Know what I hate? Meditation.
Admitting that isn’t easy, because lots of people I admire swear by meditating, and if you admit you can’t do it, they get that frowny-faced, pitying look, like announcing to a cluster of Melville scholars at a party that you couldn’t slog through “Moby Dick” but kind of like that singer Moby.
It isn’t for lack of trying that I don’t meditate. I do not have a quiet mind, and sitting there with half my brain telling the other half to be quiet is like listening to an old married couple fight about who started the fight.
So, I bought audios and I took classes. I even bought a special meditation pillow, like a little purple rectangular-butt futon. The meditation pillow sat across from me in my office for years, taunting me. Eventually, a visiting pooch lifted a leg on it, and I was secretly pleased to have an excuse to toss it out.
Mental Skills
But I’m not here to whine about my failings. No, this is part of a series I’m calling Love/Hate, where we celebrate innovations that take an annoyance or frustration and make it go away. And if you feel about meditation like I do, I have two solutions.
The first is a sort-of computer game called “The Journey to Wild Divine,” at www.wilddivine.com. You travel the world by mastering mental skills. The meditation part is that you wear biofeedback monitors on your fingertips, and, for instance, aim a bow and arrow by learning to control your heart rate. It’s not meditation, but a meditative experience suited to the goal-obsessed.
The other suggestion is a device called a MindSpa, available at www.avstim.com. You put on goggles and earbuds, then choose one of the programs and the device takes over your brain. You tell it what kind of mental training you want, and it flashes tiny lights and mutters electronic sounds, which are meant to alter your brain waves.
The results seem to me to be just what I was supposed to achieve with meditation. I know, it lacks the self-discipline of becoming a skilled meditator — in fact, the process reminds me of an older book, “The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment,” by Thaddeus Golas (Gibbs Smith, 2002) — but hey, whack this with your Zen master stick: It works.
Which is a good place for a comment from the words of 17th-century Japanese poet Basho:
From time to time
The clouds give rest
To the moon beholders.
And while I’m at it, let me pass along another love/hate:
Like everyone, I hate airline travel. And like most business travelers, I dread the thought of checking luggage. So I take my carry-on (which should be called a “drag-on”) and my computer case. Both are packed to black-hole density, and with one in each hand, you can either walk or use a hand, but not both.
The Hybrid Bag
The solution? A BBP hybrid bag (www.bbpbags.com). This is a computer case that has a messenger bag strap that converts into backpack straps. So you wear it and have a free hand, and you don’t arrive at your gate with a backache.
One friend told me that he couldn’t wear a backpack with a business suit, thinking it would be “undignified.”
I told him, “First, you can take off the backpack straps when you arrive; but you’re flying, and one of the things you are no longer allowed to take on an airplane is your dignity.”
So, those are two of my love/hates. If you’ve encountered a product or service that qualifies, please let me know at dale@dauten.com.
Dale Dauten is the founder of The Innovators’ Lab. His latest book is “(Great) Employees Only: How Gifted Bosses Hire and De-Hire Their Way to Success.”