Mindfulness and Productivity

I have been practicing sitting mindfulness meditation since 2013.

Certainly there is a strong correlation between the amount of daily stuff that gets done and consistent streaks of meditation. Also a correlation between consecutive days of no meditation and procrastination.

Think of it like a mental workout. As your awareness muscles become stronger, in time you become more aware of your impulses and thus be more likely to reject to indulge in them.

Although mainstream view on meditation represents it as an anti-stress capsule that solves daily problems of typical modern, urban life, at the end of the day, know that it is still just you dealing with all that stress and anxiety, and getting productive.

Note that there is actually more than a "capsule" to a practice that is about paying attention to your thoughts without judgment, experiencing your immediate thoughts and feelings directly, facing yourself, gently watching your unpleasant feelings, thoughts, memories and embracing them with all their both unpleasantness and pleasant joy.

Beyond "productivity," Through time, you get more and more in touch with yourself and the reality, and become more alert, observant, thoughtful and compassionate.

I do meditation daily. I use techniques such as noting, body scan, visualization, and my favorite, resting awareness. I helps me to stay in the moment and I feel more in control by doing mediation. This results in more productivity due to the fact that I'm much more action oriented.

I seriously got into meditation last year by going for 10 days silent meditation retreat which was in August. This was Vipassana. My productivity increased because I got more action oriented and was able to look at my emotions more objectively.

Few of the things that you realize when you start practicing is that the mind is very chatty and restless. The mind is obsessed with thoughts and it's more compelled to obsess over negative thought and then generate another negative thought from it, which ends up being an endless spiral to nothing.

Meditation helps to detach from the external noise and the internal noise. It helps you to objectively look at these noises and not get overwhelmed or emotional about it. It helps you to get clarity in terms of the action that needs to be taken for a given situation. These are few of things I noticed after starting meditation.

There are many forms of meditation - transcendental meditation, Vipassana(Buddist Technique), Yoga itself has many forms, different gurus generally have their own slightly modified techniques. There are also apps like headspace and Calm. It doesn't matter which you choose, what matters is that it should work for you. For me, it was Vipassana, for you, it might be something else.

Yes. If my mind won't stop racing and I'm constantly opening social media, I know it's time to meditate. I use the app Oak, created by Kevin Rose.

I used headspace and currently use Aware because I am cheap. My understanding is that meditating in a group is way more powerful, but I have yet to hit up the local monastery. I suppose the analogy might be doing a solo gym workout versus a crossfit experience.

I have a feeling that you will get tangential effects towards productivity. As stated, having an awareness of distractions and being able to recognize them as such without giving into the temptation may keep you focused.

As I found this morning, almost like diffused thinking, revelations occur when I meditate. I am in a position to receive these revelations when I meditate as opposed to when I am in constant distraction mode.

I've used Headspace before and use Oak now. I typically get a 10 minute session in five days per week and love it. Definitely agree that it has helped reduce impulses, in addition to enabling clearer thinking. My wife has used it to hedge anxiety attacks as well.

I have Calm and Headspace installed on my phone and watch; I utilize each rarely... This thread reminds me how simple it can be to reap the rewards of meditative mindfulness in the moment, and each day. Thank you.

I run a little mindfulness group at work (startup in NYC). Every day I make a little poll with times where people can click that they are available to meditate.

We usually just use an app like Calm or Headspace and put that on for 10 minutes.

From chatting with the other regulars in that group, we all find that we are more resilient to stress, react more mindfully to unexpected things that pop up, and debug our code a little easier.

All subjective opinions of course, but still, we notice a marked benefit.

I use it for weightloss. Been working quite well.

I do. I feel like it reduces my impulses to procrastinate or do something other than what I should be doing. I find it a useful tool to help me prioiritise work and just get things done. I don't see an improvement in efficiency, but definitely in efficacy.

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