Last year I completed Naval Ravikant's recommended 60 days of meditation for 1 hour per day. After a few weeks, my mind was quieter and I was much less concerned with the past and future. I realised that living in the past causes depression and living in the future causes anxiety. Discovering for myself that this is true made me almost unconsciously stay present. I felt much better for it. I tweeted about each day which kept me accountable and committed each day._x000D_
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At first it was very difficult to sit still for that long. But after the first week, I started to truly realise that all of my problems were in my own head. I was perceiving things poorly, from past images that I'd clung on to._x000D_
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However, 1 hour per day was a big commitment and not long after the challenge, I got lazy and started meditating less and less. A few months later and my mind is back in overdrive - not good._x000D_
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I needed to once again realise the importance of meditating in order to find the motivation to stick with it. I began reading wisdom from my favourite philosophers (Jiddu Krishnamurti, Naval Ravikant, Seneca, Epictetus and Aurelius) which helped me to again realise the importance of staying present and the stupidity of constant thought. Reading also gave me some useful stuff to meditate on and rewire my mind._x000D_
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I also read James Clear's Atomic Habits to discover the nature of habit formation. A few of the principles that stuck out were: The 2-minute rule, specifying a time and place, and keeping score of your progress._x000D_
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For the past 12 months, I have been learning to code, so I decided to make myself an app that incorporated these principles and encourage me to meditate every single morning. I decided to call the app "Atomic Meditation". It's based on doing a minimum of 2 mins / day for 60 days. _x000D_
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At the beginning, only day 1 is unlocked. After meditating for 2 mins, the next day is unlocked and a "Done" button appears, allowing me to stop the meditation any time I want. Usually, once the 2 mins is up, I meditate for a further 15-20 mins, even tho I could've stopped after 2 mins. I can also set a timer to alert me at a certain time, but the main point of the app is that once 2 mins is up, I can stop._x000D_
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2 minutes is easy, I always have 2 minutes each day to spare so there is absolutely no excuse to not meditate every day. The app also sends me a morning reminder and records my stats such as day streak. I've now done 30 straight days so my perception of myself has gone from someone that struggles to meditate to a person that meditates every morning. I also don't want to break this streak, further encouraging me to show up._x000D_
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If anybody is interested in using this, I'd be happy to put it on the app store? :)