A Tiny Little Signpost

Acting Fast & Slow

I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but I’ve started meditating. I know. Awful. I do apologise. Those who don’t meditate can find it so very tiresome listening to those who do. There’s an inward eye-roll from anyone remotely sceptical, from busy parents or professionals who can’t imagine ever finding the time for it, or from those who just find the whole thing a bit woo-woo. I sympathise with that. I always felt gently dismissive when I heard about the benefits of meditation, or when I pictured those who practised it – people who I always imagined must be, at least on some level, just a little bit unbearable. So I know how you feel, and I’m sorry.

If it’s any consolation, I’ve absolutely no interest in convincing you to do it. I only mention it because the idea behind this post has its roots in meditation, or metacognition if that’s more palatable for you. If you’re anything like me, I hope you’ll find what follows worthwhile even if the idea of ‘focussing on the breath’ makes you feel quietly nauseous. Indeed, it was precisely those notions I shunned in the past. In a world where video games exist, sitting and breathing seemed like the most extraordinary waste of time. I was sure meditation was great, but it was great for other people and it wouldn’t benefit someone like me. Well, it turns out I was wrong and the monks were right. Of course the monks were right.

I now meditate for ten minutes a day, with the exception of the days I spend with my nearly-two-year-old son, when I tend to cut my meditation down to approximately no minutes whatsoever. I’ve been using the highly recommended Waking Up app, which primarily focusses on a meditation practice known as Vipassana. You can go deep on this (oh boy, can you) but the essence is simple: to cultivate a greater awareness of your own field of consciousness. Mindfulness, if you will. There’s no attempt to stop thinking, or to clear one’s mind (though other meditation practices may differ), rather the emphasis is on noticing the mind as it is, and not identifying too strongly with what’s going on in there. It’s not just about thoughts, of course – anything can become the subject of increased awareness – but for the purposes of this post, we’re dealing with the stuff we think.

One of the startling truths you notice when you’ve meditated for a while is that you don’t actually have control over what goes on inside your own head. On one hand, this is an outrageous claim – of course we have control over our thoughts. Entire schools of philosophy are based around the idea that we can, and should, control them. But then, on the other hand, it’s entirely obvious that we can’t, and the more time you spend watching your thoughts, and the closer you pay attention to them, the more apparent this becomes.

Your mind isn’t some tranquil cabin in the woods, as well you know. It’s more akin to living next door to everyone you’ve ever met (and maybe even a few people you haven’t), and they pop round whenever they want, to chat about whatever they like, and they all have a copy of your front door key, so they come and go as they please. The more pleasant neighbours are perfectly polite – they won’t stay, they were just passing by and wanted to remind you of an upcoming birthday that you really must remember. Some want to stay for longer, because you haven’t seen them in a while, you didn’t reply to their recent message, and you must get back to them soon (if they don't already hate you). Often the ones least deserving of your time are the same ones who insist on making themselves at home – they outstay their welcome, talk to you about topics you’d rather forget, and make you feel generally uneasy. You live next door to a lot of neighbours, and many are loud and persistent. You can hear them through the walls at night. Some keep you awake at 3am.

You can’t decide who turns up at your door, but maybe you can decide how you treat those guests, how much importance you give them. Maybe there’s a distinction to be made between the thought and the response, between the what and the how. But the central truth remains: we don’t choose our thoughts; they happen by themselves. And if you’re unconvinced by that notion, I invite you to try having no thoughts at all for the next sixty seconds and see how you get on. The idea that we may not control what goes on in our minds is a disquieting realisation and a deep rabbit hole to travel down, one which can raise uncomfortable questions about the nature of the self. After all, if we’re incapable of deciding what we think, then who even are we? (You can ponder that crisis in your own time. We’re moving on.)

What, then, of timing? Even if we presume the substance of the thought is within our control, the timing certainly is not. You don’t know when a thought will arise and you don’t know when it will stop. There’s a fun mind game that plays on this idea. If you’re already familiar with it, I apologise in advance. If you haven’t yet heard of it, it’s known as The Game, and the only objective of The Game is not to think about it. When you do think about it, you lose The Game, and you must announce your loss aloud (‘I just lost The Game’) – which, of course, creates a cascade of losses in any other players who happen to be in the vicinity. To learn of The Game’s existence is to become a new player (welcome!). To think of it is to lose, and there is no way to win. Devastating.

Should someone lose The Game in company, the losses tend to follow a particular pattern. A guy drops his head. ‘Oh no,’ he mutters. ‘What is it?’ someone asks, concerned. ‘I just lost The Game,’ he whispers. Cries of noooo! fill the air. Everyone else has now lost The Game too, and so they insult him as they all continue to lose The Game together during the hours that follow. Maybe the next morning, people send messages announcing further losses. But over time, the losses fade. Nobody thinks of The Game, nobody mentions it. Some claim to go for years without losing The Game. In fact, before I wrote this post, I think I’d gone a couple of years myself.

But The Game is not unique. The Game is every thought you’ve ever had. You have no way of knowing where the thought will come from. You don’t know whether something in the environment will trigger it, or another person, and you don’t know when it might rise, unbidden and inexplicably, from some deep, dark, long-forgotten corner of your mind. And then at some point, you’ll think of it for the last time – or at least the last time in a long while – but you have no possible way of recognising that. You do not know whether the next time you think of it will be the last, or how long the thought will be gone for when it does go.

All of which is to say, you can’t choose what you think, you don’t know when you’ll think it, and once you are thinking it, you have no idea when you’ll stop. What an absolute nightmare. No wonder we’re such a mess.

The post I wrote before this one was called 50 Things I Wonder. Number 44 on that list read, ‘I wonder if there’s an optimal ratio of thought to action.’ Substacker basil speculated further in the comments, wondering about the optimal duration between thought and action. I have an answer to this, and that’s what you’ve been reading.

The answer comes from two different directions. The first is from author, teacher and Buddhist scholar Joseph Goldstein, who has a wonderful approach to generosity: when he has a generous impulse, he acts on it immediately. It’s such a simple thought. It doesn’t ask us to be more generous, but rather to give action to that feeling whenever it may arise. Lovely.

The second, somewhat opposite, direction comes from Dr. Tim Pychyl – a psychologist whose work sought to better understand procrastination. As a freelance writer, his short book Solving The Procrastination Puzzle may well have changed my life. And do you know what he tells us to do when we notice the impulse to procrastinate? Nothing. Nothing. Easy, right? We can all do nothing. More precisely, we should notice the thought, sit with it, and put as much space as we can between impulse and action. That’s it. Eventually, the impulse to do something else will fade, and in time you become a wiser fish who learns to see the bait for what it is.

What have we got here then? When we put all this together – a Buddhist acting quickly and a doctor acting slowly, and, let’s not forget, the impermanence of thoughts and their flighty, fickle nature – I think we find a wider lesson. If the thought is constructive, if it would benefit us or those we care about, we should translate it into action as fast as we can. But if the thought is destructive, if it threatens to derail us from whatever we hope to achieve, we should delay acting on it for as long as possible. And it’s curious to note that for many of us, our default mode is often the precise opposite – we freely give action to that which derails us while forever delaying that which would help.

As we learned from The Game (sorry), all thoughts will pass. That means we are in the business of acting on the good thoughts while they’re with us, and living with the bad thoughts until they leave us. Like much that would help us in life, it’s simple but not easy, because it requires a keen awareness of our own patterns of thought, which is where meditation comes in – but this is not a post about that.

As with anything that claims to be simple, there are caveats here. While it’s easy – in theory – to ‘do nothing’ in response to a negative thought, there are times when it will seem inconceivable to act fast on a positive thought. What if the thought is to redecorate your entire house? What if you’re doing something else that demands your full attention when you have that thought? And what about planning? Is that a thought that’s been translated into action, or a form of thinking that still needs acting upon? What’s a healthy amount of time to plan for? I’m not yet sure how to answer these questions.

But that’s ok. This is not a definitive guide on how to live, but a small idea that may be helpful to those who connect with it: the optimal duration between thought and action changes depending on the net good the thought will provide when we act upon it. It’s not going to solve all our problems, but might nevertheless serve as a tiny, little signpost in the event we ever need it.