alt Hacker NewsMen who stare at walls
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meditation helps empty hippocampus. its pretty close to what sleep does. 15 mins a day is plenty.
its good to realise its called a practice since u practice it. no one every really things of nothing
Discovering meditation from first principles
Why not just take a quick stroll, if you are close to anything green - park, nature even better. Nature soothes like nothing else.
Meditation from first principles.
If staring at walls doesn't do it - try playing guitar instead. Works for me and it's more fun than a wall IMHO.
@aselimov3 Thank you for the reminder! This is something I used to do all the time when I was younger, and I have gotten away from it. Very helpful.
I do not stare at walls, but when I get in this state I go for a 30 minute walk, with what sounds like the same effect.
Theta re reinventing meditation from first principles
I have to say that the reworded title is what made me read the article. It is almost poetic. I could see it being a title of a campy movie.
A wall or a goat?
A lot of people are referencing meditation. Ultimately that's not a terribly well-defined word. It may match some broad ones, but there's a lot of narrow ones that it wouldn't.
If staring at a wall helps then don't let me stop you but I've sometimes done something very similar by just sitting in a chair without any cell phone, book, electronic item, etc. until I'm very bored. Not like "gritting my teeth, come on we can do another 15 minutes let's goooooo" like an exercise push, but definitely waiting past the first couple of twitches of boredom until it's a constant. It's kind of an interesting way to start a vacation, really helps disconnect from work very quickly. It can be some hours, though.
I do find that this only happens for me if I'm "doing nothing". I see others suggesting exercise, or something else, and those are absolutely good in their own way. But they are not the same thing as just doing nothing. It's still trying to do something and "use the time productively".
The downside is that the family just sees a guy sitting there "doing nothing" and can find a dozen reasons to interrupt... it's hard to do this when there are any other people around, and while I'm not an absolutist about a plan that can be summed up as "sit until you can't" without much loss, the interruptions do very quickly diminish the utility. There's a huge difference between sitting uninterrupted for an hour, and sitting for 15 minutes, putting away the dishes, sitting for 15 minutes, getting up to help reach something, sitting for 15 minutes, explaining that yes you really are sitting there just doing nothing would you please just let me do that, and sitting for 15 minutes.
This particular thing doesn't match "meditation" to me, because I'm not even doing the minimal thing meditation involves; I'm not concentrating on breathing, not trying to "not think", not trying to do anything. If the mind races, let it race until it is done racing[1]. In this point in particular this certainly doesn't match a lot of specific meditation traditions. If the thought of doing something occurs to you, that meditation technique of letting it pass through you until it disappears can be useful.
If meditation is a deliberate attempt to slow down, or a deliberate attempt to concentrate on some particular thing, or a deliberate attempt to empty one's mind, it still has a deliberative goal. If you're willing to broaden the term to encompass not even having that much of a plan, then I have no objection. But this feels to me too low level to even justify the term meditation as most people use it. If you're "trying" to do anything at all, then this isn't really what I'm talking about here. I'm not saying this is "better" than meditation, I'm more saying I'm not sure this even rises to that level, as low as some of them may be. It's really just "rest", a concept our century and culture has largely lost track of.
(Of course the obvious semantic argument about "well are you trying to not try, hmmmmmm?" is there and you are free to debate that in your own head, because like I said, I'm not trying to be absolutist about this. This isn't a program I'm proposing so much as an experience report. You do whatever and call it whatever and argue about definitions as much as you like.)
[1]: If your mind literally never stops this may not work for you... that said, in the 21st century, are you sure your mind never stops racing if you just let it run itself to exhaustion? Have you ever tried? It could be some hours, plural. Again, I fully acknowledge that some people reading this can say "yes". I acknowledge the existence of great neurodiversity. But if you've never tried just letting it run itself to exhaustion you may be surprised what happens if you can find the time to let it.
Does sitting and closing eyes not do the same thing? That's what I do when I'm overwhelmed.
John Fogerty used this method to write his early CCR albums. I thought it odd. Maybe I will try this!
Seems like it would be better and easier to just take a walk instead. Whenever you feel information overload, it's time for a break: step outside, get some fresh air, stretch your legs, etc. Not a panacea, obviously, just common sense. Staring at a wall while forcing your mind to "think of nothing"... maybe try it once and see how it goes.
Reinventing meditation from first principles
i thought it was called "rawdogging" these days
Isn’t that similar to Transcendental Meditation?
I don't get this productivity hacking mindset.
You're suffering some sort of burnout, and you want to try some hack to be _more_ productive? Looking at a wall so I can crank out _more_ work? No, screw that. If I'm ever feeling that way, I'm going to try and work _less_ and take _more_ breaks.
> What I didn’t expect was how difficult it would be. Sitting for 5-10 minutes staring at a wall without thinking of anything is hard! I relate it somewhat to the feeling I have with working out.
So why not combine working out directly instead of staring at a wall? Ride a stationary bike at low zone 2/lower in my experience allow for uninterrupted focus during that time at work. While on bike, the mind shuns distraction and focus on "what's next" in the workstream (distraction includes HN, evidently I haven't gotten on the bike yet).
My homeopathic theory is that I have a total mental energy that is the sum of focused energy and a distracting energy. This distracting energy can be temporarily used at task at hand but it results in mental exhaustion, or left alone it leads to distraction seeking behavior. While on the bike, distracting energy is fully consumed by riding, allowing for focused energy stay focused. If I go above low zone 2, it starts eating into focused energy and I lose efficiency.
Instead of a wall may I recommend trees, fresh air, and just enjoying it away from anything electrical.
I had a same issue and I found it helped to just step away and blank out in nature.
Also try delaying your first coffee to after the first hour of being awake.
If you get in the habit of doing this when thinking, it can bomb interviews with interviewers who don't know that's something that some people do.
In-person interview: the majority of people want you to be making frequent eye contact, and are less comfortable when you aren't. Some people also hear folk myths that looking a certain direction is a tell for deception or fabrication. ("Up and to the left means lying; up and to the right means hungry.")
On videoconf interview: if you look away when thinking, people might think you're looking at (or listening to) AI output or a human collaborator, to cheat.
(OTOH, you might be better off finding thoughtful colleagues already familiar with introvert and neurodiverse thinkers, who are aware that many great engineers are also nerds, and who include that within "culture fit".)
Would be interesting to understand if walls and short focus vs trees and natural stuff further out is preferable.
When I was working more vision was always a bottleneck ... Staring at yet more close things would be less useful than staring at far away things
Why not a walk? No podcasts or music, just walk.
This reminds me of an app we made awhile back with the sole purpose of finding 'Boredom'.
TLDR on the app is that you join real time 'boring' livestream rooms with random people.
The app never did really take off, but I still would love some fresh ideas around combatting information overload (outside of the 1000's of screen/content blocking type apps)
It’s amazing how people recommend very quickly: ”Go to walk in a forrest amongst green leaves, talk to the squirrels…” instead of practice you can do anywhere anytime that cost nothing.
Like do you understand that everyone is not rich working home next to a nice park or great forrest? Like many, many, many in this world people have to travel 1,5h to work middle of an urban metropolitan area with almost no trees and definitely no fresh air, and their living conditions are no improvement? But this practice or other types of meditation you can do even during your remote, or even in a solitary confinement? And if you get good at this hou can do small few minute/seconds of meditations or “wall staring” during the day?
I am very privileged and there’s deers walking 5min from where I live, but I don’t have the audacity to think everyone in this world are as lucky.
a large piece of modern / abstract art works just as well, without it needing to be a blank wall
Much needed advice. Thank you!
Bro discovered meditating and gave it a fancy title.
basically reinventing breathing practices and calling it "wall staring" is peak 2026, but honestly - whatever gets you off the doom-scroll and into something resembling rest, go off
Why do people always have to reinvent the wheel?
Just do Zazen, my dude.
Some of us "stare" at our breath instead. That is, you put your attention upon the feeling of breath in the tip of your nose (or something like that).
It's nice because your eyes don't need to be open for it, so they don't get all dried out and itchy.
Shikantaza here. It's a big deal.
Consider:
We all know about "paying attention". Pay attention in class. Pay attention to the movie you're watching. Pay attention to where you're walking. Etc. It's important and we do it all the time.
Take that to the next level. Pay attention to a thing for a while. AKA Concentration. That's important too. Deep thinking, careful doing, science, engineering, art. It's necessary for all that.
And then there's meditation. It's more stuff to do with your attention.
Samatha (AKA concentration meditation) is concentration taken to the next level. All that deeper thinking etc that you got from concentration, this takes it further. Possibly much further. There are weird depths. And also, you become very familiar with the ways of attention. How it moves and how it affects the rest of your world and what you can do with it.
And then there is Shikantaza (AKA formless meditation, meditation without a seed...). it's a hard left turn. Serious sci-fi. I'll leave it at that.
Just go for a walk in nature or outside for 10min or so, get a fresh air, walking will activate many positive things, hell, you might actually cross path with someone who might have a better job for you than staring at screens and walls.
The same video showed up on my feed last week. I didn't try wall staring, but I did try a day (last Tuesday) with only a single screen active for the entire work day. I was extremely productive that day... but, and I know this is bad, I don't want set expectations too high. So here I type to you on a screen / device that should be turned off.
> A paper published in 2012 showed that in 2008 the average person was receiving 34 GB of information daily, with a daily information exposure growth rate of about 5.4% per year
The paper linked to justify this just talks about media that people consume which is growing. But that has nothing to do with the point this post is trying to make?
Your eyes "stream 4k video" anytime your eyelids are open regardless if you're watching a movie or looking at a wall? Why would me watching more videos say anything about how much information my brain processes?
See also:
Show HN: Improve cognitive focus in 1 minute (oneminutefocus.com) 741 points by junetic on Feb 7, 2024 | 287 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39288039
Ah yes, when healthy people discover disassociation. Creativity is easy when you spend half of your day on autopilot daydreaming about random ideas just to avoid dealing with reality.
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The title could have been "People who stare at walls". The subtle patriarchy of hacker news users peeps up it's head once in a while.
I've always done this. As I got older I found out that I have really bad astigmatism. It takes a lot of work to keep my eyes in focus. It feels great to just zone out and "stare" at nothing, it's like a bunch of tiny muscles in my skull get to relax.