Clocking Hours

I’m curious how many of you are out there using a meditation app or have a daily habit of sitting for 5 or 10 minutes but you’re not super sure if it’s ACTUALLY working or if you’re even doing it right. I get that. I’ve been sitting in meditation for almost a dozen years without a whole lot of noticeable progress. My meditation practice started as a means of trying to calm myself down in the midst of losing my best friend to cancer. I wasn’t there to get spiritual or gain insight into the workings of my mind. I was just trying not to freak out.

If you’re like me and wondering if that 5 or 10-minute daily meditation is doing what you’d hoped it would do, keep reading.

I started sitting multi-day silent retreats back in 2019 and have a goal of attending 1-2 annually. After covid shut things down for a bit, 2022 saw the retreat center open back up and I was grateful to get back to the mountains of northern New Mexico. 

But this year something changed for me last year. Something I didn’t expect or see coming. It’s what my dharma teachers refer to as “continuity of awareness”. Specifically, they were referring to this continuity that builds up over the course of a retreat where we’re meditating for 9 to 10 hours a day, for 7 days in a row. Our hope is to maintain that awareness as we leave the mediation hall and go brush our teeth or use the bathroom or go to bed. Eventually, when the retreat is over, the hope is that we take this continuity with us into our daily lives. And that’s what happened to me in a way that I’d never experienced before. I’ve maintained a continuity of awareness for the past couple of months that I’ve been back home.

What does that even mean? How’d it happen? And why should you care? 

Look, I’m a normal guy living a pretty normal life like the rest of you. I have work to do and household chores to take care of. I have a wife and a dog and friends and family and lots of moving parts in my life. I didn’t eschew any of those things in favor of this newfound continuity, but I did begin to place a higher priority on my meditation practice. A couple of years ago, my long-time mindfulness teacher asked me what my meditation practice looked like and I told him that I sat for 20 minutes a day, usually in the evening before bed and that I did that 6-7 days a week. Occasionally I’d throw on a guided meditation or use a mindfulness app if I felt stressed or off-base in some way. My teacher, having known me for a long time, suggested I try and sit for at least 30 minutes a day 5-6 times a week. The reason for this is that my monkey mind can be pretty damn active and loud and I need at least 20 minutes just to let things settle down, much less experience any actual peace or mindfulness. So when I got home from the retreat this year, I added an additional 30-minute sit to my day. I do it first thing in the morning before I have coffee (which honestly felt like something I would never deprioritize). So now I sit for 30 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes at night and add an occasional 10 minutes or so if I need to just breathe come back to my body. And this, I believe, is what has allowed me to maintain some of the continuity of awareness I built on retreat.

A few weeks ago during our weekly Dharma practice, I mentioned this to my teacher. I told him I’d been more present with my wife and that I’d had a new energy and awareness of my body and breath that I’d never had before. I asked if this was just residual juju left over from being on retreat, or if something shifted in me. Again, he asked about my daily practice and I told him I’d increased my time on the cushion and he said, “Man, that’s just clocking hours. And it works.”

And I was hit with the obvious realization that it’s always about clocking hours. Look, I’d love to blame Tim Ferris or any of those “life-hacking” people for giving me the idea that I could master anything I wanted to in a short amount of time by being more clever about my approach, but the truth is that I’m a bit lazy I think. I would prefer to gain mastery over something without having to actually do the work.  The same was true for me in early sobriety. I wanted the life of someone who was 9 years sober when I only had 6 months. In hindsight, I’m so grateful that wasn’t available to me. As a matter of fact, my sponsor used to tell me that I couldn’t handle 9 years sober at 6 months, but I didn’t believe him. Back then I thought having more time would make everything easier and I could fast forward through all the consequences of my actions from drinking. Like becoming an officer in the military without going through boot camp. We don’t get to short-circuit gaining experience or mastery.

Sidenote: I find it odd that I have such a strong work ethic and yet I’m always trying to figure out how to work less while.

But what I’m trying to get at here is what Ira Glass told us years ago, “Do a huge volume of work.” I won’t get good at writing because I’m a good reader or just because I so badly want to write well. I won’t reap the benefits of mindfulness if I don’t log time on the cushion. I’m not good at working with leaders and organizations because I chose to be, but because I’ve labored in that field for several years.

This is not new information. But it is a reminder that in order to get where we want to be, especially in a new domain, we have to clock the hours.

Buying new cushions or apps or singing bowls won’t make me more mindful, quite the opposite. I just need to sit down, get quiet, and do the work.

Browsing Twitter to see what my literary heroes are up to won’t make me better at writing, but sitting down and writing more shitty first drafts will put me on my way.

Time takes time. And I’m just gonna get back to the unsexy work of clocking hours.

If you’re not getting what you wanted out of your meditation practice, don’t give up yet. Try putting in some more effort. If you close your eyes and watch your breath for 5 minutes a day, try bumping that up to 10 minutes, twice a day. It’s only 15 more minutes out of your day, but it’s an additional hour and 45 minutes a week. That’s a lot more time spent trying to cultivate some awareness and insight. More time training that wily mind of yours and beginning to see through your old stories and behaviors.

Hell, if it doesn’t work for you, quit. Even the Buddha himself gave the instruction to question what we’re taught, to have our own experience, and draw our own conclusions. Don’t just meditate because every podcast out there told you to, do it because it’s paying dividends both in the moment and over the long term. If you’re not seeing results, shift something. And if you need help, ask for it.