Staring at a Wall: Embracing Deliberate Boredom | Hacker News Reader

Staring at a Wall: Embracing Deliberate Boredom

ch3ngl0rd.com

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I believe smartphones have completely destroyed most people’s ability to be bored. Whenever anyone has an opportunity for boredom, they pick up their phone.

Oftentimes it has even moved up the priority above the bottom — boredom — and even taken precedence over other leisure activities like reading, TV, or just sitting and talking. For many, it’s even close to the top, trumping work and other responsibilities. So boredom certainly stands no chance.

If people actually try and sit with just their thoughts, staring out into nature or the walls of their home, they become anxious, like an addict that can’t get their fix.

I appreciate many of the modern conveniences that come with smartphones, but I often miss the days before them.

My middle ground for this is walking. It gives me enough input to suppress my habit of entertaining myself using a smartphone, and it also makes staring at a screen quite impractical. But it gives me enough room to just process my thoughts.

Good choice. As Nietzsche said, never trust a thought you had while sitting down.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38047477

Looks like experts are divided on this

There is a commonly-used way to avoid having an open-ended think while walking, too: podcasts.

And music, too. It’s underrated what a cultural cognitive shift into multitasking and experiencing the world through an artificial auditory filter that the Walkman, and then the iPod, brought to society even before smartphones.

Good for podcasts though :)

I think it’s not just addiction but anxiety of being alone with one’s thoughts.

I love doing long solo bicycle rides. Just heading out and spending whole day riding by myself. Over the years, I bumped into many people who find such trips scary. Scared of thoughts that could pop up. Some said they could do that with headphones and music, but silence was no go.

Man, that's grim. I just think these people think the moment they go out alone with their thoughts, the first one is something real morbid: Maybe I should kill myself! Slow down buddy, we were just going on a walk alone.

To be fair to those people, I did have plenty of grim thoughts pop up in my head. Dealing with some of them wasn't easy. But IMO it's better to be away what is going on deep inside yourself rather than let it brew till it explodes in very nasty ways. But I do see how unprepared people may be afraid. Especially if they do have vague idea of what is going on inside them.

Same here with the rides. Yesterday I rode 50 miles by myself for the first time in a while, and was impressed with the amount of things going on in my life that I just hadn’t thought about.

All of my best ideas come on the bike or in the shower.

I find any form of exercise extremely boring. I go on these multi-hour bike rides which are borderline untolerably boring to me, especially at night. They do seem to have the side effects of stimulating the thoughts, reducing stress and better sleep, but to me it's just as bad as staring at the wall for a few hours, so a pretty big artificial effort.

As an avid long distance cyclist, I talked to multiple people from, let’s say, conventional meditation community. All of them agreed that solo cycling is damn close to meditation if not the same. Especially road cycling, mountain biking is a different beast. On calm backroads, of course.

Personally wall-style meditation is damn hard. But cycling makes it doable. My routine is to focus on cycling for the first hour or so. Which is also needed to get away from the city and suburb traffic. By the time I’m far away there’s enough endorphins and whatnot in the system to help and then sliding into my own deep thoughts is pretty easy. For some time till physical exhaustion kicks in.

What I find crucial is pre-planned route and having already ridden it. No need for checking the map, no fear of missing a turn without navigation and no new sights to stare at.

And pace is important. Slow & steady. Not too slow. Zone 3 is perfect IMO.

I found swimming laps to be the same.

Extremely repetitive in terms of scenery, breath, everything. The first few laps get into the rhythm and later ones are just you and your thoughts. Or, if you're lucky, just you.

Do you just mean endurance sports? What about like boxing or skateboarding?

As a "boxer", my active tike is over and I do only for the workout by now, it isbsomewhere in between. It is not boring, especially sparring, but then the drills and general carduo is boring in the sense thatvit doesn't need a lot of concentration of the complete brain. You just don't think a lot, meaning while doing it a huge part, of at least my, brain runs on idle.

Thinking of it, I need to go to the gym more. And I need some periodd of general boredom. Lately my brain had close to no occassion to run partially idle and I feel it.

You need boring sports where you don’t need 100% attention to not get hurt. E.g. road cycling on backroads is perfect. Mountain biking… no chance.

Completely agree. The other thing I've noticed is that this "lack of boredom" has really killed my creativity. Phone use (especially scrolling, scrolling, scrolling) gets my brain stuck in repeated patterns that is the antithesis of creativity.

I really wonder what the endgame of all this is. The "attention addiction" enabled by smartphones, and all the apps that are designed by some of the smartest people on the planet whose sole incentive is to keep you addicted, is IMO one of the most detrimental impacts by tech on human happiness in the past 100 years.

Road trips are my solution. While driving, no phone! Just miles and hours of staring at the highway.

When the wife takes over driving duties (we work in two-hour shifts) I jot down the ideas that came to me.

(But in fact, phones are boring to me. It's my laptop that robs me of my boredom when at home.)

Smartphones are sort of the ultimate mind-occupier in terms of portability, but it seems like for long drives lots of people have just taken to listening to audiobooks and podcasts.

It seems like we’re at a state of FOMO where every moment has to be optimized for stimulation, whether for “unproductive” entertainment or for “productive” learning. If our eyes are too focused on driving then we let our ears instead be our means to become busy away from our present surroundings.

They way I got this ability back is through cats.

They will come and sit between your eyes and the screen until you pet them. I can now put the phone away and spend time with my cat and my thoughts.

Here’s a great bit from Louis CK on this https://youtu.be/uuCoyILqut8

I wonder if this "stay in the way of it and let it hit you like a track..." piece is his wording.

Three years ago I was really grieving lost relationship, floating (not drowning) in sadness... and I found this piece of electronic music by San and Tac [0] with these words placed in the background. I would listen to this song and one day I realized, walking in a park, that I could really let it in. And I did... at it was beautiful...

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6Y2BnKy8Eg

Love & Stillness

I think it’s basically a crime against children and humanity for parents to put an iPad (flashing meaningless drivel) in front of their children while pushing them through a supermarket, or a park, or in a restaurant. It baffles me how frequently I see this done nowadays, like children need a constant flashing distraction to keep them from asking questions or being bored. I want to smash every iPad I see used like this. Let children be bored and have their own thoughts. It’s not painful for a child to have to sit in a trolley or a stroller while they’ve nothing to do. In a restaurant they might even learn language and ideas from the adult conversation no matter their age. In my eyes, if you’re a parent who does this, it’s a parenting fail particularly given you managed to get through your own childhood without the same.

My opinion on this topic, while perhaps not as strong as yours, is similar.

I think we inadvertantly created a similar dependence in our daughter, albeit with books rather than electronics.

She is 10 now and, aside from some exposure at school, she has never been allowed personal use of computers and the various computer-like devices we have today.

We did reading curriculum at home between 4 and 5. By 6 she was reading on her own for pleasure.

Today the child walks from room to room in the house with a book. Car rides without a book are accompanied with groans and anger. Any situation where boredom could set in is much worse if she doesn't have a book. She has to be specifically prodded not to read in order to get ready for school, etc, in a timely fashion.

I don't wish we'd done anything differently, but when she does eventually have access to electronics I fear she is going to transfer her extreme book "dependency" to electronics easily.

Sounds like how I was as a kid, always with a novel and then the advent of access to desktop internet in middle school hit. But hey, at least it’s a better foundation for literacy.

I think desktop computers are great for kids. I grew up using one from an early age, and I would have no hesitation giving my own kids that same access.

It's portable entertainment (phones, tablets, maybe even books unless you have a rule that they never leave the house) that I am deeply reluctant about. You can't lug a desktop to the park.

This was me 18 years ago, I think as long as the curiosity transfers to something in the real world over time, this is an amazing thing. Like reading museum placards, writing in a diary about her day to day observations, etc. Also, the reading to writing pipeline is probably the easiest to achieve when someone is young and inculcates a lot of thoughtfulness.

Also I don't think the two dependencies can be equated. Electronics create super short attention spans, books are the complete opposite. So I think she's already doing better than most her age.

Also me when I was young. The only downside was a more realistic (not mature) view of the world. This has lead men to not doing things that would have been mistakes easily forgiven at that age. My real life was a bit boring (I’d carefully select friends, keeping myself out of troubles) because my imaginary life was exciting enough). Apart from the knowledge I acquired, the upside is that I can keep track of a lot of abstractions needed for problem solving.

Whoa, same here! I too had a realistic view of the world, but at the same time was super naive. And the entire phase of teenage rebellion did not exist for me, kinda weird when I see it mentioned everywhere all the time. And "boring" was and sometimes still is the way to describe me - too cautious, and not enough spontaneity.

But I don't think I'd change anything even going back. Too many benefits...

That was me as a kid, and can confirm, that did transfer to the internet.

Same and same. Although I mostly use the internet to read stuff so it's kinda full circle.

OP here - I wouldn’t have anything like the same reaction to books, even though it might be argued that they’re the same as an iPad in being a technological distraction device. I don’t think they are at all, being a world of artistry created by the author, and requiring mind and imagination to decode. If my child needed a book all the time, I’d be pretty pleased about it. My general point was toward both the iPad use as some kind of defeater for the child being bored AND the content on those iPads - every one I see seems to be rapidly flashing, multicoloured simulation of barely even a cartoon, just some irresistible schema of child-directed content. Books are a world away from this. I’d encourage the book reading, it’s a different thing for a child to be engrossed in reading opposed to hectically distracted away from thinking and acting by an irresistible supernormal stimulus. I hope your child grows into a great writer one day.

I was this kid. It led to a lifelong love of reading and illustration which I’ve shared with friends and continue to cherish to this day. Sometimes the only think driving me out the door is the opportunity to draw something new or chance upon a good book or magazine. It also led to terrible eyesight, but generally your daughter is probably going to be fine.

Why does reading lead to poor vision? You've got me interested particularly because I have such an odd dynamic with this. I don't feel like my lens prescription has really changed at all (like ever) but I suppose I would have to check the prescriptions to be sure.

Are there ways to attenuate what you're referring to you are aware of?

It's long, uninterrupted periods of staring at a very near object, usually lit artificially unless you have a pleasant reading space by a window. It leads almost invariable to nearsightedness more than just 'poor vision'. This effect is more pronounced in children due to the fact that their eyes are still growing and change shape much more easily. There have started to be myopic toddlers where this was previously a very rare genetics based phenomena.

My daughter does have some wicked myopia. The optometrist blamed her reading.

You should get her something like VoiceDream or SpeechCentral and load books on to that. I feel like it would keep her eyes more active

Do you ever notice her "hiding" behind books to avoid social interactions or activities?

> In a restaurant they might even learn language and ideas from the adult conversation

Their parents will have their phone in hand while pushing the discussions.

On the general point: I remember a time smaller kids couldn't get into most restaurants at all because they would disturb the atmosphere (and I'm sure there's still many shops that won't allow kids).

Also people are way more susceptible to kids being noisy. It might be because exposure to kids has been so low for the majority of adults, but parents will get an utter amount of flack for letting their kid cry or shout and not immediately cater to them.

It's hard to have it both ways, our modern society will need to be more open to kid noise and disturbance if we want parents to just let the kids be kids.

The options aren’t iPad or uncontrollable noise. I think you’re missing the third option - parenting the kids. Disciplining children (even just verbally) seems to be something nobody wants to do anymore. If I was told to be quiet as a kid I did it because I knew I’d get in trouble otherwise.

This third option is not fool proof.

No amount of being told to be quiet to a 1-2 year old will do the Jo .

Sometimes parenting the kid means precisely not giving a response to their annoying and noisy behavior.

Some kids will behave with just a verbal cue. For the better or worse, most won't. That's one of the reason some restaurants have a play area, to deal with that tension.

> Disciplining children (even just verbally) seems to be something nobody wants to do anymore

"Parents these days" ?

You don’t have children.

> The options aren’t iPad or uncontrollable noise

Absolutely. Visit France; see many well-behaved and well-dressed children eating with their parents at cafes and restaurants. It's almost like they respect that this is actually their parents' treat time - that they've been taught that they are not the centre of the universe.

People used to tolerate whiny kids, now iPad and iPhones have solved the problem.

Now you can hear a groan from nearby tables whenever you take your family to a plane or restaurant

There’s also a lot of people who willingly don’t have kids and some of them think children are dogs which talk and scream instead of barking. Another is the type of parent who has a couple children with the gene of compliance active and think they’re literally gods of parenting and if your child misbehaves it’s your fault.

iPads and iPhones at max volume are arguably more intrusive.

Ah, I miss the days before I was a parent and had strong opinions on parenting.

Because rising a child is genuine hard. And it's only getting harder everyday. The cities are crowded. People are less tolerant to noisy children. If your parenting is not what people expect they will judge you on social media (instead of a very small social circle like before). Many once common parenting practices are literal crime now. And housing and school are only getting more expensive.

The most tolerable alternative is simply not to have children, and it will just be more and more common.

> The cities are crowded

Yup, all people feel the effect of this

> People are less tolerant to noisy children

My tolerance was tested today when a Mum and her princess took up 3 seats at a cafe today and let the daughter watch YouTube videos loudly on her iPad without any headphones.

I still don't understand why parents take their kids to boring cafes and restaurants. Kids want to do noisy things and run around. I didn't go to cafes until I was about 12. Prior to that weekends would be spent be walking the dogs, going to parks, forests, picnics etc

Because the parents want to go to cafe and restaurants. It’s a way to get the kids used to the things they like

I totally get that parents want to get out the house, socialise etc but are you really going to reduce this argument down to /wanting/ to do something? Because you know people will respond with all the things they /want/ to do but don't because of respect and consideration.

Parenting take time and practice. It is unreasonable to expect zero crying while in public.

As the parent takes the kids out more to restaurants and cafes, the kid will slowly learn how to behave. But it’s a process that takes time.

I get it but also as a parent I also get it

Sometimes the days are long, kid is driving you up a wall and the iPad just…works

My kid isn’t that old yet but partner and I have agreed no screens for first 15 mo at least. So anytime she’s watching TV we turn him away because he’s definitely interested!

Why 15 months?

One of my favorite times to practice not looking at my phone is when I'm waiting for something outside of my home. Waiting for a coffee at the cafe? Stare off into space, not at my phone.

I find the only time this is difficult is if I'm in a crowded area, and I'm anxiously concerned that I don't appear to be staring at a person like some creep. Then I feel one of my only options is to stare at a phone. But I also don't have a lot of entertaining apps on my phone so maybe I'll check the weather eight or nine times.

I agree to an extent. When I was younger I wanted to read anything over being bored. Sitting on the toilet would lead me to read the toilet perfume spray ingredients many times over.

My psychology professor used to say that boredom is very important state for kids. They should experience it on a regular basis, because it is the state when people become themselves. It is not external events drive their existence, nor habits or conditional reflexes, but they need to think of something to deal with boredom. With this line of thought boredom becomes a driver for a development of a personality.

As Aphex Twin once said [1] :

> I do get movitated [sic] by listening to other people now but I don't really NEED to do that. I could just lock myself away for days and get inspired by myself. That's my favorite way to do it. It's more like a pure form of motivation when it's all on your own. But you have to wait until you're really bored and you've got nothing to do. That's when it comes out. That's when I reckon it gets good.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20080611121559/http://www.furiou...

This quote immediately reminded me of "Rubber Johnny". (Trigger warning!)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eRvfxWRi6qQ

I don’t mean to be too negative here, but the author sat one time for twenty minutes in boredom and now is making a prescription that we should all spend more time in boredom.

In my opinion, I don’t even think they’re wrong in their prescription. But seriously think about that. One “walling”. Universal prescription. Hmm.

That’s more or less what most people did a century and change ago every day. Being bored is somewhat of a lost art nowadays. Good or bad I’m not sure but I definitely feel the tug of the smartphone when faced with boredom.

You make it sound as if the tech world hasn't been worshipping at the altar of stoicism, which is also pretty "one-size fits all".

I once spent a week doing this, deliberate boredom. I only permitted myself stimuli in the form of work, and any chores I might get the urge to do (I do not usually have the slightest urge to do chores). Besides that, I sat around waiting for food or sleep.

I remember making the decision, and going through with it, but somewhat unsettlingly I do not remember hardly anything from the week itself. Maybe that is because there are no memorable moments on which to look back on.

Not every moment needs to be memorable, for it to have been good. Do you remember every breakfast you’ve had for the last year?

What I found with my boring time is that I’d either spend it daydreaming or in a contemplative state. The greatest benefits is that it feels like taking a quick rest. Maybe my brain are not reacting to any stimulus? But yeah, not everything needs to be memorable and fewer things need to be captured.

> I believe smartphones have completely destroyed most people’s ability to be bored

I used to teach and consult on various forms of emergency preparedness and wilderness survival. It would amaze me at how people getting disconnected from their phones, would put extra stressors on them when I was training them.

When in the outdoors, the very first thing I would do, was to take each student's cell phone from them and tell them "you have no cell service in this situation, else rescue could be here in a few hours". That in itself would bring on extra stress into their training for the whole weekend.

When I would consult with families on preparedness in the home, the first thing I would do is cut off their internet connection and take their cell phones. It amazed me on how they could not find anything to do with their new found boredom.

Snippet from one of my documents - "... many people practice shelters, fire making, water procurement and are really good at these skills. But one should practice boredom, putting themselves in uncomfortable controlled situations, and/or practicing "embracing the suck". Practicing a physical skill for an hour and then walking back into your comfortable home is nice, but what did you really learn? "

You’d think they would at least have offline games on their laptops and consoles

Not even that. A deck of cards, checkers or chess, or even a battery powered AM/FM radio (which one should have to receive news and information in the event of a worse case scenario).

I was being tongue-in-cheek. Plenty of electronic distractions out there beyond smartphones! :p

Until they run out of electricity. :)

long time ago, when i was living in.. oz.. for few years, the boredom thing came up to me a few times. And there are few phases.. a bit like those about accepting death in "All that jazz" movie.. So here my take and speculation.. The vast empty wilderness spaces are best for total boredom. Though be careful, survival there is not boredom. But not that difficult for few days. Keep some civilization comforts (pillow? water? repellents? ..) and Just stay there, doing nothing. Don't turn on phones or radio or whatever civilization-strings-attaching-you-back.

The state that your mind will get after such thing, is like.. you go beyond boredom. Stop caring about anything unimportant to-real-you. Newz? whuts-dat? Anxiety? none.

So.. if you go for a easy but near-unescapable longer boredom - e.g. rent a floating house, on the lazy river, going with 5km/h (and no way to propel it faster), for a week upstream.. and another week back.. mmmm.

i did not make it. did not find time, courage, you-name-it, and now oz isn't a country that i would go again. But Maybe one day, maybe another place..

This sounds like simply basic meditation. Embracing boredom is the first challenge.

This is not to contradict OP's experience, but I have seen wonderful changes in life by "embracing deliberate attention" .. perhaps this might appeal to some of you.

In recent times, I have started a "digital fast" twice a week ... no looking at any screen (TV/laptop/phone/iPad) for the entire day, except keeping a lookout for urgent notifications. Very few notifications merit opening and looking at the message, and still fewer merit an immediate response.

On these days, I have reverted to paper and pen to draw and write software designs, fighting the urge to look up any reference material. I have read fat novels without much of a break, spent quality time at the gym, practiced music and slept early.

There is no boredom, there is no anxiety due to news of politics & war/climate change/AI. I don't find myself flitting from site to site and infinite-scrolling app to another such. The afterglow carries over to the next day.

How do you work on these fasting days? Are they just the weekends?

I specifically chose weekdays, because I want to get work done without distraction. I am my own worst enemy ... I find myself checking one random site after another, then opening the same sites in other windows! I needed a break from this behavior.

For work, as I said, I just use pen and paper. There are lots of tasks that don't have to be immediately keyed in. One can design, write pseudocode, think about ambitious tests, write documentation and so on. I can actually feel myself making progress when I don't have a screen in front of me.

>> For work, as I said, I just use pen and paper.

How do you deal with email/video calls/messages? Are you in a position where you can just switch those off for the day? Or do you check in at certain intervals?

I check email headers/whatsapp notifications every couple of hours and open them if they look urgent. If it merits a response, I give the person a call, instead of typing out a reply and let them know why I am calling. So now I have a bunch of colleagues who know that I am available to talk to, but also know that email responses could be delayed.

Video calls can't always be avoided, but so far I have not been affected. Or rather, I chose days on which there are no regularly scheduled video calls.

Once as a kid I had an exceptionally boring summer day at home and hated it so much that I devised a way to avoid boredom ever again. I made a big list of all my interests from the big priorities to passing fancies and whenever I don't know what to do going through the list provides something worth pursuing.

It was only many years later I realized that this was an accidental spontaneous invention of what William Edwards Deming came to call a Life List. His main purpose in that was to help people guide their careers and personal development.

For me this article is strange, but the way I integrate this sort of thing is by picking an interest and really sticking with some aspect of it. That almost always leads to a kind of boredom, but it has a limited context that makes it different and maybe even more useful. Like the way giving an artist only a few colors to work with can lead to greater creativity.

"Humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." Blaise Pascal.

All he is doing is rebranding Zazen. Nothing new here.

https://tiferetjournal.com/zazen-what-is-it-why-am-i-staring...

Soto. :p Rinzai don't look at the wall.

Rinzai can’t get past seeing the wall. :p

> It turns out that bliss — a second-by-second joy + gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious — lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (tax returns, televised golf), and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from back and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Constant bliss in every atom.

I know David Foster Wallace isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but that quote from The Pale King stuck with me for over a decade.

Didn't he kill himself?

I think this is one of the main benefits of adopting a regular practice of nondirective meditation (or transcendental meditation if you prefer that). For me, it creates 20 minutes of daily mental "blank space," and oftentimes, my brain fills that blank space with new ideas, creative direction, and insight about myself. It's also a great way to reset anxious thought patterns or distraction that I may have gotten myself stuck in.

I've also had similar experiences going on a walk somewhere quiet and non-distracting.

Walking aimlessly with no phone helps with this too. Long showers as well. Often when I'm in a creative block I go on a 4 hour walk and my brain manages to come up with new ideas.

Why Boredom is Good For You - Veritasium: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKPwKFigF8U

Very similar to what I started working on last year. It’s been working extremely well and one of the best things I’ve done for myself. I talk about it here: https://rnilo.com/making-life-boring/

Boredom is the poor vision of the mind's eye. When an average mind looks at a tree, the mental image in it is a blurry caricature of that tree, it lacks details and is completely uninteresting to look at, so the mind lazily wanders to another distraction, in hope to see more details there, but the new mental image appears just as blurry. Smartphones "solve" this by feeding a high contrast image into the visual memory: this gives the mind the details it's been yearning for, but does nothing to improve its ability to construct such images. It's a lot like going to gym to have a trainer move your limbs, creating the appearance of exercise.

For comparison, when a scientist or an artist looks at a tree, his mind creates a highly detailed image, and the more he peers into it, the more finer details his mind discovers. So his mind is never bored, rather it can be hypnotized by the amount of details it sees. He develops this skill by immersion into whatever he sees: rather than letting himself get distracted, he makes his attention inspect the object of interest as closely as possible; this improves clarity of his mind's vision, which lets him see even more details. This means when he looks at a tree, all his attention explores this tree, and when he thinks about a tree, all his attention explores the mental image of the tree. In average minds, their attention is always split between many things, so they never see anything clearly.

Immersion is what makes all the difference.

Am I the only one who feels like I have to do nothing some amount of time every day? Like I get too overwhelmed with everything and then I just walk around while my mind slowly settles. If I try to do something while in this mode - even if it's just watching TV or something - I'm unable to focus and get really irritated.

I feel like I've had this since I was a child/early teenager. My mom always found it weird how I just walked around the house not really doing anything at the age of 13 or so.

I also go mildly crazy without the daily walkabout

This post reads like classic HN. Thanks for sharing.

Being bored is painful for me. But I remember one night in university where I had taken ADHD meds and then realized I wasn’t going to pull an all-nighter, and I laid in bed doing literally nothing for about six hours and it was a rather profound experience. My mind just went on a long hike through a wilderness of ideas.

I remember reading in an interview, Steve Jobs mentioning he used to go on meditation retreats to a place near SF called something like "Still Point".

And he would sit against a wall and meditate.

Can't find any links about it any more.

(If anyone can find links to the retreat or to him mentioning doing this meditation, please post them below.)

I think you have discovered meditation.

I feel like the difficulty is this needs to have positive reinforcement or incentives, if you are not comfortable or it's unpleasant, you will avoid doing it a second time.

At least one must be prepared for some unpleasantness. All these sensations, thoughts and feelings bubble up. You kind of go through them. With prolonged meditation (like for days) it gets really strong sometimes.

The incentives are all the benefits laid out in the article and the comments here.

It amazes me that the rituals that were obvious in the past are now considered a desire. Thanks to technological advancements

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned "Sitting and Smiling" yet: https://www.youtube.com/@BenjaminBennetttt

A recent Freakonomics podcast/guest (Dr. Sapolsky) mentions that when you bite down softly on a wooden pencil, it makes eyes' crow-feet express, which artificially tricks your proprioception into thinking that you're smiling.

This tactic can be used to with minimal conditioning/tolerance.

Welcome to my childhood

Balance in all things. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38021463

Ha “set a timer”

The author seems to be missing the point of his own exercise.

You should spend more time being bored.

Sounds very much like zazen.

You can take this idea one step further and not only avoid external stimuli but also internal ones. This is effectively mindfulness meditation. You try to not "react" to stimuli (both external and internal) and just observe. Is feels very unusual in the beginning but can have a huge benefit on your life.

FWIW I use the app "Waking Up" from Sam Harris.

Interesting read

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