Productivity and performance are the buzzwords in every workplace these days.
We need to do more work with less resources in an even shorter period of time! Work and life just seems to get more hectic by the day.
Does this kind of work day sound familiar?
Get into work, open the email. Gasp at the long list of emails that seem to have appeared from nowhere overnight. “How the hell did that happen??? I was here to 8pm last night working my backside off so that I could clear my work and be ready to start afresh today”.
Shoulders drop. The heart rate increases, the sense of dread is looming on the horizon. Suddenly overwhelmed with stress and anxiety. And you haven’t even started any actual work yet!
You clear the emails, well king of, you skim read them all to see if anything ‘must’ be done straight away. Flag a bunch of them to ‘action later’, and disregard the others hoping that someone else on the email chain will look after it.
You work hard all morning but still haven’t started on your priority tasks for the day but have been ‘busy’ doing stuff.
Before you know it, its lunchtime. But wait, there’s a meeting coming up that haven’t prepared for so a small bite to eat is shovelled down while preparing for the meeting.
You rush into the meeting, without taking even the slightest moment to take stock.
The meeting is a talk fest, and all you can think is ‘my time could be spent so much better than this’ so you have all sorts of problems focusing and paying attention.
Back to the desk, the emails and phone calls have mounted up, and before you know it, it is the end of the day. You sit there with a stunned look on your face wondering where all the time went…
Does this work day sound a bit better?
Get into work, turn on the computer, and before even thinking of opening the emails, you do a 10 minute meditation. It’s your morning ritual.
The 10 minute meditation is finished and it is time to get stuck into the day and those emails first thing. You gasp as you see the amount of emails, but rather than shoulders dropping, you have a sense of calm as you start working through them with a clear and controlled thought process
You action a couple of emails that require immediate attention, schedule the work for others, then fire into your priority tasks. Your mind is in a positive place and the day just flows on from there.
Obstacles and challenges continue to arise throughout the day but if they become a bit much, you stop, take stock, even do another short meditation or breathing exercise, and it all becomes manageable again.
Those 2 stories are a snapshot of my workdays before and after starting a regular meditation practise. It might seem a bit extreme, but even today, if I don’t meditate on any given day for whatever reason, then something very similar to the first scenario tends to unfold.
So here’s a few ways you might be able to incorporate meditation or mindfulness into your work day:
- A 5-10 minute relaxation meditation before you start for the day (and that means before opening any emails!) just to get you in the right frame of mind or a visualisation of the work you will be completing successfully throughout the day.
- A 5-10 minute meditation straight after lunch to refresh the brain, clear the noise in the mind and set the intention for what you want to achieve in the afternoon.
- As you are about to shut down the computer for the day. A 5-10 minute meditation to acknowledge the work you have achieved, or if you haven’t achieved as much as you’d like, acknowledge that fact, accept it and move on so that you don’t ‘take the work home’ with you each night.
- As you are rushing between meetings. A quick 2 minute breathing exercise to slow down your mind and concentrate on the present.
- As you are about to start a team meeting. A short 2-5 minute meditation to focus everyone’s thoughts on the present and have everyone in the meeting have a clear mind open to the content of the meeting an a positive frame of mind to be
Just implementing one of these could create significant improvements in your mind space at work. And if you don’t feel comfortable meditation at work, try before or after work in the comfort of your home.
Need some convincing on the benefits and some of the science that supports it? Read more from any of our benefits of meditation blogs.
Or if you’re interested in giving meditation a try, a great way to start out is with guided meditations. Give our 3 free meditation series a try by filling out the form at the top right of the page (or you can see a bit more information on them here).
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