, I spotted a gardener who swept the wide footpath using something like a grotesquely oversized broom. That tool must have been immensely heavy, with its long bamboo handle and the dense bristles of thick straw. Nevertheless, the groundskeeper’s elegant, swinging motions had an almost effortless quality to them. At a closer look, they reminded me more of a dancer moving to an inaudible tune, a painter skillfully applying a brush, or even a Samurai knight wielding their Katana sword. There was nothing “menial” about the labor of that gardener—quite the contrary, even a small crowd had already gathered to watch his performance in awe.

Meditating comes with an interesting side effect: When you’re sitting still and observing your own thoughts, you slowly start to appreciate how weird and quirky your mind actually is. That can be scary at times—for instance, you realize how little control “you” ultimately have over what’s going on in there. But it can also be highly instructive. One interesting thing I’ve come to notice, during as well as outside of formal meditation sessions, is how much the degree to which I feel “fidgety” varies from day to day and even from one situation to the next. There are times when it’s relatively easy to focus my attention at will, when there’s a slow undercurrent of calmness, rarely disturbed by intruding thoughts. But then, sometimes, the exact opposite is true: I’m feeling restless and unsteady, as if my mind is being yanked around between a thousand different things, all competing for limited cognitive resources. Engaging deeply with any one of those, however, becomes quite impossible. Instead, I’m caught in an endless loop of unproductive task switching. Running in high gear, but not going anywhere. Constantly distracting myself, and then distracting myself from the previous distraction.

I have referred to my meditation practice a few times now, but I realize that I never actually explained what I even mean by that. So, what is it that I do when I say I meditate? Why do I do it in the first place? And is it really worth the hassle? First, let me clarify what meditation, to me, is certainly not: It’s not “sitting around and thinking hard about a problem”—even though the term is frequently used in that sense in everyday language. But it’s also not “emptying one’s mind” or “trying not to think”. It’s also distinct from formal prayer in the Christian, Muslim, or Judaic sense. And it’s quite definitely not mind-wandering or daydreaming. Don’t get me wrong, all of these activities have their merits, and there’s a time and place for them—they’re just not what’y meant with meditation. Meditation instead is actually a very broad term that includes countless different techniques aimed at training, at better understanding, or even at changing the human mind.

More than a year ago, I published this blog post about my daily routine. Since then I’ve received a lot of feedback, ranging from curiosity to mild encouragement to raised eyebrows. In essence though, the comments most people brought up boil down to three things: “This kind of lifestyle seems dull / repetitive / strenuous / masochistic. How do you find any joy in that?” “Isn’t it all just a fluke? Can you really keep these things up over the long-term?” “I see the point in what you’re doing, but I could never muster the motivation / willpower / determination to get started.” So, today I want to clear up some confusion around these concerns. What seems to be in question is on the one hand how to create the momentum that’s necessary to establish positive lifestyle changes in the first place, and on the other hand, how that momentum can be sustained over the long-haul by turning things that we know we ought to do into things we want to do. As we shall see, these topics are tightly interconnected. But let’s try to tackle them one at a time.

At first it struck me as an exaggeration when James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, wrote the following in one of his recent newsletters: “Most big, deeply satisfying accomplishments in life take at least five years to achieve. This can include building a business, cultivating a loving relationship, writing a book, getting in the best shape of your life, raising a family, and more.” Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Atomic Habits by James Clear. The more I think about it though, the more two things stand out about his point: First, how well it actually corresponds with my personal experience. And second, that it’s quite at odds with how we commonly think “success” works. But regardless if we’re talking about five years, as Clear does, or the 10,000 hours that Malcolm Gladwell identified in Outliers, the point is that perseverance always trumps intensity: Deliberate, goal-directed effort, applied consistently over a long stretch of time, and ideally with a feedback loop built in, is bound to yield lasting effects. But here’s the catch: While traveling along such path, the individual steps we take often look insignificant. Progress is thus hard to discern and the perceived lack thereof can easily discourage us from keeping at it.

Peak Mind by Amishi P. Jha. We’re all distracted, all of the time. More and more studies show that on average, we spend only 50% of our waking hours engaged with the present moment—the other half of the time we’re zoning out, ruminating, mind-wandering or daydreaming. Furthermore, research suggests that our ability to pay attention is on the decline. And why wouldn’t it be, given the increasing pace at which we’re assaulted by social media notifications, breaking news alerts, and instant messages. It’s no surprise that our minds, drowning in a sea of sensations without a chance for rest or respite, have a hard time to focus on anything at all. The dangers of this pervasive state of mindlessness are of course obvious in situations that depend on our ability to concentrate, whether you’re performing surgery on someone’s brain or simply driving a car. But not only does this constant running on auto pilot cause countless preventable errors of oversight or negligence. It’s also detrimental to our psychological wellbeing: Every time our minds are not truly present in the moment, we can’t fully enjoy our current experience, our social interactions become more and more shallow and less meaningful, our brains can only form inferior memories, and ultimately, we might miss out on what’s most valuable in our lives.

Frankly, I didn’t have the best of weeks this week. I found myself questioning my self-worth based on perceptions of having fallen short of certain achievements. It’s pointless to judge yourself solely by outcomes of course, particularly those that aren’t entirely under your own control–as the Stoics would put it. But to understand that basic principle is one thing, while applying it in everyday life is quite something different. So, I ended up in a detrimental spiral of negative thoughts and emotions which unsurprisingly resulted in bad sleep, a foul mood, a shortness of temper, and an unwarranted harshness towards others that, of course, only added fuel to the fire.

Getting people–others or ourselves–to do something that’s not obviously pleasurable is immensely tricky. Never mind if you want to start an exercise routine, eat healthier, or motivate someone to get their Covid-19 shot, the underlying challenge is always the same: In the short-term, it’s easier, less painful, or more convenient to simply avoid doing the “right” thing. So what can we do, in spite of that bias towards immediate gratification, to overcome the mind’s inbred inertia?

“Where’s the fun in that?”, many people asked after I had published my daily routine. Often, the question seemed borne not purely out of curiosity or interest, but rather inspired by pity, or even concern about my wellbeing. Doesn’t so much rigidity and discipline grind one down? Am I renouncing all of life’s pleasures? Doesn’t all work and no play make Jack a dull boy? How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett. Let me preface the following by saying: I’m neither an ascetic nor a masochist. But the more closely you examine the inner workings of your mind, the more you realize that pleasure is a complex, multi-faceted issue. Even the simplest taxonomies psychologists use to quantify the texture of our moment-to-moment experience require at least two dimensions: valence (pleasant to unpleasant) and arousal (calm to thrilled).

It’s 4:15am when my alarm goes off. I get out of bed immediately, without snoozing. Before I know what’s happening, I’m already in my running gear, and with a sip of water I’m out of the door no later than 4:25am. I run for 60 to 120 minutes, covering between ten and twenty kilometers. When I get back, it’s time for breakfast: Usually, oatmeal and a banana to refill the carbs I’ve burnt, together with a big glass of water to rehydrate. Some stretching exercises, as well as a hot shower, come right afterwards.

That tiny moment between sleep and wakefulness is a fascinating thing: Your mind hasn't quite caught up with reality yet, but it already tries to make sense of what's going on. When something feels even a little bit off during those split seconds, that can be a frightening experience: The light comes in from the wrong direction. The air is too humid. The touch of the bedspread seems unfamiliar. What the hell is going on? And then it hits: This isn’t where I usually wake up. This is Seoul. This is Cape Town. This is Manhattan. This is Hong Kong. This is an anonymous hotel room at the other end of the world, and I’m just passing through here. Suddenly, that what caused anxiety a moment ago turns into an awe-inspiring realization: I’m right here, right now, in this strange place, and I have the opportunity to explore it and everything it has to offer. How great is that?

Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer. My Journey to Lhasa by Alexandra David-Néel. I’m not sure why, but over the last few weeks I rediscovered a passion for adventure literature. Re-reading Heinrich Harrer’s “Seven Years in Tibet” led me down the rabbit-hole towards lesser known, but no less epic, tales such as Alexandra David-Néel’s “Journey to Lhasa”. Right now, I’m halfway through “Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage”, which details the horrors of the 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, and just when their ship finally gets crushed and the crew is forced to flee into the freezing wilderness of Antarctica, the central heating in my house breaks down.

It’s a particularly unnerving aspect of the human condition that we’re longing the most for the things we don’t—or can’t—have at the moment. As of this writing, I’m sitting comfortably in a warm house, wearing decent clothes, am well fed and somewhat relaxed. Still I get the feeling that I’d enjoy nothing more than being outside in the blistering cold of this foggy December morning, pushing my body to physical exhaustion by running for an hour or two, only to arrive at where I started. What’s wrong with me?

Good Strategy / Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. Recently I read Richard Rumelt's business classic Good Strategy / Bad Strategy which, beside clarifying what strategy actually is and why any organization would benefit from having one, offers many insightful stories and anecdotes on economics. One I found particularly amusing was about Andrew Carnegie, who was arguably the most successful business man of his day, being ranked the richest American for several years at the beginning of the 20th century.

People say that life is short, but that’s not true. Life isn’t short, it’s long. In fact, it’s the longest thing we ever experience first hand. We only perceive life as short because we don’t make the best use of the time we have. It has become all too easy nowadays to waste away an entire lifetime with distractions like TV or social media. All the while we subconsciously hope that some day, by some miracle, a more satisfying future will roll around in which we will be… happy.