I've had a week off from posting on social media, so instead, here is an article I generated from a talk I gave on Saturday, 31 January.
The theme for this year is what I call "the Frictionless Way". Those practices that yield the greatest benefit with the least effort.
Most advice about self-improvement tells you to work on your weaknesses. That approach can be unhelpful. You can find yourself ruminating about what's wrong with you instead of building on what's already working.
There's a smarter approach: find the thing that benefits you most while requiring the least effort, then put all your effort into that.
This isn't about being lazy. It's about discovering and applying leverage. And nowhere does this matter more than in meditation and mental training.
Why "Easy" Isn't a Problem
The "Easiness" of a practice is an indication of its effectiveness.
When someone tells me they can "only do relaxation meditation," for example, they usually say it apologetically. Like they've failed some test.
If you can practice meditation frictionlessly (meaning you get benefits and it feels effortless), you've cracked it. That's not a consolation prize. That's the goal. You've found your path forward. The mistake is treating inner work like external work. In the outside world, cause and effect are straightforward. If I push an item, such as a cup, a little, it moves a little. If I push harder, it moves more.
Internal work is not like external work. Want to see this in action? Try to not think about pink elephants. The harder you try, the more pink elephants will fill your mind. Your mind is trying to help you. It is whicekcing whether you're thinking about the thing you told it not to think about. It's trying to help you.
A frictionless practice is feedback. Its data about what gives you benefits right now. That can change, of course, but if it does, you can always change your practices.
Mental Training vs. Distraction
Not all meditation is equal. Some is genuine mental training. Some is just another distraction in a world already drowning in distractions.
Go to YouTube and search for "meditation." You'll find endless pages of content. Most of it won't help you. The gems are hard to spot unless you know what actual mental training looks like and what benefits it provides. The difference matters because mental training changes outcomes. Real, measurable, physical and psychological outcomes.
Herbert Benson figured this out decades ago. He was a cardiovascular surgeon in the United States with a busy practice, performing cardiovascular surgeries, providing patient care, and overseeing aftercare. He discovered that meditation and yoga fundamentally changed his patients' outcomes. They got better in ways that surgery alone couldn't explain.
A recent study from India confirms this. A cardiovascular practice there prescribes a form of yoga (largely meditation), combined with brisk walks and a clean diet. The results? Arterial calcification reverses in ways that transform patients' lives. This isn't fringe science. The evidence is overwhelming and essentially undisputed.
The Core Principle of The Frictionless Way
Here's the rule that makes everything else work: never do a meditation that doesn't leave you feeling neutral or better. Don't grind through meditations that make your mind more chaotic or make you uncomfortable.
If your mind races during a practice, if you're beating yourself up, if you feel worse than when you started, stop. Go back to something that works more effectively. Do your reliable go-to practice. This isn't giving up. It's smart training. It is, as you can see from the title of this article, Coherent Action.
Forcing yourself through discomfort in mental training doesn't build strength. It builds resistance. That resistance makes future practice harder, not easier.
Building Your Personal Toolkit
Most people end up with a small number of core practices. Not dozens. Not one. A small, reliable set that delivers real-world benefits.
Here's an example. I've barely slept the last couple of nights. Visitors threw my schedule off completely. When I'm sleep-deprived like this, I use a specific practice called hypnagogic meditation. The more tired you are, the sooner you benefit from it. At the end, I feel as refreshed as if I'd had a proper night's sleep.
This isn't unique to me. The US Federal Aviation Authority uses a version of this called "controlled rest."
When a pilot hasn't slept enough, the crew lets them take a twenty-minute nap. NASA uses it too. It's called the 'NASA nap'. The military uses it in aviation. The meditation I do tips me into that controlled-rest state, and then I'm recovering from sleep deprivation in real time.
When you find a practice that solves an actual problem in your life, that becomes your anchor. You can use it on the bus, at your desk, before bed, or when you wake up. It grows because you use it regularly.
Why Try Different Practices?
If you already have something that works, then why experiment?
Because moving between practices has its own power. Once you've built a skill, you'll notice that different situations call for different approaches. When your mind is racing at bedtime, you might need one practice to settle down, then another to actually fall asleep. The order matters. Learning which sequence works for which situation--that's the advanced skill you're building through trial and error.
This is why I teach multiple practices in sessions rather than one long meditation. I'm helping you test different approaches. You keep what works and forget the rest. You also notice what doesn't work for you right now, though you need to realise that may change in time. Over time, you assemble a personal toolkit matched to your actual life.
Getting Started
The path of The Frictionless Way of meditating is patient experimentation. Try new practices. Notice what feels effortless. Notice what delivers benefits. Notice what leaves you worse off, or what leaves you neutral.
Three questions to guide your exploration:
- Does this practice leave me feeling neutral or better? If not, stop and try something else. There's no prize for suffering through meditation.
- Does this solve a real problem? Do I benefit? The best practices connect to real situations — stress, sleep, focus, recovery and regaining calmness.
Abstract benefits matter less than concrete ones.
- Can I do this regularly? A practice you'll actually use beats a "better" practice that you won't. We build our practices. We aren't who we want to be. We are what we do.
The Frictionless Way isn't about avoiding effort. It's about directing effort where it actually pays off. It is a combination of Wu-wei and Personal Kaizen in practice (see my earlier posts on these below) Find what works. Do more of it. Let the rest go. Experiment. Repeat.
References to previous articles in this area:
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