I recently took a personality test and decided I needed to change some things; some aspects of my personality seemed to be responsible for making me unhappy. A high level of neurotic anxiety was one of them. To help adopt a new mindset, I took intensive meditation class; the “homework” involved meditating for 45 minutes a day.

This was challenging because, as I confessed to my meditation teacher, I hated meditating. As an ultra-productive efficiency lover, I didn’t like doing nothing for long stretches of time. But also, and more important, I wasn’t sure I really wanted my anxiety to go away.