[I'm sleepy so bear with me.] Meditation is extremely easy - for a while. I'm interested in it, I try to do it regularly, but it's not easy to return to it every day, or during a busy day. We see a news article about it, we talk about it, some of us will try it for a while, but in a month from now, all of us will be at the same point as right now - not doing it anymore. It's hard to stress how important is to practice regularly, as then it starts to be really effective.
In my life, I'm returning to meditation in waves, in short periods of practice, but for some (possibly material, possibly immaterial) reason, I want more.
My aim is to find a way how to meditate sustainably, with the least effort, and how to remind oneself every day that he should meditate. Mind you, I don't know if this is even viable, as sometimes your mind revolts, and when it does, it will (on the background) use your best intelligence and creativity to avoid the practice. I think that not even smartphone apps can help you in this regard. Speaking of which, so far I've seen two worth mentioning (I haven't tried them yet), this one for iPhone http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lotus-bud-meditation-timer/id... and this one for Android https://market.android.com/details?id=com.nwalex.meditation. But as I said, I'm not sure these can help in a long run. The problem is that as you keep practicing (internal-awareness) meditation regularly, it will change your external reality (a.k.a. your life) very profoundly, only making it harder to keep practicing every day. There's a lot more to write about this, I could go on and on for many more pages - distractions, formal vs informal, beating your daily energy deficiency, cheating the thought-switching mechanism that makes you day-dream during meditation, etc.. but I want to put this in a readable and practically usable form first, if that is possible at all. (Edit: oh, and it must be a very short form - if you write a book about meditation, then - I believe - you have already failed to deliver what matters, as in that case the reader will simply get satisfied/their energy depleted with the reading itself, and their focus moves to something else.)
I use the iPhone app called 'Soto Timer' when I'm away. It's free and allows you to configure multiple periods (so you can sit, rest or kinhin, sit, rest or kinhin etc)
Sitting every day is most important. There is no substitute for this. A good way to convince yourself of the benefits, and to reinvigorate your practice, is to throw yourself into the deep end and do a retreat. The 'container' of a 'retreat' (retreat is an inadequate word, if you've ever done a proper retreat you'll know why) allows you to sit for extended periods and remain mindful when doing other simple activities like cutting food for your lunch.
As you said though, meditation is a 'practice'. There is no 'attainment' - if you're not practicing, the benefits are basically nil. As such, you need to practice for it to be worthwhile.
The best time to sit is first thing in the morning. Set your alarm, get out of bed (no excuses) and sit down. This is good for two reasons. 1) if you do nothing else all day, at least you've done your meditation and 2) as you've not had a chance to distract yourself yet, you're more likely to remain present. Of course you'll distract yourself with your plans for your day and convince yourself that you don't have time for this, that you're too tired, but these are just stories like all the others you tell yourself. Let them go, and return to your breath, again and again and again.
This is true. To sit right after getting out of bed in the morning, that actually might be the only chance for a regular practice, in this hectic material world. One usually has to visit the bathroom, and that can be enough for the day thoughts and habits to fully kick in - one grabs a tea, a piece of dark organic chocolate, talks with their partner, pets their dog - realizing few hours later or sometime during the day (if at all), that he actually skipped a sitting, but despite that, morning is most probably the best time. I know, once the initial one or two-week period is fought through, then the energies are different and practicing is easier ... at least until life creates its next whirlpool day and kicks one off the track. Waves. Anyway. Meditation is the art of coming back after losing track, in micro (the practice) and in macro (the waves), and the great thing is, that every next wave is better, because one puts to use what he has learnt before.
I wrote https://market.android.com/details?id=com.nwalex.meditation because I wanted to motivate myself to meditate more regularly. Prior to having the app, I'd manage maybe 10 days in a row, before finding some reason to skip a day (too busy, too tired, etc). Now I very rarely skip a day. As to whether or not it works long term, I've been using it for over a year, and it's still working for me. But then, it is custom built for my personality. My competitive nature means I never want to 'break the chain'. YMMV.
I'm an iPhone user, but I'm moving to Android (via Galaxy Nexus) very soon, and I think your app will be one of the first ones I install. And it's great to hear that it helps you practicing for over a year, that's just wonderful. Do you have intervals of more days in a row when you don't practice at all?
One idea for the app - build a reminder into it - but a random one. One that sounds an alarm at unexpected time of day. This might be great for cheating the evading mind.
It has a reminder, but it's not random. You tell it how many minutes you want to spend meditating each day, and then configure a reminder time. At that time a notification appears in the tool bar if you haven't met your target. You can configure the notification message to make it something that motivates you.
You can also configure what time your day starts. If you often meditate just before bed, and don't go to bed until after midnight, you can offset the start of day. I have mine set to 2am, for example.
Last but not least, it has a simple widget that displays the length of the current chain (the number of consecutive days you have met your target), your longest ever chain, and a representation of the proportion of the target you've met today. When you miss a day, the current chain resets to zero.
All this combined works well for me. I recently broke a chain of 369 days because I was really ill. It wasn't a decision I took lightly. I'm on a run of 31 days now - less than a year to go to beat my record!
