How to Choose a Guided Meditation for Daily Practicing
AIDAS BENDORAITIS / JUNE 6, 2020
Reading time: 3 minutes.
If you want to stay happy and peaceful, you probably practice meditation. Tried a series of different guided meditations, you would find it useful to have a meditation track on your iPhone so that you can practice it in a park, at the workplace, or even in public transport. Meditation apps like Soulvana, Omvana, Calm, or Headspace are cool, but maybe they are not your thing, and all you need is a simple MP3 with the guidance that you can listen to at any place.
You did your research and selected several guided meditations. Now you want to decide which of them to choose. Your guided meditation must meet several criteria you have. To help you prioritize, 1st things 1st comes into play.
Using 1st things 1st to prioritize guided meditations
At 1st things 1st, you create prioritization projects, where you perform these four steps:
- Define criteria.
- List out meditations (or other things).
- Rate each meditation by each criterion.
- Explore priorities.
⚙️ Project setup
At first, you will add a new project to your personal account. You will choose “Blank” from the project templates.
The project creation wizard will guide you through the essential questions:
1. The project Title and Short description – you will probably call the project “Guided Meditations”. Next!
2. Then you will set how to name things. You will change the Things to Meditations.
When you created the project, you will go to the main steps of prioritization.
🧭 Step 1. Add criteria
In the first step of prioritization, you will add the list of criteria and their evaluation types.
- Can be saved on your iPhone because you want to access it anywhere.
- Takes a short time because you don’t have much alone time during the day.
- Improves well-being because that’s what matters to you.
- Boosts energy because you need to relax and gain the focus back.
- Performed in a kind tone because you don’t want to listen to unpleasant guidance regularly.
Choose Bulk add criteria and enter these criteria one per line. Set their evaluation type From “definitely not” to “definitely”
The criteria will be added to the prioritizer. Now you can edit them and change their importance.
💡 Step 2. Add guided meditations
In the next step, you will list out your guided meditations.
- Arriving Meditation by Connected Business (9:30)
- 6 Phase Meditation by Vishen Lakhiani (15:30)
- 15 Minute Guided Meditation by Boho Beautiful (16:30)
- Brief Mindfulness of Breathing by Dr. Miles Neale (7:15)
- Guided Meditation: Focus Pt 1 by Rhys Winton (4:00)
After choosing Bulk add meditations, you will enter them line by line:
The meditations will be added to the prioritizer. You can then edit them individually.
🎚 Step 3. Evaluate meditations by criteria
Now it’s time to evaluate all guided meditations by all criteria.
For example, you can save most of these meditations on iPhone either as MP3 or as offline Spotify tracks, but “15 Minute Guided Meditation by Boho Beautiful” is from Youtube, extracting sound from it would be complicated. 15-minute meditations are probably not short, but you can practice the others in 10 minutes or less. “Arriving Meditation by Connected Business” and “6 Phase Meditation by Vishen Lakhiani” definitely improves well-being and boosts energy, whereas others are not so effective.
📊 Step 4. Explore priorities
The prioritizer will show you calculated and sorted meditations grouped into the ones:
- to choose for sure,
- to consider, and
- to skip.
“Arriving Meditation by Connected Business” might be at the top, matching your criteria at 95%. That will be the track that you will transfer to your Music app and listen to it regularly to calm your mind and restore energy. “6 Phase Meditation by Vishen Lakhiani” could also be pretty close, matching the criteria at 85%. It’s worth having on your iPhone for more random and longer rest times.
Final words
Whether you evaluate meditation tracks or meditation apps, prioritizer 1st things 1st might be handy for you. Check it out now and make rational decisions about things that matter to you!
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Cover photo by Jared Rice.