Wandering Minds

Our minds wander … a lot! How can we become more aware and practice mindfulness at work. Consider mindfulness like ‘mental strength training’. Many credible institutions are focusing on the benefits of mindfulness and its link to overall performance. What is emerging from the research is that being mindful can increase our ‘on the job’ performance and overall wellbeing.

According to experts at Harvard and the 2010 KIllingsworth and Gilbert study our minds wonder 47% of the time! What is more astounding is that our sense of contentment is not linked to what we were thinking about but the fact that we were not present (meaning that the distraction and ‘wandering mind’ is what is providing contentment more so than what we are actually thinking about). A few interesting points to reflect on here:

• We spend almost 50% of our day thinking about the past or the future
• What opportunities are we missing when we are not present
• The goal is not to be present 100% of the time, distraction and mental rest are critical for wellbeing and performance

Thinking about the past and future – not the here and now

Let’s put this in the context of work for a moment. As an employee you are expected to learn from the past, leverage what you can and think about the future, and how your actions today impact the overall project, team or objective. So there is a benefit to intentional reflection. Bringing mindfulness into your activities at work (or at home) can help you better determine how you are using your wandering mind as a tool for mental rest and recharge vs simply being distracted. The more we bring intention into our actions the better performing and healthier we become.

Think of your mind like a sink – fully open the faucet and watch the basin quickly fill. The flow of water is greater pouring into the basin vs the drain allowing the water to escape. Close the faucet and the basin will quickly empty ready to ‘perform’ and receive more. Our brains work in a similar manner, too much input and we become less effective. As a coping mechanism our minds start to wander to give the ‘basin’ time to drain. When we are intentional about this we can use task switching and distractions to our benefit.

Take some time to reflect before lunch and at the end of your day on how you were present and when you had a tendency to let your mind wander. What were the environmental factors associated with a wandering mind, do you recognize any patterns? Go easy on yourself and recognize that being more ‘in the present’ is a process – we are training for a marathon not a quick sprint!