A minuteAny ordinary dayMindfulnessAnger

Treat it like brushing your teeth rather than like meditating. Nobody is good at brushing their teeth, and nobody skips it because last night's went badly.

The hygiene framing takes the achievement out of it, and achievement is where perfectionists quit. Put it next to something already automatic: after you brush, before you leave the bathroom, one minute of breathing. There is no standard to reach and no state to arrive in, only whether it happened.

Qur’an and Sunnah

We shall certainly reward those who remain steadfast according to the best of their actions (Quran 16:96). The grading is generous, which is a relief to anyone whose daily minute is mostly wandering.

مَا عِندَكُمۡ يَنفَدُ وَمَا عِندَ ٱللَّهِ بَاقࣲۗ وَلَنَجۡزِيَنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ صَبَرُوٓاْ أَجۡرَهُم بِأَحۡسَنِ مَا كَانُواْ يَعۡمَلُونَ

What you have runs out but what God has endures, and We shall certainly reward those who remain steadfast according to the best of their actions

Qur’an 16:96read it in the library

Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.

What the research says

In a randomised comparison of ways to get young adults eating more fruit and vegetables, plans that named a specific situation and the response to make in it did better than vaguer general plans. That was diet in a young sample, so it is not a claim about meditation. The transferable part is the shape of the plan: after this thing I already do, I do that small thing.

Chapman J, Armitage CJ, Norman P. (2009). Comparing implementation intention interventions in relation to young adults' intake of fruit and vegetables.. Psychology & health doi

Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.

Why it works

Attaching a small act to one you already do daily means you barely have to decide about it.

This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.

Near this one

A cold shower hands you a clean, timed urge to work with. You plan a minute, and four seconds in every part of you wants out: notice it, breathe, let the wave pass, then notice it come back.

Five minutesMaking it stick

This goes the way learning a bicycle went. You could not, then you could but only with all of your attention, then one day you rode without thinking about it. The middle bit is the ugly bit.

Five minutesMaking it stick

If you held back at four o'clock and then snapped at seven, the holding back still happened. A later slip does not reach backwards and cancel it.

A minuteMaking it stick