Data science & Meditation: a love story

Why data scientists can benefit from incorporating meditation into their routine

In a nutshell

In this article, I propose the idea that meditating regularly leads to the development of desirable traits in the context of data science work.

This idea is developed in four sections.

• A meditation protocol:
  I provide a meditation protocol that can be applied by anyone that is interested in giving meditation a try.
• Hebb’s law:
  I define the neuroscience principle called “Hebb’s law” and its implications on learning a skill or behaviour.
• Hebb’s law and meditating:
  I show how according to Hebb’s law, meditating allows one to develop one’s “metacognition” and “mental discipline”.
• Metacognition, mental discipline and data science:
  In this final paragraph, I describe how metacognition and mental discipline can be valuable skills for data scientists.

A meditation protocol

1. Sit comfortably in a chair, your back should be supported
2. Start a chronometer, the meditation session should last anywhere between 12 and 14 minutes
3. Close your eyes and breathe through your nose
4. In your head, repeat the word “air” gently. This word will act as an anchor for your attention.
5. Each time you notice a thought emerging in your mind (this is perfectly normal, don’t be frustrated), gently stop engaging with it and come back to repeating your anchor word.
6. You can open your eyes to check the elapsed time from time to time, but try to refrain from overdoing it.

This simple protocol will serve as a reference to help me illustrate my points in the following parts. Please understand that many other meditation protocols exist out there. I leave it to you to explore them.

Hebb’s law

Hebb’s law is the name given to a famous neuroscience principle that stipulates that “neurons that fire together wire together”. In layman's terms, the more you engage in a particular behaviour or thought process, the stronger the connection between the neurons involved in that activity will become.

This means that one can learn skills or instil a particular behaviour in oneself through consistent practice and repetition. Note that this simple truth has been known for a long time, as illustrated by the French idiom from the XVth century: “C’est en forgeant qu’on devient forgeron” (which translates literally into: “It is by forging that one becomes a blacksmith”).

C’est en forgeant qu’on devient forgeron

For instance, if one wants to develop one’s memory, one should find ways to routinely challenge one’s memory, through memory games for instance. Over a long enough period of time, this should lead to improved memorization skills.

Hebb’s law and meditating

If we want to determine the benefits which can be brought upon by regular meditation practice in a particular context, we should:

1. Isolate the skills that are put to use in a meditation practice. Our assumption is that with enough time and repetition, these skills will develop given Hebb’s law principle.
2. Rate the usefulness of these skills in our context of interest.

I will attend to point 1 in this section and to point 2 in the next section.

Now, let us look at our meditation practice, and in particular the 5th step:

“Each time you notice a thought emerging in your mind (this is perfectly normal, don’t be frustrated), gently stop engaging with it and come back to repeating your anchor word.”

The act of noticing a thought emerging in your mind supposes that you are paying attention to your internal mental experience and are able to be aware of your thoughts as they arise. This is a clear manifestation of the “metacognition” skill, which refers to the ability to think about and regulate one’s own cognitive processes.

In contrast, the act of stopping engagement with a starting train of thoughts and coming back to repeating your anchor word supposes the ability to keep your attention focused on a task, and resilience in the face of distractions. This is a clear manifestation of the “mental discipline” skill, which refers to the ability to control the direction of your attention.

To summarize, Hebb’s law tells us that:
Regular meditation practice = better metacognition and mental discipline skills

Metacognition, mental discipline and data science

Now, how useful are metacognition and mental discipline skills in the context of data science work?

As obvious as it may seem, it won’t hurt to remind ourselves that data science is all about cognitive work, which requires higher-level thinking skills such as:

• analytical engineering: Being able to break down a concrete problem (such as a business problem) into a combination of data mining problems.
• evaluation: Being able to determine the value of a proposed solution to a problem.

I could list many similar skills such as synthesis, problem-solving, decision-making and critical thinking, which all have their place in data scientists’ work.

A common feature to all of these skills is that they require sustained attention to be put in practice effectively. This is where both metacognition and mental discipline skills come in handy.

To summarize

Regular meditation practice = better metacognition + mental discipline skills = better overall cognitive skills = better data scientists

Hopefully, you will benefit from reading this article 😁