One Meditation a Day Instead of Two

At half past four my workday ends. I sit down, close my eyes and meditate for twenty minutes. At some point I started to resent those twenty minutes.

Why I tried it

I meditate twice a day for twenty minutes: in the morning before anything else, and in the afternoon when I close the day's work. I never questioned the morning one. The afternoon one, I did.

The maths was simple. Twenty minutes a day, five days a week, comes to almost ninety hours a year. More than two full working weeks. In a one-person business where every hour counts, that looked like a lot. The morning session would give me the foundation anyway, I reasoned, and the afternoon one was more habit than need.

What happened

Nothing obvious in the first weeks. I kept working through the afternoon, finished what I had started, and felt pleased to have won some time back.

Then, slowly and almost without noticing, my evenings changed. Work no longer stopped at half past four. It spilled into family time, into dinner, into the bedtime routine. I was there in body and still at work in my head. I went to bed differently and slept differently. I was more tired and more worn out.

It took me almost six months to admit it: I had kept the twenty minutes, and everything else had got worse.

What surprised me

Not that I was more tired. That I didn't pay the price where I had saved. I paid back those twenty afternoon minutes in the evening and the next morning, with interest. I saved at one point in the day and lost at a completely different one, which is why I didn't connect the two for so long.

What I'm taking from this

I went back to twice twenty minutes a day. I no longer think of the afternoon meditation as time I lose. It's the point where my workday ends. Without it, work comes home with me.

If you're wondering what you could drop from your day to make more room, check whether it's one of these airlocks. What costs you isn't always what takes time. Sometimes it's what closes something off.