Figures, numbers as standards

One of the heroes and guiding influences of the last decades of my working life was W. Edwards Deming.  He is one, often considered the main, person in the quality movement, sometimes called Total Quality Management or Total Quality Control.  From him and other sources, I came to suspect numbers where they are given as constants to guide people.  When I look at a set of rules or expectations or results, I suspect the numbers.

I guess it all started in my junior or senior year of college.  The math department or somebody sponsored a visiting lecturer from Bell Labs.  He said that we should keep our eye on the fast lane in supermarkets.  He had noted that the number of items which was stated as the upper limit one could have going through that lane to be checked out varied too much.  Some stores say 10 and some state 15. 

I am a fan of meditation, sitting quietly and being still.  I keep my eyes on a single spot while attending to the thoughts that come to my mind.  When I realize that I have become involved with a line of thinking, I break it off gently, shelving it until sometime after the session.  I keep clearing and re-clearing my mind until the end of the session.  I learned to do this from the 1972 book by Herbert Benson M.D., "The Relaxation Response".  I have been meditating regularly for about 15 years.

I started with his recommendation to do meditation for 10 to 20 minutes once or twice a day.  I considered 10 minutes once a day to be within his recommendation and although I tried slightly longer periods, I found that 10 minutes once a day had an effect on my thinking and awareness of where I was doing with my thinking.  That mindfulness is what I was after and I liked that standard for duration, which I still use.

But I have found a surprising variation in the recommended duration.  8 hours (an friend who is expert in the literature of India), a weekend with repeated 45 or 90 minute sessions (many meditation retreats), 6 seconds (Dr. Charles Stroebel, "The Quieting Reflex"), 10 to 20 minutes once or twice a day (Benson's book) , 24 minutes (B. Alan Wallace), and 8 minutes (Victor Davich). Tolle says it is possible, perhaps better even, to work at increasing self-awareness of one's mind flow by simply taking a moment at various points in one's day to pay close, relaxed attention to some activity such as washing the dishes or getting into the car.

I am confident that all these people know what they are talking about and that various durations can all be quite valuable.  I still like to keep an eye on numerical standards and recommendations.  I have even seen two different references lately to research that implies having a body-mass index of between 25 and 30 is healthy for those of us fatties who are over 70.  The longtime standard has been 25.