About a year and a half ago, I cleared and rough graded my land for our house build. I rented a kx40-4 for about two weeks and put about 140 hours on it. That was pure meditation. The hydraulics became an extension of my body, with the immediate gratification of instantaneous change, I was able to shape the land as I see fit. My wife asked me what I was thinking about and my response was “dirt dirt dirt..rock..dirt” and that was wonderful. I have not had that feeling since I was completely disconnected for a week on an island in Belize. Very calming until the tap root of a big oak tree wrapped around the bedrock 6’ underground. Then you’re reminded that every task has its challenges. I’m now on the look out for a good deal on an excavator.

Otherwise, I enjoy flower farming and grow about 1/2 acre of flowers and sell wholesale. Close second. Sometimes it is stressful in the midst of July/August weeds but then once you come out the other side, it’s all worth it.

I get it, same reason I enjoy gardening alone in general.

Most of us spend our work time balancing 100 different things, putting out fires, bouncing between meetings, answering adhoc pings via calls/zooms/slacks, and struggling to do the deep work we are allegedly paid for in between.

There's a therapeutic aspect to certain kinds of physical hobby/chore work or full focussed hobbyist time that counterbalances this.

Otherwise at the end of a day of being burned out, we ruminate & doom scroll which only makes things worse.

This really resonates with me. I think I have 2 kinds of meditations like this. 1 is more “centering” - fly fishing; and the other is more “processing” - gravel biking.

When I’m on a long, multi hour gravel bike ride - I usually don’t listen to music - just the sounds of world around me and let my mind freely wander. As my mind wanders it finds the tough emotional pieces I haven’t yet processed and starts chipping away at them. Sometimes I end up crying quite hard depending on what my mind has decided to work through. I’m sure I look like a maniac to whatever farmers I’m passing by.

Fly fishing on the other hand is less emotionally intense and much more calming. The dull roar of the river, the intense focus on the water - trying to spot the fish movements within it, trying to identify the tiny bug life around me so I can better select a fly, the focus on placing my fly and my line precisely where I want it. The rhythmic casting, mending, and recasting. Finding constant balance as you wade across uneven river beds. It’s a rare thing where I can fully silence my mind but it’s easy to do when fly fishing. It’s like a deep reprieve from the otherwise constant chatter of thinking - just calm and serene.

Seattle has wild (foreign, invasive) blackberries all over the place, and in Summer you can easily drive around a bit, spot them, and then spend twenty minutes picking and eating them. As someone from southern California, it's a marvelous thing for food to just be out there in the wild for the taking.

I do really appreciate tranquil posts about immersing oneself in actual life, like this one. But as a long-term meditator I have a duty to inform everyone that doing something is not meditation.

I think it is underappreciated how you can make almost anything meditative, even things you previously did not like as mentioned in this article.

For me it's loading and unloading the dishwasher. I hated it, still do, but if I'm careful to approach it with a very delicate kind of focus I can lose myself in the deep mysteries of the task.

If you're looking for a place to find things to pick: https://fallingfruit.org/about/welcome

My family has taken up some hobbies like this, which are very therapeutic to do together. Berry/cherry picking, hiking, mushroom gathering, and on vacation we like to go to certain beaches in Oregon to find agates or other cool rocks, some places have seashells and even a beach in Florida that has shark teeth.

With small kids, these sort of lazy tasks bring out focus, physical awareness and exploration. Living in the city, these are valuable respites from chaos and noise.

Washing dishes, strangely, hits that for me. One of the reasons I've never found dishwashers to be worth it.

Here I was thinking these are poisonous ha, let's try it

For me its walking.

Life seems a bit better after a long walk preferably somewhere nice

For me it's sweeping the garden.

I hated having to do this a s a child. When I returned home after being away for quite a while, I picked up just to reduce mom's burden.

Then I found myself actually wanting to do it, just for the mental space it gives. The sense of cleanliness you get adds to the quality of the experience.

Very nice post. I wish life didn't ruin this for me. As a child, I was forced to pick berries and mushrooms alone when all my friends were playing football - and it made me hate the process with all my heart. But that was so long ago - maybe I should give it one more chance...

I love picking blackberries, sloes, elderberries, elderflowers, crab apples etc from the hedgerows around me in the south of England. I also love then using them to make preserves etc. Very relaxing and rewarding.

Polishing my shoes is mine

Shelling peas has a similar quality

Hm, picking redcurrants usually isn't so much work because you collect entire strigs of berries. It's picking the berries off the strigs later that's more annoying but you can do it while watching tv or something.

LOve it

I’m sorry, I can’t stand that these types of posts keep making it to the front page of hacker news.

It’s been said over and over but they never reveal the deepest truth. We should all be picking berries all the time but we can’t because capitalism steals our time and wealth and makes us suffer.

I mean, can you deny that’s what he’s saying here? “I find it more pleasurable picking berries than writing code or working in a coffee shop or yada yada yada?”