Have you ever been resting and thought “I should be doing something. I shouldn’t be sitting around. I feel so lazy.” Maybe someone else has expected you to be more productive? How do we go from being "lost in doing" to being at ease with just resting?
The great Thich Nhat Hanh identified the diseases of modern life in his book “The Art of Living.” One of those was being driven by and chasing after goals. We feel we need to be working towards something, if we’re not then we’re lazy or a loser.
If you google 'mindfulness and productivity' you’ll see a ton of articles talking about how you can optimise your efficiency using meditation. This isn’t wrong, but maximising your output is not what mindfulness is for. The purpose of our existence is to be happy and to relieve the suffering of others; to achieve that we sometimes need to stop, we need to sit, breathe and we need to let go of our attachments. And that includes letting go of goals and letting go of the need to ‘do’ constantly.
The modern world of work has evolved into a kind of arms race, where people are expected to be constantly productive, more and more optimised, more closely observed. We have internalised this and put ourselves on the clock 24 / 7 - we can’t relax on a day off because we feel like we’re supposed to be doing something. I’ve heard from many people when they’re not feeling well that they feel guilty about not working - I experience this as well. I recovered from covid recently and beat myself up for not being productive enough in work.
This culture is starting to change though. There’s been a shift recently in the balance of power between employers and workers - it has different names, sometimes called “The Great Resignation”, “The Great Realization” or the antiwork / work reform movement based in reddit. It’s great that awareness is rising, poor behaviour from leaders is being challenged and that protecting people’s wellbeing at work is becoming an important issue. But it really shouldn’t take millions of people quitting for leaders to wake up and put the mental health of employees at the top of their priority list.
Mindfulness has plenty of ready made solutions that help create a better culture at work and at home. And this isn’t about squeezing more productivity out of people, its about making work a place where people feel happy and fulfilled, where people want to stay so you reduce your turnover, not have vacancies all the time and everyone gets what they want.
Step one is to listen. Work is a much happier place if leaders listen to what employees have to say without judgement, without necessarily agreeing or disagreeing. Its easy to get defensive when people are complaining but that creates an 'us and them' environment. Having a forum where people feel free to express themselves without being shouted down, where their concerns are taken seriously and (where appropriate) acted on goes a lot of the way to addressing discontent. More than anything, people just want to feel listened to and understood.
Step two is stopping and letting go. Yes, being more productive means stopping, breathing and looking around. Quit spinning the wheels for a while and ask yourself what is really important. If that's too big a question, ask yourself - what makes something an important task. Then apply those criteria to the old to-do list and do the most important stuff in the time available. Whatever falls off the end of the list, let it go. Poor leadership expects everything to be done. That is not reasonable and is incredibly stress inducing.
And step three is valuing people’s feelings. Many workplaces have a macho culture where you push on through, you get the job done regardless of the cost. If people get bullied, harassed and shouted at, that's just collateral damage - you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. No-one wants to work in an environment where their sadness and anxiety are just part of the process. Consciously make wellbeing and mental health part of the decision making process for how work gets done, not just something that's added to a corporate document.
And we can do these for ourselves at home as well. Value your peace, your mental health. Make it the most important factor in your decision making. Carve out time for rest and recovery, prioritise tasks in your doing time and don’t put pressure on yourself to do everything. And of course - stop and listen to your feelings, even your difficult feelings. Give yourself an internal forum where it’s OK to think what you’re thinking and OK to feel what you’re feeling. Doing these simple things makes us more productive but more importantly builds our calmness and happiness as well.
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