About 6 weeks ago I decided to try Naval Ravikant’s meditation challenge. The basic premise is that most people quit meditating before there is any discernable benefit. Naval claims that on average it takes around 60 hours of meditation before you really get any tangible results. The challenge is to meditate 60 minutes a day for 60 consecutive days.
I tried this several times and quit within a few days. I also tried using apps for 10-20 minute increments but got burned out or just forgot. So I decided to start a Twitter diary that details the experience. I would tweet every day recapping how the session went. Prior to this I barely went on twitter. I also had tweeted like 2 total times. I had a few friends that followed me which I was a little self conscious about but thought screw it.
I did the first 30 days completely uninterrupted before I got thrown off track for a few days. After missing a few days due to a Jet Ski accident.
Overall I think this was a really good decision for me personally. Meditating for an hour forces you to actually meditate. Its easy to day dream for 10-15 or be completely reliant on an app. The biggest immediate change was sleep quality. I find that meditating at any point during the day helps me fall asleep much faster.
Additionally, when you just sit there with your eyes closed at some point you are going to evaluate your thought pattern. This really did not start to happen until after the 35 day mark.
Once I around the 40 day mark some interesting stuff started to happen. I subconsciously started to really clean up my diet. I eat pretty healthy to begin with but junk food held basically no appeal. Not sure if this is related to meditation or not but I didn’t consciously change anything.
I have included the twitter thread here for reference.