BE HERE NOW

Ram Dass

We often think of Mindfulness in terms of meditation, yoga or as some woo-woo trendy idea of the moment. While it may be a very hot topic these days, it’s actually an ancient and incredibly simple concept that’s profoundly effective. One of my favorite interpretations of it comes from the title of spiritual teacher/author Ram Dass’ book: BE HERE NOW. The truth is, most of us spend more of our time thinking about past and future events than what is happening right now. That’s not to say that the past and future don’t matter, of course they do. But the past can’t be changed and the future is determined by what happens in the present. So the present is what truly matters. Mindfulness is about being present in the present. The practical application of this concept can improve everything from a massive work project to getting the laundry done. Using this idea can allow you to harness your time, energy, and attention, which will allow you to get more done with less stress.  Here are some of the ways that mindfulness and productivity techniques intersect and how you can apply them.

Single-Tasking

For starters, use the idea of being present to focus on just one thing. The concept of multi-tasking is a well debunked myth. Multitasking is really switch-tasking. When you do more than one thing at a time you are making your brain stop and start the processes of each task over and over again, and every time you do that, your brain has to reset, which takes time and steals focus. As a result, you’re not allowing yourself to get into a deep flow state on any one thing. It’s in that deep flow state that the best of your mind is available to you for whatever it is you are trying to accomplish.  See if you relate to this scenario:  

You start writing a proposal or an email or whatever. You decide to go find a quote to start it off. You can’t find it right away. Now that you’re in your browser you see a tab of the product you meant to buy on Amazon yesterday and think, oh, let me finish that. While there, you see some suggested similar items and next thing you know you’ve been on Amazon for 20 mins, but didn’t even make the purchase because you couldn’t decide between the original thing and the recommendations.  Eventually you get back to the proposal - no further along, forgetting why you were looking for that quote in the first place.  Three tasks, none completed. All are now stressful open loops in our minds. We go through this every day. If you had opted for a more mindful approach -- set your intention, do just the one thing, and allow other thoughts to float past you would be more successful with the primary task.  Doing just one thing gives you a greater chance of actually completing it, and completing it well. 

Mindfulness training often uses the phrase:  “Set Your Intention”. This means choose how you plan to move through your day, your tasks, your interactions.  Without an intention, we are controlled by events, by distractions, by others’ goals & needs, and we never quite feel accomplished. Intentionality in any set of actions is the difference between being in control of your circumstances or your circumstances being in control of you. An intention can be grand or simple. “I will be kind today”  “I will read my industry journal for 25 minutes today”, “I will only check social media twice a day. “  Intentionality leads to accomplishment.  

The Mind Sweep

One final intersection of mindfulness and productivity relates to David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” system. One of the aspects of meditation is resting the mind. During a mindfulness meditation you might be encouraged to simply observe thoughts that occur without focusing on them or judging them. One of the tools of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” system (often referred to as GTD), is the “mind sweep”.  In a mind sweep, you spend a quality amount of focused time downloading everything that requires your attention out of your mind and into a ‘trusted system’.  That can be a legal pad or an app,  the format is not important. What is important is the emptying out of all those concerns. With these concerns out of your brain and onto paper, you are left with two things: 1)  A starting point to set your intentions and priorities-- selecting from all those things you swept onto the page--  And, 2)  An unburdened mind with which to tackle them. 

Productivity is not really about checking off everything on your to-do list. It’s about checking off the right things. Mindfulness allows us to create the right conditions to identify our priorities and focus the mind the in a way that is next level.