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 for you. Find the activities that you want to do even though you don’t reach for them compulsively. Activities that you often multitask during tend to be the best candidates, because they’re the ones that leave your mind free enough to do them with even more intention. I’ve found that doing the activity without multitasking makes it much more meaningful.