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Comment by echelon_musk | Hacker News Reader

Not that anyone asked:

I've long given up on meditation timers. I go to a room without any digital technology except for a Casio F91W. I have gotten good at gauging how long I've been concentrating for and if I have aversion to continued sitting I just peek at the watch to know how long it's been.

This is a solved problem that costs $0 and I don't have to worry about receiving personalised ads because I'm into 'mindfulness'.

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Yup. I count my breaths in batches of 12 (batch count on the in breath, breath count on the out breath). So like "1-1, 1-2, ..., 1-12, 2-1, 2-2" and it works out that the batch count is the number of minutes I've been meditating. So if I want to meditate for 10 minutes I do 10x 12-counts. No technology needed, can be done anywhere, anytime.

> No technology needed, can be done anywhere, anytime.

I call this doing nothing with... nothing. It aligns closer to the spirit of emptiness.

I haven't heard about this before, did you learn it from someone? I usually just count breaths up to 10 and then restart and have a timer for 10 minutes - the timer usually ruins the mood. This is genius and I'm going to start doing this instead.

Counting makes it not so effective for me, but so do timers. I tend to just meditate however long feels right from 5-45 minutes.

This is brilliant. For me it was about 8 counts per minute (and I could adjust on the fly). This is a good one to add to the arsenal of breathing techniques.

Re: the app. My personal experience has been after while if you need an app to do nothing …

Author here. I 100% agree, don't obsess about the tools, do whatever works for you. I use the app mainly for meditation and despite having decades of experience I tend to lose the track of time.

I get the impression that you haven't read the article/UI text in the app, so can't comment on the rest of your message I'm afraid.

But, to you some time: I don't charge for the app, I hate ads, I just want people to sit down and do nothing/stop doomscrolling. No need to meditate and no ideology involved.

I suppose it costs one Casio F91W, but I get what you mean.

Good-quality incense burns pretty consistently -- when I sit, I sit the time it takes one stick to burn down. There's even incense-burners that will ring a little bell when the stick burns down, but I just stay aware of it.

For how long do you usually meditate?

> I don't have to worry about receiving personalised ads because I'm into 'mindfulness'.

That's my reaction to all these mindfulness and mental health apps/services. The same tech bros that have created and profited off this crisis in the first place are now trying to sell a solution.

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