You can meditate at your office for five minutes like this businessman while his coworkers ... [+]
August is National Wellness Month and a time to focus on work stress management, self-care, burnout prevention and developing healthy daily routines. Research from Gallup reveals that working less isn’t enough to reduce stress, improve well-being or prevent burnout. It’s part of the story, but not the whole story. So what’s the other part? Gallup’s analysis of employee burnout found that the missing piece is how employees experience their workload that has a stronger influence on burnout than the number of hours they work. Plus, when it comes to overall well-being, the quality of the work experience has 2.5 to three times the impact than the number of days or hours worked.
So what if you could be more in the present moment and do your work at the same time? Workflow meditation—the curious observation of what’s happening inside and around you in the present moment without judgment during the course of your workday—allows you to do exactly that. If you’re like most people, you spin a lot of plates on a daily basis, skipping the present moment to get to the next item on your agenda. You hop in and out of the shower to get to work instead of being in the shower. You rush through your commute to the office instead of being present during the commute. You multitask to get everything done before calling it a day instead of being present with each task. What’s wrong with this picture?
You’re stuck in the past or future, while the present moment—where life really happens—passes you by. If you’re “always on,” the slightest inconvenience can trip your inner alarm system, causing you to lose your cool before you know it. Over time, stress has, in effect, kidnapped you, and you probably haven’t given much thought to doing anything about it. You may have noticed the shrinkage of your contentment, well-being and happiness, but you may not know what to do about it. When your mind hijacks you into worry, stress or depression, it magnifies its chronic perception of threats, compromising your mental and physical health. Eventually, these stressors catch up with you, accumulating and forcing your brain to adapt negatively to them as only it can sometimes leading to burnout.
How To Practice Workflow Meditation?
During your work routines, observing your thoughts and feelings like you would a blemish on your hand—instead of fast-forwarding through them—resets your brain and changes your body chemistry, making you calmer on the inside and more productive on the outside.
Workflow meditations allow you to be mindful in motion during the flow of activities already built into the course of your workday such as during Zoom meetings, returning emails or meeting deadlines. They are quick, portable, and easy to use while on the run. Just sixty seconds of any brief present-moment activity can reset your brain, unwind stress, clear your head and raise your energy level. The beauty of workflow meditation is that you can blend it into your daily routines without added time.
While waiting for your quarterly review, you can practice present-moment listening. Stuck in traffic, you can focus on your in-breath and out-breath and imbibe the calm in your body. You can even practice it right now. As you read on, you might find your mind wandering from time to time. If it does, just be aware of your wandering mind, let its distraction be okay, and gently bring it back to the words on the printed page. That, too, is a workflow meditation. When you’re fully engaged with curiosity in a workflow meditation, you notice that previous worries or stressful thoughts fall away. You might be aware that your heart and respiration rates are slower and your tight muscles loosen because you took yourself off the red alert of your thinking mind and brought it into the present moment, neutralizing your stress response and activating your rest-and-digest-response.
Start Your Day With Workflow Meditation
On the way from the parking deck into your office building, instead of rifling through your day’s agenda, you can intentionally walk with present-moment awareness. Simply bring your attention to the sensations of your feet against the ground, note the feeling of the open sky or focus on as many different sounds as you can. You might hear a dog bark in the distance, birds tweeting, ambient traffic, a siren, an airplane, your own gurgling stomach or a heating or air conditioning unit.
The next time you go back to your workplace, imagine you have entered it for the first time. Notice the entrance-way and the architecture of the building. Once inside, look at your coworkers with renewed interest as if you’ve never seen them before. Notice what you’re thinking and feeling as you mindfully examine your workplace. If you notice yourself making judgments, try not to judge yourself for judging. Instead, see if you can substitute curiosity and compassion for the coworkers or situations you’re judging. Then after you’ve completed the exercise at work, try it when you get home. The goal is to stay in the present moment and substitute curiosity for judgment. After you complete the exercise, notice the shifts inside your body and see if your breathing and heart rates are slower and you feel calmer and more clearheaded.
As the day drags on, take a minute between work tasks to breathe deeply with three or four in-breaths. If you’re in a stressful Zoom meeting you can remain actively involved while practicing box breathing. And before heading into another appointment, take three or five minutes to walk around the block or stretch at your desk to reset your nervous system so you don’t take that stress with you into the next work situation. After long stretches of sitting in front of your screen, practice the 20-20-20 rule by looking 20 feet away from your computer every 20 minutes for 20 seconds. After a workflow meditation, notice if you’re not calmer and more clearheaded.
A Final Word
It’s what we’re doing during work hours that creates work stress and burnout and compromises our well-being, not solely because of the hours and days. Out-of-the-moment episodes—when your mind is stuck in the past or future—are roadblocks to relaxation and productivity. They disconnect you from yourself and your surroundings and keep your stress needle elevated. Watch your mind and notice where it goes from moment to moment for the next 24 hours. Note the difference in the workflow when you’re present and when your mind drifts to the past or future. When you find your mind wandering—even now as you read these words—gently bring it back into the present. As you continue with the workflow meditations, tension will subside, you’ll feel more relaxed and engaged and your productivity will soar.
