Protocol: Does Mindfulness Meditation Improve the Life of a Healthy Medical Student?

Quantified Self Project Logs
1

Hi guys! I’m pre-publishing this protocol on my next experiment, and I’d love your feedback! You’re smart people :+1:

I’ve been meditating for quite a while now. 130 hours of Headspace and 450 hours of unguided mindfulness meditation, or about 25 minutes/day for 4 years. Personally, I believe it’s been tremendously beneficial in weakening some of my more disagreeable patterns of behavior; specifically, I think I’m a lot less irritable, slightly happier, and able to reason more clearly.

However, I’m at a point where I’m doing things that are typically referred to as meaningful, but I sometimes feel like it doesn’t matter much. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy with my life in general, but I wonder whether meditation might be taking away some of the most intense joy.

Furthermore, 500 hours is a lot of time! Time that could be well spent on other activities.

Therefore, I aim to examine whether meditation affects my mood, irritability, distractability, focus and how I treat my partner. I hypothesise that meditation makes me less reactive, both to positive and negative experiences, and I predict that it:

  1. Makes me less happy, since my life is pretty great externally
  2. Makes me less irritable
  3. Decreases my distractability
  4. Increases time from when I wake up 'till I start work (since I typically meditate in the morning)
  5. Decreases total time spent on work
  6. Makes my partner less satisfied with our relationship, since I express fewer emotions

Methods

I am a 25-year old medical student living with my girlfriend in Denmark. Since I expect that the effect of meditation accumululates, I’ve decided on a 4-week A/B/A/B study, with 1 week of meditation for 30 minutes/day in the morning after breakfast, followed by 1 week of not meditating, 1 week of meditating, 1 week of not meditating. I will be using Headspace semi-guided sessions, and will start the study on the 23rd of September and end it on the 20th of October.

Outcome measures

Mood

I use ReporterApp (iOS) to measure mood via experience sampling semi-randomly 5 times a day, on the following scale, inspired by Nick Winthers:

1: Suicidally depressed.
2: Majorly depressed or in tons of pain.
3: Frustrated or annoyed or sad or hurting or generally unhappy.
4: A little down.
5: Okay.
6: Content.
7: Happy to the point of smiling or rocking out.
8: Excitedly happy; awesome.
9: Ecstatic.
10: Contender for best moment of my life.

Irritability

The same methodology is applied for irritability (“I feel irritable” and “I feel grumpy”), as well as distractability (“I am distracted”) ranked on a score of 1 (Not at all) to 6 (Very).

Productivity

Time until starting work is tracked as time untill first Anki flashcard, first pomodoro, or first lecture, whichever comes first.

Total time is tracked in Toggl, with 5/6ths weighting for lectures, 1/1 weighting for pomodoros.

Partner’s perception

My partner’s perception of me is scored with the relationship assessment scale [Vaughn et al.] on saturday of every week.

Misc.

Sampling size is determined pragmatically – I have about a month of stable work with low variability where I can conduct the study.

I complete analyses by intention to treat.

So, what do you think? :slight_smile:

Footnotes

Vaughn et al., DOI: 10.1080/019261899262023

2

This is very interesting to me. I’ve been tracking my mood during a “non-meditating” phase of my life. I’ve had a meditation practice for 21 years, always including gaps, or missed days. My average length of “runs” (that is, days meditating without a gap) was 9 days, according to data I collected a few years ago using the now defunct “Equanimity” app. I tended to have longer and more frequent breaks during July and December, which are months that typically included travelling. Over the last 21 years, my longest break was about 1 year.

About 4 months ago, I decided to give in to my irritation with my meditation practice and stop for a while. I had a sense that it was contributing to my feelings of being “private” or “separate” from other other people, and that - just as you suggest - a certain kind of equanimity and lack of dependence inhibited intimacy. I also stopped keeping a journal, interrupting a practice that goes back over 30 years, though also with many breaks. I was a bit afraid to stop, but this fear itself made me want to stop: After all, what was I afraid of?

At first I was happy to have stopped. The increase in time available to work showed itself immediately. Instead of an hour+ morning ritual I had nothing to interfere with getting to work before the rest of the family woke up. I was also more relaxed at night, since I didn’t feel like I had to get to sleep so that I could be awake by 5 or 5:30.

However, my mood data shows a steady lowering of mood, and subjectively I can sense increasing irritability. Also, staying up in the evenings makes me tempted to watch shows, which is kind of amazing and fun (I’ve rarely bothered even knowing what shows are on, and when people talk about them I tune out), but also seems to me like a bit of a waste. Certainly I didn’t intend to “switch meditation for watching shows.” I’m going to continue this for a bit but I already feel myself very tempted to return to my former practice. I’ll be interested in the results of your experiment!

3

If that is a concern, might be worth looking into whether you can get the same benefits (or even just 80%) spending less time meditating (e.g. just 5-10 minutes per day, with maybe one longer session once a week)?

4

@Agaricus You’ve accumulated quite a bit more time than me, so thank you so much for your perspective! Interesting to see that you’ve had the same sense.

@ejain Strongly agree! For now, I want to test 30 vs. 0 min to maximise the chance of finding a difference. If I do find a difference, 5 min may be the next phase.