Author: Harry Curtis
Published: 2023-05-19
Last Updated: 2023-12-15
Tracking my meditation habit over a three-month period.
This case study examines the data from my meditation habit over three months, between 1 February and 1 May 2023. I explore how my practice changed over time and how environmental and contextual factors may have caused those changes. Furthermore, I describe how insights from this case study connect to recent psychology research on willpower.
The data set shows how the duration of each session changed from day to day, as well as the techniques used. I set out a specific schedule to follow before the period began. By the end of the three months, I had completed 81 per cent of my meditation sessions, with most interruptions happening in the final two weeks.
The area chart (Fig. 2) shows that I meditated for about 27 hours between 1 February and 1 May, meditating on 73 days and missing 17 days, equivalent to an 81 per cent success rate.
The longest uninterrupted period of daily practice was 32 days, from 6 February until 9 March. The longest abstention was six days between 12 and 17 April. "Falling off the wagon" is sometimes used to describe breaking a habit, usually with a negative connotation. Interestingly, I seem to fall off in twos, two days after the first fall. One explanation could be that the demotivation after breaking a "winning" streak makes it harder to get back on the wagon. Once you realise the effort it took to maintain the habit for that long, the idea of repeating it can impede starting again.
If the "falling off the wagon twice" hypothesis is true, I could modify my environment in the days after breaking a streak to make meditating easier. That could be as simple as setting out a chair for meditation or going to bed earlier the night before. In other words, marginal changes that increase the probability of success.
As can be seen from the interruptions, making a plan was insufficient to guarantee the continuity of my meditation habit. However, the two most extensive periods of interruption happened after my mum came to stay in our apartment. Our apartment isn't large, maybe around 40 square metres, with two bedrooms and a bathroom. With my mum there, it was me, my wife, my mum and our cat sharing the same space. A quiet environment is fundamental to my meditation practice, as I imagine it is for many people. I tend to wake up earlier than my wife but at the same time as my mum. Thus, in the early morning, when I used to have the living room to myself, I was now sharing the space with my mother.
The bar chart (Fig. 3) shows that the most commonly practised technique was the Lying-Down, followed by the Sitting Meditation.
Many meditation techniques have a specific purpose. They bring attention to a single sense or part of the body. On the other hand, the Lying-Down and Sitting Meditations are general techniques. Thus, their focal point is the breath, which tends to be the most common anchor for attention. For this reason, they serve as fallback techniques when there is no overall intention for the practice other than mindfulness. For future meditation schedules, I have decided to dedicate more time to methods such as the Nowscape and Soundscape Meditations, as I have found them more engaging than the general techniques.
The line graph (Fig. 4) shows the fluctuations in the length of my meditation practice over time. It also highlights the interruptions in my meditation practice during the three months.
I decided on the schedule for my meditation practice beforehand, so the longer 30-minute practices occurred at regular intervals of a week, plus a 45-minute practice session every 45 days (more or less). By deciding on the schedule beforehand, I intended to reduce the number of choices. Thus, reducing the daily cognitive strain and, hopefully, nudging the odds of maintaining the meditation practice in my favour.
In mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) programs, meditation instructors often recommend 45 minutes of practice per day. Although my schedule allows for a long practice every day (at least in theory), I have found that, in practice, attempting to set an extended meditation session every day significantly increases the chances of breaking my habit. It's a trade-off between regularity and intensity. From my experience, most teachers say that a daily practice of even a few minutes is more beneficial than a less frequent but lengthy practice. Nevertheless, I have found weekly sessions of thirty minutes plus helpful for improving my attention.
How do we explain our behaviour when we don't do what we intended? When we break a helpful habit, it isn't uncommon to experience self-blame. Often, we see ourselves as the primary cause, breaking the habit as a personal failure. Each person blames themselves more or less, but a charitable conception of willpower, and a conception supported by modern psychology, is that activities that are not immediately gratifying (in other words, tasks that require willpower) deplete our stores of mental energy. (Baumeister 1997) The name of this phenomenon is ego depletion. With a modern understanding of habit formation as the minimisation of ego depletion, self-blame transforms into a question of how we can modify task conditions to improve the chances of maintaining our habit. It also allows for a charitable conception of failure that does not reduce personal responsibility but teaches us to see ourselves as part of our environment and not alienate ourselves from it. Thus, a busy or stressful environment is simply less conducive to meditation than a quiet one, reducing the chances of meditating. Waking up earlier when the apartment is quiet or assigning a separate space for meditation are methods that increase the chances of meditating.
One way to increase the odds of meditating is by reducing unnecessary choices. In his book "The Paradox of Choice", Barry Schwartz argues that, although freedom is one of the cornerstones of Western societies (specifically, the USA), an abundance of choice in some situations seems to paralyse, rather than free us. (Schwartz 2004) When you have to decide which task to do first in the morning or which meditation technique to use, you use a small portion of your mental energy. In turn, you have less energy to do tasks that require willpower. Conversely, behaviour becomes a habit when it is automatic. That is not to say the activity itself is necessarily performed on autopilot, only that we make the decision leading to the task automatically. Otherwise, that would be counter-productive to developing mindfulness. One way you can effectively automate habits is with "habit stacking", a term used by James Clear to describe linking new habits with well-established, older ones. (Clear 2018) I have found that I can stack my meditation habit by practising immediately after using the bathroom in the morning. By associating one with the other, the theory is that I will eventually start walking straight out of the bathroom in the morning and into my meditation practice.
Although this case study has examined my meditation habit, it has applications beyond nurturing mindfulness. Any helpful habit that you want to implement, but are struggling to stick with can benefit from the insights from my practice; for example, preparing your environment is an effective way of developing a gym habit, such as leaving your sports kit out on your bed when you leave for work in the morning, or getting changed as soon as you leave the bathroom. Habit stacking can even increase reading time for students by associating picking up a book with finishing your breakfast. Furthermore, stacking helps those who want to break unhelpful habits, as it brings awareness to how they may connect to other behaviours; for example, immediately looking in the fridge every day after work may contribute significantly to overeating. Most importantly, a better understanding of the recent developments in psychology has the potential to improve mental health. When we appreciate our role in the wider context and act mindfully, we can increase our happiness and the happiness of those around us.
- Baumeister, R. F; Bratslavsky, E; Muravan, M; Tice, D. M. (1998). Ego Depletion: Is the Active Self a Limited Resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1998, Vol. 74, No. 5, 1252-1265.
- Clear, J. (2018). Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. Penguin Random House.
- Schwartz, B. (2004). The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. Harper Perennial.