(No) Technology: A Reflection
No phones, no speaking, and a whole lot of meditation for 10 days. To some, this sounds like a fantasy akin to escaping the matrix, while going deep within oneself to discover hidden truths, or perhaps, simply, bliss from being disconnected. To others, it’s pure, voluntary torture.
For those not familiar, Vipassana is a 10-day silent meditation course. It features a loud gong disguised as a 4am wake-up call, which sets in motion a daily practice of meditation on a paper-thin cushion, sitting cross-legged for 12 hours a day. No eye contact, no technology, and not many breaks.
Despite my custodial schedule and surroundings, over the 10-day period I found myself in moments of deep reflection - from nuanced childhood memories, to asking myself why my last meal before the course was not more indulgent. A few days in, once the high-level thoughts had cleared, I was beaming with clarity and able to connect the dots in my mind with unusual dexterity. One of the threads I pulled on was the interesting link between the Vipassana course and the journey of a founder.
Individual Reality
It’s only human nature that prior to diving into the deep end of a new experience, we scour the internet to search for what to expect. In tandem, I uncovered several blogs citing personal experiences from Vipassana – ranging from “life-changing” to “exhausting” – and even read a book dedicated to the course. It may have eased the anxious anticipation, but a few hours in, all preconceived notions were slowly set aside.
A major tenet of meditation is to focus on one’s own awareness, experience, and individual reality. We each come with our own ‘baggage’ of the past, and it’s unreasonable to expect similar experiences or to relate to what someone else feels. Similarly, founders are guaranteed to be inundated with advice – well-meaning, of course – and urged to take several points of view when building their company. That said, we’ve seen the opposite in great entrepreneurs; they trust their own intuition, their own conviction – the individual reality they’ve built up in their minds. They adeptly filter most advice, embodying their actions with their strongly held core beliefs and taking independent decisions to solve important problems.
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." – Henry Ford
Boredom & Creativity
“When you pay attention to boredom, it gets unbelievably interesting.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn
One of my surprising takeaways from the course is the ‘superpower’ you build of being able to deal with boredom. It’s unsettling how much of a crux our phones can be to divert our attention away from the present; slowly eroding our awareness with the nudges and notifications. There were times when long periods of boredom in the course preceded moments of immense flow and creativity.
It made me think that dealing with boredom can be a significant strength for founders. Not to be confused with lacking a sense of urgency – which is critical to the success of an early-stage company – but the ability to not do things for the sake of doing things. It’s the analogy that if a ship is anchored to the ocean floor, there’s no point in trying to move forward. Often founders undertake grandiose strategic initiatives to create a durable moat for their business. The great entrepreneurs, although impatient at the micro level, always give time to see things through. It’s the ‘boredom’ where they thrive, allowing time to bear its fruit.
Razor Sharp
As a group, we anticipated the first meditation with eagerness and excitement. Until, of course, we were told that for the first three days in the course, we would simply close our eyes and focus on our breath. The natural synchrony of the breath and the area above our upper lip, where we ‘feel’ our exhale. They called this technique ‘anapana’, the first, required step to eventually progress into the ‘vipassana’ technique. Naturally perplexed at the time, I now understand in hindsight that we were cultivating our minds to focus, rather than simply thinking about our patterns of inhale-exhale.
Prior to embarking on their journey, founders typically possess a grand vision of the future they want to build. The various parts and pieces that come together to create the ambitious collective. Yet, the very best often know that the biggest enemy of a grand vision is analysis paralysis, and it’s important to start at a singular point of focus; a ‘beachhead’ market. For Google, it was search; for Amazon, books. Once you build customer trust and own a segment, it’s more reasonable to broaden horizons and expand into tangential verticals. The path to enlightenment, we were told, is about taking the first step.
This piece didn’t focus on discussing the Vipassana course experience in more detail, as there’s plenty published around the topic. Yuval Noah Harari (1, 2), the author of ‘Sapiens’, and Tarun Davda from Matrix have shared their interesting perspectives.