Meditation Marathon Retro #M10D

So…we’ve just finished the #M10D Challenge. This was an exponential challenge, beyond the #M6D by leaps and bounds. And it was incredible! We had people from Japan to the Aleutians, from Sweden to the southern Patagonia here in Argentina. But I also learn a lot about organizing it, and how it differs from the basic #M6D, so I thought that I would put this learning in writing. In case that this is the first article that you read about it, I suggest that you go to the brief explanation that I’ve posted here or to my Youtube channel for more in depth coverage. Also, you might want to refresh the previous Marathons based on #M6D. Also, just for fun, I’m including our playlist at the Present Show

So, first, let’s do an unorthodox retro. Let’s first focus on what has continued and what has changed between the other massive Meditation Marathons that we’ve done, #M6D and this #M10D.

What has remained the same

• The way to practice: you can follow up on your own or do it on a group
• The format: a series of timed meditations, through a series of pre-defined days
• The ways of contact: vía either mail, Facebook, twitter, Instagram or forum (if at IBM)
• The main distribution of people who sign up vs people who do all the practices (which are about a 4-6% of the total signers)

What has changed

• First of all, the number of people who signed up has been much higher than before (8.453 total) from a more diverse range of timezones and countries
• Instead of a single meditation and instruction, we had four different meditations across the ten days
• Daily webcasts so people can join and practice online with us
• More focus on production values: each meditation had a custom-designed flyer, a video in several languages and also audio

So, having said that, let’s go on the Bad, the Good and What We should Try Next

The Bad

• This was, actually, exhausting. Even with a small group of people helping me, the sheer volume of mails and questions meant that I spent about 3-4 hours more per day that I had planned, so the last days I was running basically on empty.
• The lack of segmentation that this meditation presupposes had an advantage: large number of signers. But it also made upkeep  very time consuming, since it means that every meditation should at least be recorded, edited, exported, etc…at least four times.
• A running issue through all Meditative Marathons and also Workshops is the low adhesion to the habit of Mindfulness, usually less than 10%. This is an improvement from the usual rates of 1-2% adhesion bandied about, but still, need improving.

The Good

• Great response from everyone who wrote about the meditations and the way they ramped up on complexity.
• A lot of good questions and follow up, which allows me to fine tune the next iteration
• It was super fun to be in a lot of live shows at the internet.

What should we try in the next iteration

• Having an established group of helpers who’ve had gone through the #M10D. So, basically, I need to come up with an M10D Facilitator Training
• I need to work on something that helps to keep up the commitment
• Also, I need to segment the way of getting the practices, so instead of producing a meditation in various languages across various media, I can cut the workload. For that and the previous point, I think that an app should be the way to go. I’ll think about it.
• As the last point: we’ve already got sponsorship from programs and corporations. I think we need to get serious and start talking government and education sponsorship and overview.

So…those are my points for the M10D. As you can see, they suggest a roadmap for what remains of the year. What do you think of it? Have I missed something?

F