Hide table of contents

 All of us need some rest in a form different than sleep or a proper 1 hour long meditation. In this post, I'm sharing a technique that has benefited me in this regard.

 

Our mind goes through a lot everyday; capturing new information or creating one (ideas, etc) every moment. This happens irrespective of us being conscious of it or otherwise. The case is just like a road with traffic jam with many different cars running over it, every minute. Sometimes a giant, black car and a small, Mr. Bean-ish car, the other time. Here, the giant black car equates to the overwhelming thoughts we encounter in a day. The small car, something like the popular character Mr. Bean used to drive could be thought of as the fickle thoughts in a day. Huff! we encounter countless thoughts in a day.

Hence our mind needs some rest in a form different than sleep or a proper 1 hour long meditation. It needs rest at frequent intervals.

TRAFFIC CONTROL

This is a practice wherein we will take a pause from everything that we're doing (no matter how important it is) at frequent intervals throughout our day. More about the intervals below but before that let's focus on the 'Pause' here.

I believe, we will never be able to take the pause unless we consciously try to acknowledge it's importance. Our minds will ask us, 'How is this sudden pause more important than my work at hand?'. So, when our mind is asking us this question, we must make ourselves gently understand: 'This one pause can improve the way I'm handling my work at hand by 3X.' After saying this to yourself immediately withdraw from your desk, etc and sit comfortably to start the 'Pause'.

The Intervals

It could be for 5-10 minutes, after every hour on busy days. Try stretching the pause to 30 minutes after every one hour on easy days (example-weekends).

The Practice

So what are we actually going to do in these 'Pause (s)'? We'll firstly take a few deep breathe; yes as cliché as it sounds (can't help it, haha) ! After few deep inhalations, we'll keep seeing the thoughts, whichever may arrive. Mostly, these thoughts could be related to our current work at hand or plans about future.

  • 'Seeing' the thoughts- Earlier in this article, our thoughts were compared to running cars on a road with traffic. Now, we'll imagine that we're looking at these cars through a window, unbothered. Keep 'seeing' your thoughts unbothered just like random cars on a busy road. Gently allow the thoughts to come and go, do not get mingled with them.

BONUS

Yes, this jar is the bonus. If you can get a glass jar like this (using which might not be possible everywhere/every time) and use it while taking the pauses, you'll feel very much relaxed. 'Very much' here might even sound underestimating the amount of relaxation one might experience. Such jars are light weight and easy on our palms while we hold it.

How to use it?

Gently lift the empty, unlid glass jar and place it below one of your ears and close to your neck. Now gently tilt your head towards the mouth of the jar. You will hear something. This sound will be better than all blue noises that are created artificially. This sound will also help you focus on your pauses efficiently.

End notes

Keep practicing traffic control even while on vacations and I bet this will only increase the quality of your off days.

 

Thanks!

Comments2


Sorted by Click to highlight new comments since:

I tried your recommendation with the jar and I was surprised about the sound. It was interesting.

Glad you found it interesting:)

Curated and popular this week
Jay Luong
 ·  · 1m read
 · 
Now accepting applications for Code4Compassion 2025! Join leading AI developers & animal advocates to build practical tech solutions for animal protection in this 24-hour event developed in collaboration between AI for Animals, Electric Sheep, & Open Paws. * 4 problem tracks based on real-world technical needs submitted by animal advocacy orgs * Utilise the first-ever suite of AI models specifically trained for animal advocacy: Pre-trained & fine-tuned models, along with dedicated cloud compute for each team & expert mentorship * Pro-animal, pro-innovation: Strategically positioned between EAGx Bay Area (Feb 21-23) & the AI for Animals 2025 Conference (March 1-2), C4C25 creates a direct pipeline from technical innovation to real-world deployment Whether you’re an AI engineer, full-stack developer, ML researcher, or data scientist, if you’re excited about applying your skills to protect animals, we want to hear from you. * Date: February 26-27, 2025 * Location: Sports Basement Hacking Space, 1590 Bryant Street, San Francisco * Limited support for underserved applicants available. All participants will also receive a 50% discount for tickets to the AI for Animals 2025 conference. Apply now Applications close February 1. Full details at our website. Questions? DM or reply to this post.
 ·  · 2m read
 · 
As I was driving the other day, I saw a group of protestors in front of the local Methodist church.  "God Hates Abortion! Pray to End the Murder!" Various signs to this effect were being held up triumphantly by the rather old people who had decided that this was their best use of a Tuesday morning. This got me curious; how big of an issue is abortion? I realized I didn't know how many abortions happened per year in the U.S. I stopped by the side of the road to look this up, and was flabbergasted to learn that the number of abortion in the U.S. in 2023 was a little over 1 million. There were 1 million abortions in 2023. If you're anything like me, that number is probably a little shocking. I don't know what I expected, but probably more like a couple hundred thousand. For reference, there were about 600,000 malaria deaths in 2023. And that's world-wide. So if: 1. Fetuses counted as people(highly debatable) 2. Fetuses felt as much suffering when being aborted as a malaria victim did when dying(also highly debatable) 3. We don't care about the potential future suffering of the parents or the child post-birth from them not having an abortion(so simplifying as to make this CoT wrong?) 4. Preventing abortion is more tractable than malaria prevention(which I would guess is likely true) Then, that would make abortion a bigger issue than malaria. ---------------------------------------- I was still curious about how big of a problem abortions were compared to other EA causes, so I looked into factory farming on a vague notion that other EAs thought it was an important problem. And wow, was I not prepared for the sheer magnitude disparity. From the USDA Livestock and Meat Domestic Data report(the important section being the Slaughter Statistics), I learned that there were ~9.6 billion land animal deaths from Jan-Nov of 2023.[1] Of these 9.6 billion land animals, ~8.65 billion were just broiler chickens. These means that broiler chickens accounted for almost
 ·  · 2m read
 · 
Below is the executive summary of our new paper, The Manhattan Trap. Please visit the link above to see the full paper. We also encourage discussion and feedback in the comments here. This paper examines the strategic dynamics of international competition to develop Artificial Superintelligence (ASI). We argue that the same assumptions that might motivate the US to race to develop ASI also imply that such a race is extremely dangerous. A race to develop ASI is motivated by two assumptions: that ASI provides a decisive military advantage (DMA) to the first state that develops it, and that states are rational actors aware of ASI's strategic implications. However, these same assumptions make racing catastrophically dangerous for three reasons. First, an ASI race creates a threat to strategic stability that could trigger a war between the US and its adversaries, particularly China. If ASI could provide a decisive military advantage, states would rationally view their adversaries' ASI development as an existential threat justifying military intervention and espionage. A state cannot race to ASI without incurring significant risk of great power conflict unless either (a) its adversaries are unaware of ASI's importance (contradicting the awareness assumption), (b) development can be kept secret (likely impossible given the scale required), or (c) adversaries believe they can win the race (requiring a close competition in which victory is not assured). Second, racing heightens the risk of losing control of an ASI system once developed. We do not take a position on the likelihood of loss of control. Instead, we observe that the argument for racing assumes that ASI would wield a decisive advantage over the militaries of global superpowers; accordingly, losing control of such a technology would also present an existential threat to the state that developed it. We also argue that an ASI would only provide a DMA if its capabilities scaled extremely rapidly—precisely the sce
Relevant opportunities
22
CEEALAR
· · 1m read