I had read all the advice in the world about getting better sleep. Whether it's sleep masks, supplements, tuning your daily routine, I did it and often benefitted from it. However I continued to have a problem many with ADHD experience that none of the above really hit: My mind is just racing at night. I **cannot just rest my mind. It needs something to chew on** and process. This has always been the missing puzzle piece. Then I remembered reading about *koans* which are **meditative riddles or paradoxical questions used in Zen Buddhism to quiet the mind** and provoke insight. They are like little puzzles you can mentally take with you into your meditation. I thought that would be perfect for this use case. It **replaces satisfying that need for stimulation by getting on the phone** with something that need only exist as a tiny memory in my head that I can chew on for hours if needed. In practice, I can only spend about 10-20 minutes on them because having my body totally rested and my eyes shut, I **usually fall asleep quickly as a result**. So I decided to share these koans with readers here in case they are helpful to anyone else. # Example Koans ## Now you're rich Just before bed, you learn that for whatever reason, you now have all the money you'll ever need and more. What do you do? The question is not long term or about listing out things you will buy, but moment to moment tomorrow morning, what is the first thing you do, the second, and so on. How does it all play out? ## A private ecosystem You are given all the funds and resources to construct a big terrarium the size of a single-family home. You get to design what goes inside it in terms of plants and animals and it will be closed for the rest of time allowing it to live as its own closed ecosystem. How do you construct it? Would you allow visitors? ## Your own personal Imagine you were so wealthy you could hire your own personal `___` (choose what goes in this blank). What would you fill in the blank and how would having this person on the payroll working full-time for your needs change your life? ## Urban Planning You have infinite resources and permissions to change the urban planning and quality of life of a city of your choosing. What do you do? ## Birthday Paradox The Birthday Paradox is the real and surprising fact that in a room of any random set of 23 people, there is a 50% chance two of them will have the same birthday. Without doing any math, what might help explain why this actually makes sense? ## Time And Particles Consider that any point in time can be defined as a snapshot of the state of all matter and energy at that point. The difference between Jan 1, 1965 and today is just that every particle in the universe and all energy changed to different positions and states. Even a thought in one's head is just energy and matter doing things in our brains. Is this an adequate definition and if it is, could we not consider that if we could just move matter and energy around we could effectively time travel? ## Plane on a globe Why does a plane not need to occasionally dip its nose down when flying horizontally to prevent it from flying off the curvature of the earth and into outer space? ## Extra senses Imagine only one human had ever developed the sense of sight. Wouldn't it be hard to explain the concept of light and color to us? What if we are in that world now and there is another sense we have not yet evolved? Could we describe it anyway? ## You as a simulation If you could perfectly make a copy of yourself on a computer such that it could think, feel, remember exactly as you do, is it you? If not, what is it missing? ## Entropy Everything tends to move from order to disorder. When we use energy, it comes to us in an ordered state like in a battery, then when we're done with it, it's disordered, like heat dissipated in the air and on surfaces. If this trend continues, what is the eventual state of the universe once everything has reached perfect entropy? How do we explain molecules coming together to form larger molecules, cells, and life itself despite entropy? ## Free Days What if tomorrow you had no obligations? What would you do? ![[Partials#^eaec46]]