Lately I've been able to meditate consistently, so a note on that.
I'd often seen and heard "Meditation is great!" and "Meditation is amazing!" — but I never fully bought it.
I'd practiced in periods before and vaguely felt effects, but because it was vague I never truly bought in, and I couldn't stick with it.
I don't know if I'll keep going, but on the conviction side I've gone much deeper, so I have a hunch I might continue. That said, it's only been about a week — if I stop, I'll write about that too.
By the way, not only for meditation: I can't continue what I haven't bought into. Put another way, without a gut-level click, discomfort wins and I think, "Is there even a point?"
So convincing yourself before acting matters — and more than that, you often need thinking patterns for how you convince yourself.
Slight digression: among founders around me, people who convince themselves quickly also seem to act quickly and get results. They may risk not feeling self-contradiction — but if they succeed, PDCA afterward is also fast, and compound success adds up.
The trigger for finally trying to convince myself about meditation was reading a certain novel.
There's a short story collection by SF writer Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others (Japanese title: "The Story of Your Life").
In one of the shorts, the protagonist's intelligence rises through drugs. As an image, think of an SF version of Flowers for Algernon.
As the protagonist gets smarter, they become able to metaprogram their own thinking and bodily control, and every kind of thought becomes more sophisticated.
"Metaprogramming the brain" felt like a good phrase — and I wondered whether meditation could be called that.
Until now the image of meditation was too dominated by "think about nothing," "be here now," "focus on the breath" — so when thoughts arose during practice I felt guilty, and when I couldn't focus on breath the discomfort was so large I quit before feeling benefits.
This time, to establish my own metaprogramming-style approach to meditation, I discussed it with Claude until I was convinced. Again I felt: generative AI gives new knowledge, and discussions are less likely to scatter uselessly or drift across mismatched levels of abstraction — very helpful. It's like having a university professor with a huge specialized background do one-on-one discussion that isn't position-talk for the sake of their methods.
I put it into a document; here are some extracted essentials.
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・Meditation isn't merely a relaxation technique; it can be understood as metaprogramming of brain and consciousness. Metaprogramming means a program's ability to change and optimize itself. Likewise, meditation is conscious intervention in the thinking process itself — a tool for changing patterns and frameworks of thought.
・"Thinking" and "meditation" aren't opposites; they differ only in level of abstraction — like the relationship between "programming" and "OS." That's the difference between conscious processing and unconscious processing.
These are highly convincing premises: thoughts arising during meditation aren't a problem — rather, without a mutual reinforcement loop, both stall.
It's a higher-level concept, but the fresh point is there's no ranking of better/worse.
On that basis, the aim of meditation is to separate the "subject" who thinks from the "observer" who watches that self.
So even if you train the thinking self — analytical thinking — without meta-thinking you can fall into self-referential loops like a buggy program. With observer mode, you can attend to the process that produces thoughts and "unconsciously" correct and operate. If you only use analytical thinking from another angle, you've just swapped programs and errors still appear — so you switch to observer mode, interrupt automatic reaction patterns, and cultivate the ability to choose another response.
Conversely, if you only update the OS and lack a thinking "I" (analytical thinking), the programs themselves aren't improved and problems don't get solved.
For example: if you only keep meditating and never engage analytical thinking, you're more likely to get scammed into buying "sage-taught meditation school" info products.
Improving analytical thinking and metacognition through meditation is one learning loop: even if too many thoughts arise in meditation, recognizing them as a thinking pattern, labeling them, and learning through that flow updates the whole system. In other words, treat it as a "training opportunity," not a "failure."
As a flow, start with about 5–10 minutes and extend if it feels workable.
This staged processing model works well:
Recognition: notice a thought exists ("Ah, an anger memory is surfacing")
Observation: for a few seconds, observe the nature of the thought
Labeling: attach a neutral label to the type ("This is a thought about the past")
Redirection: gently but clearly return attention to the breath
This integrated approach is more effective than simply "eliminate thoughts" or "just keep observing," and develops both metacognitive circuits and executive control circuits.
That's all.
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