better to finish, and smoothly:

[editing note: noting that the discussion just added above maybe confusingly tone clashes with this section]

One of the things that’s hard is that, I suspect, for most people, doing the thing will either consume their lives or they’ll get stuck. There’s the saying, "Better not to start. If you start, better to finish."

Some people will try to fit all this into the way their life currently is, their job, their relationships. That might work, meditating one to three hours per day, with more on the weekends, and intensely a few times per year. (But, again, see above how long that’ll take, calendar time, given the raw number of hours needed to asymptote.) One possible outcome of this is that they won’t notice many things changing. And that’s a safe tolerable outcome. But, if that person gets into some hard stuff, they might not have the "habitual intensity" to get themselves out. And they may get stuck in a state that’s hurting themselves, people they care about, and possibly many people that they incidentally come into contact with in their daily lives.

So there’s a certain safety in "really committing." You don’t have to do that in the beginning. You can ramp up slowly over six to twenty-four months, maybe, to see if you really want to do this thing. Maybe. We don’t have enough data, yet. This section will change as that data comes in. Be very careful about experimenting, to figure out whether you’re in or you’re out. Don’t accidentally get too far. It happens.

An important part of the that "really committing" is not just knowing that you’re going to put in a lot of hours. That other part is something like "cognitive burden" or "cognitive momentum." It often or even usually won’t look like normal "figuring things out," though it very well might, but your mind is going to be occupied solving problems of types its never, ever had to solve before. And, to make progress, this is sometimes going to be going on "in the back of your mind" when you’d potentially rather be, say, making money or enjoying or strengthening relationships. One person described it to be as "whole self demanding" as another full time job or another primary relationship. So, even if one doesn’t meditate for three days or something, that "job-ness" or "relationship-ness" in terms of how the mind is processing beneath the surface (or not) doesn’t go away.

A few paragraphs above, I mentioned, "they may get stuck in a state that’s hurting themselves, people they care about, and possibly many people that they incidentally come into contact with in their daily lives." Being "really committed" also involves trying to have life flexibility to sometimes dial the intensity up even more, to move through harmful states faster or more smoothly. Other sections will talk a bit more specifically about the possible harms to oneself and other people. But, if something like that is going on, one wants to be able to ideally isolate themselves for as many hours or days is necessary to get to something better. That’s going to put a strain on relationships, depending on how complete that isolation should be. It’s better to have kids after one or both people get on the likely far side of all of that.

This paragraph is in the section above, too: Every problem you encounter may seem like it’s the deepest last problem. But there will be another, and another, maybe with a delay but inevitably, until there isn’t. So plan for this, in resources (time, money, relationships), possible break-taking (to make money or friends), opportunity costs, etc. One can’t predict using timelines, or plan using timelines—one has to just assume it’s going to take 10 years 20 years even if it only takes 1.7 years. This can potentially be hard and risky, depending on available resources and opportunity costs, and likely or possible sequelae.