How I (Finally) Started Meditating

This morning I took a cold shower and I didn't really want to do it. I mean, who in the dead of winter wants to take a cold shower? But it's one of those things that when I do it, I feel so much better afterwards. Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Connect the Dots. I'm so glad that you are spending time with me today. Thank you so much for the kind words, comments, ratings, and subscriptions that you've given to the show. It means so much to me. Thank you so much, especially to Tammy and Mark and Justin who have left 5-star ratings and reviews on iTunes for the Connect the Dots Podcast. No matter where you are listening, I would love if you would subscribe and share any way that you can because it really helps the show grow. Now the thing that I want to talk about today, I've been thinking about a lot since the new year began. And I'm recording this on January 8th, 2021. And at the beginning of a new year, we've spent a couple of episodes talking about this, it's a big time for habits and for goals and new things that you want to do. And for me, it brings a new realization of little things that I haven't made consistent habits, but when I do them, I can feel a huge part of my work, my life, my energy shift. The struggle that I find with each of these things that we're going to dive into is they don't feel particularly urgent at the time that I want to do them, and something else always feels more urgent at the time. So I mentioned the cold shower. Now that's— that might be kind of a different thing because that's just a mindset. I'm already in the shower. Let's just make the water cold for a minute or two and really, you know, get the body charged up. Something that I've been thinking about and trying to practice on a daily basis, which I've never been very good at, is meditation. And I've always struggled with just being still in general. I am, I like to think, a man of action. And so I always want to be doing something. To just sit feels like— feels like I'm giving up, even in a moment. I know that sounds silly to say out loud, but it is something that I struggle with.. But here's the big thing: when I'm able to sit with myself and my thoughts— and that's probably more of the scary thing that I'm running from, to be honest, if we're really going to dive into the psyche of all this— what I'm doing at the end, like the way my mind is cleared out after I'm done meditating or manifesting, like visualizing the way that I want my life to be, then I feel so much better and more focused as I go into the day. Now this should come as no surprise to me, and if you have been following my YouTube channel for a little while, you have probably heard me talk about journaling in the same way. It can feel like I don't have time or there's something more urgent to do when I have set aside time to journal. I have found a very similar feeling after I'm done with the session, and especially when I'm chaining a lot of sessions together with journaling or with meditating, my mind and my life feels so much clearer. Instead of rushing into the day or going to bed at night with my mind a jumble of emotions and thoughts and reactions and judgments, I'm able to clear out my mind with meditating. Oftentimes I've referred to journaling as a form of meditation for me, and I'm able to clear out my thoughts, get them on paper, But these are all examples of things that I intend to do, but they often don't feel as urgent in the moment. You may be thinking of habits or practices like this in your own life—things that in the moment maybe don't feel as gratifying, but the long-term effect and impact of doing them can change everything about your life. In my case, I will often push off something like reading, like note-taking, like meditation. All of these things that I know are important, make a difference in my life, make a difference in my work, but I will often feel like, "Oh, I've got a new podcast to record." I know this was something that I made a decision about today. Or I have a new YouTube video to record, or I have to write that email. There are all these things that I'm like, "Well, that has to go out today," or "That has to go out in the next couple of days." So I could do the work that I have to do, or I could spend 30 minutes meditating. Now maybe I don't need to spend 30 minutes meditating, but you understand the decision, and oftentimes it is pretty binary. At least it is for me. It's not like, oh, I'll just spend 10 minutes meditating. And part of the challenge in this for me is one of the excuses that I make in the moment is like, well, I'm just going to spend all 10 minutes of meditating thinking about the YouTube video that I have to make or thinking about the podcast that I need to record. But that's not the point. When you really sit and think about it, the point is to sit with yourself and to do this thing that you know is going to make an impact on your life. There's a prioritization framework called the Eisenhower Method, and it's a 4-quadrant grid that you can set up. Think of it as importance on the y-axis and then urgency on the x-axis. But you have these 4 quadrants and the place that things like— I'm just going to read a few to you that I always kind of fall into: reading, note-taking, meditation, breathwork, prayer, journaling. All of these things I've realized in the Eisenhower Box, they all fall into this important but non-urgent category, into this important and non-urgent quadrant. And It's interesting to think about that because I know that they are important. If you ask me, they are important. I've done them enough and I've seen enough positive outcomes from doing them, even in the small chunks of time that I have, to know they are important and they serve me well. But they're not urgent. I can always push them off, and oftentimes I will push them off. And the things that end up being like urgent and important, those are just always the things that I lean into first. And at face value, there's nothing wrong with that. I need to get content out. That is the work. That is the work that I do. And it wouldn't really matter even if I wasn't in business for myself now, if I wasn't a full-time content creator. When I worked at ConvertKit, when I worked at Podia, when I worked at Camp Rockmont for Boys in Black Mountain, North Carolina— shout out— it was all still the same thing. And that is like, well, I have to respond to this email. Well, I have to like put together this program plan. Well, I have to like figure figure out this app mockup, all of these different things always came to mind for me as more important and especially more urgent than doing those things like breathwork, meditation, mindfulness, reading, taking proper notes. So what we're talking about isn't just setting up another habit loop to say, okay, 9:00 AM when I come to my office, before I really get started, I'm going to sit and meditate for 15 minutes, or I'm going to read for 30 minutes and then take notes. Those are ways that I know I can set up a habit loop. I've done those things before. I really understand how they work. But since the urgency isn't necessarily there, it's more than just setting up a habit. It's making a clear decision and a choice that this matters to me and that long-term this is what is going to make a profound impact on my life, on my work, and the way that I'm able to communicate and share and my ideas with people. Let's take reading and Smart Notes or Quick Notes as an example of something that I do pretty consistently. Many of you will remember the 90-Day Notes Challenge that we just wrapped up. And the thing that is really important to me about this is I know when I'm reading and I'm taking notes, especially since a lot of my work comes from ideas and not just the ideas of others, but how I connect the dots on those different ideas. And concepts and things that I'm coming up with. So the more that I read— I realize this saying it out loud— but the more that I read and the better I take notes and the more consistent I am with doing both of those practices, the better my work will be and the better I'll be able to communicate. The clearer I will be when I am sharing ideas, when I'm making videos, when I'm recording podcasts, when I'm writing emails. All of it becomes easier, but in the moment in the moment when it's like, okay, I've set aside time to read. Way too often I'll find myself in that top right, like, well, recording a podcast is important too, and it's very urgent. Recording that next YouTube video, editing that next YouTube video, you have to get it out. It's important and it's urgent. This other thing, it's important but it's not as urgent. And way too often I'll shift into the top right side of that Eisenhower box. Because if I ignore learning and development and research and note-taking and reading for too long, what starts to happen is that my entire business, all of my content, can start to grow stagnant. It can be unclear. It can be vague because I haven't spent enough time processing my ideas and really spending time making sure that I am communicating them to you in the best, clearest, most helpful way. And just to hammer home how impactful these practices and habits are, even if they don't feel as urgent in the moment, is an example of reading and note-taking. And note-taking especially, because what I'm doing when I'm taking proper, quick, or smart notes is I'm distributing my creativity across many moments throughout the day, week, and month. I'm collecting these different notes, each of them individual contextual pieces of knowledge that help me just assemble a new piece of content when it is time to create it or perform it or publish it. When I have created many of these podcast episodes, it hasn't been a case of, well, let's just at the top of my mind right now, it's thinking about a particular topic—habits, time management, annual planning—and going through my notes and taking out individual ones and assembling them into a new content stack that I am reviewing and kind of assembling for that particular podcast episode. I do the same for email newsletters. I will often do the same for YouTube videos. Now you can start to see how if I ignore for too long my reading and note-taking habit, then I start to struggle with content creation. The things that I want to put together, I'm just like thinking of off the top of my mind, which doesn't, which doesn't lead to as good of a piece of content because it's all just kind of on the fly. Instead, it's much better for me to go back through my notes, and often even what I'll do is I'll start creating new notes or add new context to the piece of content that I'm creating because I have all of these ideas, all of these notes that I've developed in the past. Okay, so how can we tie these concepts and these principles together for you? I want you to think about and maybe go back and listen to the time management tips episode that came out right before this one, because there are two concepts in there, two frameworks of organizing your time that can be really helpful for this. One of them is the 70/20/10 rule from Google, and the other is the 50/30/20 rule from Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and many other business leadership strategy and entrepreneur books. I would think of this first as a part of the Jim Collins 50/30/20 rule. And just to give you the quick and dirty version of it is Jim Collins tracks all of his time to make sure that he is spending at least 50% of his work on creative time, 30% of his work on teaching, learning, researching, and then 20% on the admin and managerial tasks. So what I would do for this is think of 1 or 2 of these habits or practices that you know are important but don't feel as urgent, and making sure that they are a part of either your 50% creative time or your 30% teaching, learning, researching time. Categorizing your practice in this way is a really good indicator to yourself that it is important enough to make time for. And what we're realizing is the more that we make time for these different practices—and each one is going to be unique and special to you—the more that we will see over the long term our work our life improve. One clarification that I want to make about how and where to categorize whatever practice it is that you want to implement and mark as important in your life and in your work is that it's going to be unique to you, and different practices may fall into different categories. Like reading and note-taking for me falls into the teaching, learning, and researching part of my day and of my time tracking. Because when I think about how much more creative and focused I am after meditating, how it acts as windshield wipers for my mind, then I feel okay putting that into my creative time for the day, for the week, even if I'm not in the act of creating new content. You see the, you see the distinction there? So think about what the outcome is, what the benefit is to you for the practice that you're wanting to mark as important and spend more time on this year. That will help you decide where to categorize it, if you want to do that at all. It's totally fine with me, and you should feel totally confident if you're just like, man, Matt, you're right, I've been slacking on this thing, or it's just kind of stayed in the important but not urgent category of my work and I haven't been spending time on it, I'm just gonna do it. Awesome. Just do it. Now there's another concept that we talked about in the time management tips episode, and that was the Google 70/20/10 rule. And the quick and dirty version of Google's 70/20/10 rule is they spend 70% of their time on the core business, which could be like Search, AdSense, Gmail, and Google Earth, and then 20% of their time on exciting new opportunities, and then 10% of their time on crazy ideas that could change everything. And I think a really good application or use of that 10% time for you is to make sure that you're spending 10% of your time, say 4 hours a week, you know, work time, making sure that you are spending it in a practice, in a habit, in in some type of pursuit that you know is important but isn't like— doesn't feel as urgent. Any of these examples that I've given you. And that's kind of what— how I'm looking at it right now. If I can spend 10% of my time each week reading, taking notes, researching, making sure that I'm connecting ideas and spending time on the like on the important tasks that I know will keep me sharp, help make better content for you, and help grow the business long term. Here's my challenge for you as we go into a new week: make sure that you are prioritizing time in your week for the practices and habits that you know are going to make a long-term impact on you, even if they don't feel as urgent in the short term, like right in the moment. Those are the things that can change everything for you in the long term, in the big picture. And so keep in mind also, when we've talked about habits and systems, is that even though I've referenced things like up to an hour, a couple hours, or 4 hours over the course of the week, if you're not used to doing this— and I'm going to do the same thing for meditation— even if you're not used to doing this, let's start small. 5, 10, 15 minutes of All right, let's do the thing. Let's complete the system. Let's complete the loop of this habit that we want to be building and make sure that we're making time for them. The other thing that I'm going to do is making sure that I'm reminding myself and posting reminders, Post-it notes, even around my office and around my house to help me remember that this matters long term. And when I get anxious or I get kind of frustrated about like, no, I really have this other thing to do, that I'm taking a deep breath. And this is where meditation and mindfulness really help. But I'm taking a deep breath and I'm coming back to remembering this really matters. This helps you innovate. This helps you be sharp. This helps you deliver better content long-term. And if you never prioritize it, then things are not going to get better. So that's Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you're here at the end, and just a quick sidebar about creativity in general, I have to say that for most of this episode, I felt like I was doing a terrible job. And it's a really interesting and a personal challenge that you have to get over of like, oh, I think this kind of sucks. But it is time to ship and it is time to publish. If you are in a situation where you are in the beginning stages of creative work and every time you try and write, record, or film something, you're like, this sucks, I'm not going to publish it, I hope you know that this episode that I am like literally finishing up right now, in the moment and probably while I'm editing, I'm gonna be like this sucks, and it's still gonna go out, and I'm gonna get better for the next one. I'm gonna get better because I'm gonna continue to prioritize reading and notes and organization and making sure that I'm ahead of schedule and not stressed out. But if this is something that you want to get better at— publishing, shipping, practicing creative work— please sign up to my email list. I talk about this a lot. I also have a special productivity course that you can go through called the Productivity Power-Up. And it's all about how to organize your time, your projects, many types of different information content that you want to get out in the world and making sure that you can do it on a reliable, consistent, healthy basis. You can sign up and learn about both of those things. But thank you so much for being a part of Connect the Dots. Thank you for listening. Some of you watching on YouTube as well, shout out to Tammy. Thank you for watching. I know that Tammy watches the YouTube channel for the podcast. But thank you so much, everyone. I can't wait to share a new episode of Connect the Dots with you next Monday. So see you then, or talk to you then. Thanks, everybody. Bye.