Goal-free time
Once a day, time with no goal and no input.
Do this
- Once a day, step out of doing and responding: sit quietly, meditate, draw or listen to music. He sets no length. Ten minutes is a workable start.
- Don't try to work anything out. Asking yourself what to do with your life is not how this works. Let wants surface as feelings and images.
- Run the three daily checks he takes from the analyst James Hollis. Shut up: someone has it worse, so practise gratitude, giving it and receiving it. Suit up: prepare and look after yourself. Show up: do your part in the roles you hold.
- If you pray, this is where it fits. He prays every night, asking for clarity and the energy to act well, not for outcomes.
- Longer versions count too: a run, a hike, a camping trip.
- Don't wait to find a calling. He says you find it while working hard at something else, and he plans his own life in five-year chunks.
On a bad day: Ten breaths of full attention before you get out of bed. That is his own morning minimum.
Why it works
The argument he takes from Hollis: people who only fulfil roles and prepare for them can do it for decades and still end up miserable. Time outside stimulus and response lets less conscious wishes surface as feelings or images, which then shape what you notice and choose. He pairs this with the hard focus block: one period a day of full effort, one with none.
What the research says
The least evidence-based of the ten, and he presents it as personal experience. Nearby research exists: meditation programmes modestly reduce anxiety and low mood, gratitude exercises raise well-being in trials, and attending religious services is associated with longer life in observational data. He also cites a 2026 brain-imaging study of meditation and concludes that regular meditators can sleep about an hour less. The study did not measure how much sleep anyone needs.
- Goyal et al., JAMA Internal Medicine, 2014Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: a systematic review and meta-analysisAcross 47 trials, mindfulness meditation programmes gave moderate improvements in anxiety, depression and pain.
- Emmons & McCullough, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2003Counting blessings versus burdens: an experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily lifePeople who listed things they were grateful for each week reported higher well-being than those who listed hassles.
- Li et al., JAMA Internal Medicine, 2016Association of Religious Service Attendance With Mortality Among WomenAmong about 74,000 US nurses, attending services more than once a week went with 33% lower mortality over 16 years. Observational.
- Keating et al., PNAS, 2026Neurofluid circulation changes during a focused attention style of mindfulness meditationMRI of 23 experienced meditators showed brain fluid flow shifting toward a sleep-like pattern during focused-attention meditation. It did not measure waste clearance directly, and beginners were not tested.