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“A single bracelet does not jingle.”
Congolese proverb
Each day I sit for insight meditation.
I’ve done it for over 15 years.
About a year ago, I started morning pages as well. Writing whatever is in my head the moment I wake.
When I write the pages first, my meditation goes much deeper.
Without morning pages, I spend the first 30 minutes of each session on what I could have written down in five minutes.
Other habits combine the same way.
For the comedian George Carlin, it was notes and files.
He wrote ideas on little memo pads, mostly while watching TV.
When no pad was near, he spoke into a digital recorder.
At 18, a radio boss told him to write down each idea, even the ones he couldn’t use yet. “A good idea is of no use to you unless you can find it.”
So Carlin filed each note in folders within folders. One subject was “The Way We Talk.”
Each time he reread a note to file it, it stuck better.
“The path gets a little richer and deeper,” he said.
When he sat down to write an act, he wrote from the files.
The files let him find each note the day he needed it.
He made 14 HBO specials.
For the saxophonist Sonny Rollins, it was yoga and improvising.
He studied yoga in India.
In 2014 an NPR host asked what it brought to his playing. “It’s the concentration level,” he said.
When he improvised, he tried to reach his subconscious. “You can’t think and play at the same time. Believe me, I’ve tried it.”
He said the contemplative forms of yoga aim for that same state. “When you’re into yoga and when you’re into improvisation, you want to reach that level.”
So the yoga trained the concentration his playing needed.
Aidan Levy tells his story in Saxophone Colossus.
For the surgeon James “Butch” Rosser, it was a video game and surgery.
In 2005 he kept an Xbox, PlayStation 2 and a GameCube a few strides from his operating room.
He did keyhole surgery, where the surgeon works through small cuts with a camera and long tools.
Before an operation he warmed up on a game called Super Monkey Ball.
His study tested the warm-up on other surgeons. Those who played right before a keyhole drill made fewer errors and finished it about 11 seconds faster than those who didn’t.
A game made the surgeons faster and more accurate on the drill.
Economists call this complementarity. The value of one thing rises with what you pair it with.
Two good habits can pay more together than one great habit alone.
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How could two of your habits feed each other?
