Addicted to Inhaling? How to Recover.

Young people today have good news - they might live to be 150!  The bad news is, they'll have to work seventy hours a week, the whole way there.  It's easier to sustain an endeavor, like breathing, if there is an equal amount of rest time.  Inhale (work and energy), exhale (rest and surrender).  When there is balance and rhythm, the work and the rest begin to feel the same. 

Cats spend 18 hours per day time sleeping.  Not all at once, they sleep in spurts, ie. the catnap.  They are masters of recovery.  It turns out we need these short spurt patterns too.   Instead we live in overstimulated six to eight-hour chunks.

Rowers spend more time with their oars in the air, than with them in water.  Sustainability and pacing is necessary for any valuable endeavor, like staying alive.  If you push anything too hard, it'll wear out.  Your washing machine, your car, your body, even your shoes need a day-off to recover.

Some monks spend so much time in meditation that they only need two to four hours of sleep per night.  A typical day could include a series of shorter single tasks like waking at 4am, doing chores, meditation, a group meal, group meditation, physical exercise, meditation, lunch, prayer, physical exercise, community work, meditation, last meal, prayer, sleep.  Zero multitasking.

Without calculating the answer to my next question, do you know how many hours there are in a week?  Most people have no idea, and yet they throw their hours into various activities without having any idea of how they're spending them.

50 work
48 sleep
25 eating and preparing meals
16 texting and online (come on, don't kid yourself.)
14 tv
12 grooming
10 talking on the phone
8 driving,
6 shopping....
so far totaling: 189 hours

There are 168 hours in a week.  Enter, multitasking, or, how to squeeze 6 lbs of potatoes  into a 5 lb bag.  Studies show that multitasking wears us out more than we realize because it's the anti-recovery.  Sure, throw a load of laundry in while you make dinner with the tv on in the background, quickly check your email ten times while something simmers, sort the snail-mail.  Answer two phone calls while simultaneously checking someone's homework.  Eat dinner while watching tv.   Quiet-time makes overstimulated people very nervous and loud.  We're a country full of a juggling junkies and buskers.  It's the equivalent of having our oars in the water 18 hours a day.

Find the air.  

1. For one thing, read about other people who have.  Tim Ferriss, The Four Hour Workweek.

2. Meditate.  Without music.  Yoga.

3. Single task.

4. Schedule actual blank time.  Eliminate the word "busy" from your vocabulary. 

5. Make sure the last hour before bed is senza any outside stimulation.

6. Come up with two more suggestions (not ten, or twenty, that's too busy!) and share them here.

There's more to say, but I don't want to overwork the post.  ; )  In all things there is a balance of positive and negative space.

Exhale.
~jw