Once we begin to understand mindfulness and practise it regularly throughout our daily lives, we can then begin to explore how to take further steps to allow it to improve areas we may not have considered using it in before.
In this case, how you can introduce it into your working life. We spend a lot of time at work and therefore it is a place where being more mindful could provide many benefits, we just need to consider where and how we can introduce it into our working routine.
Research suggests that practising mindfulness can be very valuable in the workplace enhancing the skills of concentration, resilience, decision making, problem-solving, creativity and relationships and more. We become more productive and our value to our organisation increases. There is no end to the benefits, so here some ideas on how to use mindfulness at work.
Be present
To be mindful is to switch from auto-pilot to being consciously present. Being mindful at work involves you giving your full attention to the project you are working on, and each time your mind wanders, acknowledging where your thoughts have gone and gently bringing your focus back to the piece of work you are completing. You can think of this in the same way as you may complete a guided meditation, focussing on the breath, then when your mind wanders, as it inevitably does, gently accepting where your thoughts have gone non-judgementally, and guiding yourself back to your breath.
Decide to be more mindful
At the start of your day at work choose to be mindful for as much of the day as you can, in every task you complete. Remember that mindfulness is a practise and if you don’t achieve this in everything you do that day, be patient and non-judgmental with yourself. The times you were mindful will have still brought greater clarity and focus to your work.
Have a mindful lunch break
Make a date with yourself to eat your lunch mindfully, go for a mindful walk or listen to some music and focus on the sounds and tones of instruments and voices. Your afternoon will almost always be more productive if you have a proper break and switch off from the morning’s activity.
Stop multi-tasking
We often talk about multi-tasking as if it is a skill we should all have, and that if we can’t multi-task we are not as productive or useful. If we are multi-tasking our brain is not focussed completely on what we are doing, as we are constantly switching from one thing to the next. This mixed attention may cause us to not complete any of the things we are doing as efficiently as we could if we were single-tasking. Try to complete one piece of work at a time, without moving into other tasks and notice how much more clarity and focus you have. You may find it helps to group tasks into sections such as phone calls, emails and meetings, then work through each block rather than switching back and for. It may help to set a timer and work on each task for a certain period before moving on.
Keep a mindful journal
Try out different ways of working mindfully and see what works for you. Note how much more productive you felt when you had a proper mindful lunchbreak. Notice how much more you learned about someone you manage when you listened to them mindfully and shut out distractions.
If you would like to talk about mindfulness training please contact us.