Unformed Delta - mindfulness

5 unexpectedly mindful activities

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 19:48:00 +0000

I’ve been increasingly interested in mindfulness over the past year, starting to meditate about ~2 months ago. Overall, it has been fairly transformative in terms of my qualitative stress and overall sense of well being. These are activities that didn’t seem mindful, but I ended up finding meditation like benefits in.

Playing Riichi Mahjong

I originally learned Riichi Mahjong at work. When Mahjong Soul added my favorite character from Idolm@ster Shiny Colors in a collab, I started to play online. At first, 5 seconds a turn felt like a tiny amount of time to identify patterns in a 14 tile hand and decide what tile to discard. But, as I got better, simpler hands became easy to play mechanically, and the extra time between turns made it easy for my mind to drift to other things.

But the game has a surprising amount of depth. Even if optimal tile efficiency becomes trivial, there’s room to improve by paying more attention to what your opponents are discarding, expected value calculations, and so on.

Ultimately Riichi Mahjong is still a heavily luck based game, and it’s unfortunately common to play perfectly, and still end up in last place. This creates a good opportunity for equanimity practice, by remaining composed while losing, you maximize your chances of making an extremely satisfying comeback.

Walking without listening to anything

When I first was getting interested in being more mindful, I was listening to something on my AirPods almost all of the time. I started to make an effort to only listen to podcasts or audiobooks intentionally. I started by designating transitions, such as entering a building AirPods free. At first, I frequently felt unproductive unproductive because I wasn’t ingesting information at every possible moment, and it was easy to slip into putting my AirPods and listening to something anyways. Eventually, I started to enjoy mindfully putting my shoes, and riding down the elevator before heading out for a walk. I now often notice I’m not actually enjoying what I’m listening to, and stop it, enjoying the rest of a walk in silence.

Brushing my hair

Almost any mundane activity can be done mindfully. Even boring chores like brushing my hair, washing dishes, or cleaning my apartment. If anything, the more boring the activity, the more space it provides for mindful reflection. Nowadays I mostly do these activities while listening to a podcast or music if I’m having trouble motivating myself to start doing them.

Just listening to a podcast or music

As I listened to less podcasts, audiobooks, and music while doing other things, I found there was still audio that I wanted to make time to listen to. Mindfully listening has helped me be more discerning of what I like best. For shorter pieces like songs, this 4 step attention procedure for listening is a good way to engage more deeply when desired.

Watching Yuru Camp

Laid back-camp (ゆるキャン), is a slice of life anime, focusing on high school girls going camping in and around Yamanashi prefecture (right around Mt. Fuji). Because it’s primarily slice of life, there isn’t much plot. Sometimes it features seconds of nature scenery montages and panoramas at the expense of character interaction. While watching season 1, I thought this made the show ideal for solving Jig-Saw Puzzles while watching the show. But mindfully watching the show gave me an even better experience. Watching one episode each night before bedtime gave me space to process my day and feel ready to go to sleep. After finishing the latest season, I still haven’t found anything that I like quite as much as a replacement.

Anything can be mindful

Anything can be done mindfully as long as it isn’t too stimulating or addictive. Find activities you don’t reach for compulsively but want to do anyways. Activities that you multitask while doing or do while multitasking can be good candidates. They leave your mind free enough to pursue them with more intention. Focusing on doing such activities often makes the activity feel more meaningful.

4 step attention procedure for listening (or more generally observing)

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 19:47:00 +0000

In Your Mind is Being Fracked from The Ezra Klein Show, D. Graham Burnett describes a procedure for actively listening to music. I think this procedure is also generally useful for anything that you can engage with several times (e.g. a piece of artwork, a poem, or a short video, a location).

Listen (or more generally observe)
Listen/recall, what have you heard before? (what have you observed before?)
Listen/discover, what do you hear for the first time? (what can you observe for the first time?)
Don’t listen, what do you find when you don’t listen? (what do you notice when you’re not actively observing?)

6 things that help me cope with ADHD

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 06:08:00 +0000

I’ve struggled with ADHD to various degrees since being diagnosed in first grade. I primarily experience inattentiveness, particularly when what I’m doing only pays off long-term. These are the things that have helped me the most.

Watching videos on 1x speed. I got used to faster speeds from podcast listening, and got into a habit of always watching videos at 2x speed (or sometimes even faster). This made it possible for me to watch less interesting content, which ironically, resulted in a lot more YouTube consumption. 1x speed gives me a better chance of noticing that I’m distracting myself plus helps me enjoy my favorite content more.
Avoiding music while working. When I’m solving a difficult problem or writing, it’s easy to focus on music I’m listening to instead of thinking. This is especially true for new music that I haven’t listened to before. If I’ve caught an earworm, sometimes listening to that song on repeat can make the song slip into the background, and make it easier to focus.
Adderall. I’ve only tried two medicines: Adderall and Vyvanse. Adderall works far better for me. I tried Vyvanse in college. It gave me horrible side effects: significantly worsening my anxiety, reducing my reduced appetite leading to missed meals, and bouts of hyper-attention that on occasion caused me to forget to go to the bathroom. When I have a clear plan for what I want to accomplish with my day, Adderall helps me stay on track. But when I don’t, Adderall can sometimes be counterproductive, reducing my likelihood of breaking out of a distracted spiral. So, I take Adderall only when I have a clear plan for what I want to do with my day. I end up taking Adderall roughly 4 days a week. Days when I don’t take it are a bit more spontaneous and creative. Plus, after not taking it for a while, it’s a little more potent. Aside from a slightly reduced appetite, I haven’t really had any noticeable side effects from my low 15mg dose. I hear side effects vary a lot person to person, so you may want to try several medicines before finding one that works for you.
Running. I ran cross country throughout my best years of high school. This improved my attention sufficiently that I decided that I stopped taking Adderall for those few years. I maintain a relatively lifestyle (biking, hiking, walking), but want to try to integrate more endurance sports into my life for improved focus and attention.
Focusing on bed time instead of wake up time. When I don’t sleep well, I get distracted a lot more easily, and it’s a lot harder to wake up in the morning. I used to get up as late as I needed to in order to get to work on time. I didn’t have much of a habit around my bedtime. I thought I’d notice when I was tired and needed to go to bed. But much to the contrary, being tired makes me much more vulnerable to getting sucked down a rabbit hole. YouTube, a video game, or even an audiobook can all be more exciting than the idea of going to bed. Maintaining a regular bedtime of midnight, generously before when I need to fall asleep to get my usual 8 and a half hours, has enabled me to often manage to wake up earlier than my alarm.
Meditation. Probably because my mom was pretty into it when I was a kid, I avoided meditation for the longest time. I started meditating¹ a little over two months ago, and am increasingly able to notice my attention begin to drift something else. Sometimes this lets me stay more focused, but more often it helps me notice that I need a break, am sitting in an uncomfortable position. While in a distracted spiral, sometimes this lets me notice that I’m distracted from my intended activity while I’m transitioning between videos or activities.

I use and recommend The Healthy Minds Program, and think it might be particularly well suited for people with ADHD. It offers both sitting and active meditations which makes it easy to fit meditation in every day. I also like that its long, well structured catalog of lessons and meditations prevents me from ever having to choose what to do next. ↩

AirPods

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 05:35:00 +0000

AirPods are my most and least favorite piece of tech.

Not too long after the release of the first version of AirPods, I was just starting to listen to podcasts. I’d always preferred listening to audiobooks. Podcasts gave me access to the news without needing to read letters with my eyes. I could listen to things much more engaging than what I was learning in class. To top it off, it easily slotted into activities I was already doing: walking to my classes, cleaning, or exercising. In fact, I had so much time for listening to podcasts, that even 2-3 hour podcasts rounding up the latest Apple rumors fit into my schedule.

By the time AirPods Pro were released, there was hardly a menial task where I was not listening to podcasts. Noise cancellation enabled me to listen while walking down a busy street, and obsolesced the need for a separate pair of noise cancelling headphones on a plane. In a noisy corner of campus, I could create a distraction free environment by listening to white noise at a moment’s notice.

Some days of the week, several of my favorite podcasts would all release at the same time. I’d listen at higher speeds to reach “inbox zero” anyways. But other days of the week, I would still run out of things to listen to. Clearly, I still didn’t have enough things to listen to.

Now graduated, I joined book clubs from 3 of my social circles: my college friends, my work, my friends in Seattle. Each book was just an average of ~10 hours, but if I listened any faster than 1.5-1.8x I wouldn’t be able to recall enough to meaningfully participate in discussions. After intense periods of reading I would despair that I had a 20-30 hour backlog of podcasts to get through.

I started to delight in long mining/building sessions in Minecraft, I completed all the shrines in Breath of the Wild and started looking for Koroks, played all of Hollow Knight, and acquired 15 golden strawberries in Celeste. Often the winning attempt would be one where I’d paused what I was listening to.

A few years ago I realized that listening to a podcast for my 5 minute walk to the office was stupid. I’d often start my workday with distraction, to finish the 20 minute episode of Planet Money I was on or the like. I resolved to solve this problem.

I started to intentionally take my AirPods off when going through a doorway. Entering my apartment building: take off headphones. Leaving elevator just after entering apartment building: take off AirPods. Entering my apartment itself: take off AirPods once more.

Sometimes I would unintentionally still be listening to something, but slowly my thoughts were the main thing that accompanied me on my way to work.

My backlog of unlistened podcasts grew. I’d stopped attending book clubs a few years ago, only reading the books I was most interested in.

To this day, wearing AirPods puts me in a different state of mind. I get bored and it’s easier to slip into distraction. I can only bear silence when I’m not wearing them.