Want to live twice as long? Meditation might help | Oliver Burkeman

What if you could increase the attention you paid to every moment, no matter how humdrum?

In his new book The Science Of Enlightenment, the meditation teacher Shinzen Young claims that if you meditate for a few minutes a day, you'll double your lifespan. There are two obvious possibilities here. One is that he's a charlatan. The other is that he's talking in an annoyingly metaphorical way, as when certain new age authors claim that "you are the universe", which may be true in some sense, but isn't much use when you're trying to get out of a parking ticket. Actually, I think neither applies. I think he might be right. Bear with me.

If you're older than about 25, you'll be familiar with the way time seems to speed up as we age. That's probably because we encounter fewer novel experiences, so with less information to process, we pay less attention; and, in recollection, the months and years feel shorter. You can test this: just recall a recent time when you did expose yourself to lots of novelty. A five-day trip I made to Sweden last year still feels like a substantial episode in my life, but the five days either side of it have evaporated, lost to memory for ever.