I’ve been quite good these past few weeks about writing this newsletter a little bit every day. I keep a list of newsletter topics in my notes app, and on Monday, I pick one and start detailing out an outline. From Tuesday to Friday, I spend 30 minutes after my workday writing, tweaking, and rearranging what I have written so far, and on the weekends I iterate and embellish, tag on the few subsections of my newsletter that I have to update last minute, and publish.
But this week, when I sat down Monday, and then Tuesday, I was just stuck.
I did the same process: I pulled out my notes app and read through the 5-10 ideas that I had accumulated. None of them were bad ideas, but this week none jumped out at me as the topic I wanted to talk about.
I thought, “That’s fine, I can’t put pressure on myself. The only task is to publish. I just have to pick one, start writing, and the rest will come.”
So I picked one and wrote the title into my Substack editor. And then nothing.
I thought, “I’ll give it a rest. I’ve had a long day of work, I’ll come back to it tomorrow.”
Tomorrow came (Tuesday), and once again I sat down in front of my computer. I typed lifetothemax.substack.com into Chrome and opened the post I had started on Monday. Still nothing.
I started to worry, “What if this is the end of my great writing streak? After all, it was bound to happen at some point. I’ve never been a very good writer, and most things I start creatively usually end before I get anywhere good, why should this be any different?” In a moment of unsteadiness, all of my insecurities came flushing back, all of my small yet significant achievements over the past few months dwarfed by self-doubt.
Now obviously, you’re reading this newsletter, which means I got over this brief slump. This isn’t going to be a story about writer’s block, or how I overcame it. After all, I could never write a better one than Natasha Bedingfield.
Instead, this newsletter is about something that was happening completely in parallel (or so I thought) with this brief episode of anxiety.
This week was the first week in which I meditated every day. And I hope that it will be the first of very, very, many.
When I started trying to meditate a few months ago, and when I finally set the goal of meditating every day two weeks ago, I clearly thought this was a plus, but that it wasn’t a goal I needed. Meditation, I thought, is something that anxious people do. “I don’t consider myself a very anxious person”, I wrote. And therefore, I didn’t need meditation. This was the first goal that was not a response to a negative thing in my life.
When I thought I should really be reading more, I set the goal of reading 30 minutes a day.
When I was unhappy with how out of shape I had become, I decided to work out a little every day.
I was unhappy about how little I post online, so I told myself I had to post on TikTok once a week.
My phone screentime was too high, so I decided to reduce it.
I struggled to stick to my goals, so I decided to write a newsletter about them.
But with meditation, there wasn’t something I had to change about my life. Sure, I had a goal to “prioritize my mental health”, which I first came up with a year and a half ago as a new year’s resolution for 2020 when I was in a much worse mental state. But meditation wasn’t going to fix that, and I never intended it to. Yes, it is tangentially related to mental health, but not in the clear-cut way that the other goals were.
Meditation, if anything, seemed like something someone like me, with a newsletter about goals and self-improvement, should do. It fits the brand. “Oh, that guy who tries to set good habits for his life meditates every day? Yeah, that makes sense.”
It wasn’t something I thought I needed.
However, after a week of meditating every day, my perspective on meditation has changed entirely.
The reason I opened this newsletter with the story of my writer’s block is that it is precisely those instances of panic that meditation specifically targets — when a small problem becomes so significant in your mind that it completely blocks out any positive thought.
Meditation is to your emotions what a nap is to fatigue. When you are tired, a small 10-15 minute nap can give you a boost of energy that will carry you through the rest of the day. If your mind is in turmoil and starts to fill with negative or stressful thoughts, sitting down for 10 minutes and meditating can leave you perfectly relaxed, and just like the nap, truly turn your day around.
In my meditations this week, I went through the “Basics” section of the app Headspace (add me here). In these sessions, Andy Puddicombe, the co-founder of the app and teacher of mindfulness discusses how you can “experience” thoughts, including stressful ones, in a way that separates your mind from them. He discusses multiple analogies, like your thoughts being cars on a highway going by as you sit on the shoulder of the road. In this way, you separate yourself from your thoughts — your thoughts are not you. They will come, as they always do, but if you notice them and realize your mind has shifted, you can let the thoughts continue down the highway by just bringing your mind back to the body.
Cultivating this relationship with your thoughts means that when I do get stressed about something (like not being able to come up with a newsletter topic), I don’t have to let that stress consume me. The stress will come and go, and knowing that means that you know it will go when stress inevitably comes. You disarm stress.
Meditation equips me with that power. The power to feel stress but know that it will pass. It’s not about hiding your emotions or suppressing them in some way. Instead, you point them out. You acknowledge they are there, and in doing so, reduce them to just what they are, emotions. That’s powerful.
Because of this, I think I do need meditation. You don’t have to be an anxious person to get anxious at times. And the regularity of meditating every day means you can consistently “check-in” with your mind and your emotions, and compare how they evolves from day to day.
So there you go. I ended up getting over my writer’s block, and I meditated every day. And I will again next week. And the week after. At least I hope 🤞
💪 Goals
Year Progress: 52%
Publish one newsletter a week.
Read 30 minutes a day. (182 hours total)
Work out once a week.
Post 52 videos on TikTok.
Consume less, create more.
Meditate daily.
Paint two paintings.
Do a Leetcode coding problem each week.
Get a tattoo.
Make music.
Pretty good week. Reading and working out went well. I posted on TikTok 4 times. Screen time was up but mostly because of time spent on the phone with my girlfriend. As I said above I meditated daily, and I also did a Leetcode problem every day. I’m getting a tattoo later this month. I’ll have a think this week about how I want to go about painting and making music (and how I’ll fit them into my schedule).
📥 Input
Newsletters posted: 22 📈 +1
Hours read this year: 96 📈 +2.5 (on schedule)
Workouts this year: 53 📈 +5 (26 ahead of target)
TikToks posted in 2021: 9 (@maxzechef) + 8 (@maxlascombe) = 17 📈 +4 (10 behind target)
Screen time this week: 28h
Number of times meditated: 12 📈 +7 (2 behind schedule)
📤 Output
Newsletter subscribers: 45 (thank you ❤️)
Books read this year: 15
Number of abs: 1
TikTok followers: 126 (@maxzechef) + 38 (@maxlascombe)
📚 Reading
Finished this week:
“The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo”, Taylor Jenkins Reid. ★★★★☆
Currently reading:
“The Hobbit”, J. R. R. Tolkien.
Please leave any book recommendations in the comments and add me on Goodreads.
🗓 Daily Routine
Thanks to all my subscribers and readers new and old. Really means a lot that you read this week after week. If you’re not reading from your email inbox, please consider subscribing below:
See you next Sunday ❤️
In the meantime, you can read last week’s newsletter: