You Have to Stop!

Meditation as a side quest to buff skills

I recently brought my meditation routine back, and it’s been about three weeks since I started setting aside some time to stop and breathe. I began with just seven innocent minutes, and now I’m up to about 20.

Not everyone knows this, but I used to work as a hatha yoga teacher and trainer. It was my teenage dream ever since my first practice at 14. I started practicing at that age and enrolled in a teacher training program in 2007. For over a decade, yoga was my professional life. Back then, some of us (the hardcore ones) would practice 𝘒𝘢𝘺𝘢 𝘚𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘺𝘢𝘮 for three to five hours straight — standing so still that it felt like our legs weren’t even there anymore.

But that’s not the point. I don’t want to scare you off.

Establishing a meditation routine has measurable benefits, no matter what field you’re in. I won’t go into long-term changes like hormone regulation and so on. Let’s keep it practical: it’s about what you can feel 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘄.

As a developer, I’ve noticed how easy it is to lose focus during long hours in front of a screen with unlimited internet access. It’s way too tempting to switch tabs, start multiple research threads, or try solving many problems at once — and we all know that never works as well as it feels at the moment.

Even before we sit down to work, our minds are already “refactoring” everything — revisiting yesterday’s debts, rewriting today’s to-do lists, and preloading tomorrow’s tasks.

While we are skilled at breaking down problems into manageable chunks, we often dive too deeply into details when a step back could give us the perspective we need.

Pausing for just a few minutes, paying attention to something simple like the sounds around you, the rhythm of your breath (without trying to control it), or even the flow of your thoughts can have an impact that lasts the entire day. For me, that’s enough. I’m not aiming for enlightenment — I just want to be functional and get bills paid.

I’ve noticed how this practice reduces the mental clutter around my to-do lists. The tasks are there, written down. I’m (almost) trained to notice when my mind jumps from one thought to another, and it no longer pulls me away from the present moment.

Recently, I revisited a book called 𝘗𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 by Andy Hunt — yes, the same author of 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘳. He uses the word ‘holistic’, pointing out that having an holistic view of a problem or architecture would benefit us all as developers. Well, that’s my thing. At least it was. I felt good about a tech person bringing that up with no new age weirdo biases.

The idea is this: 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘱 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘰𝘣𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴, 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘮𝘴, 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘢 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 — like watching your thoughts without getting caught up in them.

This “detached” perspective has many benefits:

• You don’t get overly attached to a single solution, which makes it easier to explore alternatives.

• You’re not tied to the code you’ve written, so you can refactor or rewrite it without hesitation.

• You let go of what you think you know, allowing you to listen, learn, and even see the world through someone else’s eyes.

In a way, it’s a training for lifelong learning — and that’s exactly the theme I’d like to explore in my following posts.

Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts or experiences with meditation, learning, or staying focused on your stuff.