I used to meditate regularly until I decided to take a break a couple of months ago.
On the positive side it has helped me a lot - lowered stress, better sleep, improved communication, creativity and a lot of the things others have already covered. I want to highlight a few things on the not so positive side.
1) lowered drive at work. I had to take more conscious effort to get myself to take action on things when I previously reacted quickly as I was more "on the edge".
2) feeling very emotional / sensitive. I found myself crying to myself a lot more and generally being affected by things around me.
3) Ignoring certain things that needed attention. I think at some point it started to become a crutch. Some relationships needed my attention / action in my personal life and I found myself doing nothing about it because I think in some way I started using meditation almost as some place I could escape into and feel good internally when externally things weren't great.
In spite of all the above, I want to resume my practice soon as I feel that the fact that I can see the issues give me the ability to address them. I highly recommend the site http://lorinroche.com
Understand the domain really well. You have to live and breathe it. Not just the specific problem you are trying to solve but the bigger picture. It will give you the freedom to make macro level decisions regarding your code that can have a high impact.
This usually happens to me when the task at hand is not challenging enough. Try and develop some genuine interest in what you are doing and everything will just flow.
On the positive side it has helped me a lot - lowered stress, better sleep, improved communication, creativity and a lot of the things others have already covered. I want to highlight a few things on the not so positive side.
1) lowered drive at work. I had to take more conscious effort to get myself to take action on things when I previously reacted quickly as I was more "on the edge". 2) feeling very emotional / sensitive. I found myself crying to myself a lot more and generally being affected by things around me. 3) Ignoring certain things that needed attention. I think at some point it started to become a crutch. Some relationships needed my attention / action in my personal life and I found myself doing nothing about it because I think in some way I started using meditation almost as some place I could escape into and feel good internally when externally things weren't great.
In spite of all the above, I want to resume my practice soon as I feel that the fact that I can see the issues give me the ability to address them. I highly recommend the site http://lorinroche.com