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Five Mindfulness Practices To Boost Your Daily Productivity
ZEN-it Team
11 Dec 2023
Mindfulness is the new superpower. Everyone’s talking about how helpful it is to incorporate mindfulness techniques into our daily lives, about mindfulness for productivity. There are also thousands, if not millions of resources available now, on how to be more mindful, present, and supercharge ourselves.
In this sea of content, how can we start with some basic steps? How do we start practising Mindfulness 101, to build mindfulness habits?
We at ZEN-it have put together some simple daily mindfulness exercises. Here are five things that you can start working on, to be more mindful and effective:
1. Start Your Day With A Mindful Mantra
Repetition is one of the most important elements to shifting our mindset and building habits. Just like repeating an activity every day makes it part of our muscle memory, when we repeat things to ourselves in our mind, they become imprinted in our minds.
Unfortunately, many of us have a tendency to brood or focus on negative things - from waking to sleeping - imprinting those thoughts. Why not change that, starting the day with positivity? We can start our morning with a mindful mantra. This should be a positive, grounding statement that resonates with us, such as “I will be present in the moment.”, or “I am calm and at peace.”. We could also use affirmations such as “I believe in myself and my abilities.”
How does this help? Mindfulness mantras help to encourage our mind to be present, positive, and engaged. This can gradually help improve our focus, our engagement with our tasks, and our outlook towards life on the whole - and give a productivity boost!
2. Take Stock, Take Control
Functioning on autopilot, or “muscle memory” - it’s something everyone does. Our bodies are present, doing something; our minds, elsewhere. This is very tempting, because we are all so busy, and have so many things to do - we want to keep analysing, planning, thinking about things - even as we do other things.
The issue with this is, it doesn’t stop with things like thinking about an important meeting as we brush our teeth - we may end up thinking about cooking dinner, or an email to a client, during that meeting!
So what do we do? We need to take stock of our surroundings, and take control of our mind. Easier said than done, but not impossible. We need to keep bringing our minds back to the present, to here, and now, whenever we feel it wander. It will take time, discipline and effort to achieve this, but will result in enhancing our focus and clarity. Image: a mind in our control, that is present, aware, sharp and focused!
3. Breathing Exercises
Sometimes, it isn’t enough to simply try to bring our mind to the present. We may be under emotional turmoil, feel very anxious about something, or feel some other intense emotions. These hamper our ability to calmly focus on the tasks at hand, apply our minds and do those things that we need to.
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Practising breathing techniques for focus can help in such situations - breathing exercises like 478 breathing, 63 breathing or 36 breathing. These breathing practices make us focus on our breath, helping to ground us. Taking deep breaths also helps calm us down and clear our minds, improving oxygen flow to our brains too.
4. Keep Stress At Bay
Continuing with the above, a churning mind keeps distracting and bothering us as we try to carry on with our day, and gets compounded by workplace stressors. It also influences how we respond and react to various scenarios.
Zen mindfulness teachings emphasise the importance of letting emotions and thoughts arise in our minds, observing them without judgement and analysis, and letting them go. This helps our minds build strength and resilience, to stop the churn and function in an aware, yet calm and present state.
This can help us become more calm, effective, self-observant and ultimately, also helps in reducing personal and work stress.
5. Wind Down With Gratitude And Contentment
Just as it's important to start the day on a mindful note, it's also essential to end the day on the right note. An easy way to do this is to practise a short meditation before bedtime. Meditation can help busy professionals, homemakers, students and others, wind down, calm down and relax.
Another healthy practice is to inculcate and encourage a sense of gratitude and contentment in ourselves, through gratitude practises for wellbeing. These could be affirmations and reminders of acts and events that we feel happy, content or grateful for. It can also be helpful to carry out writing exercises for these. like the Joy in Little Things writing exercise or the Gratitude guided session on ZEN~It, in the Self-Care section of the app.
Start Your Mindfulness Journey Today!
You may have noticed that there’s no quick fix band-aid for any of these. But trust us, once you start trying these mindfulness exercises out, you will see an improvement in your mood, energy, and find your inner peace. If you need any help with these, the ZEN-it mindfulness app offers a number of guided sessions on mindfulness mantras, affirmations, breathing exercises, meditations and practises to observe and let go of emotions, and mindfulness exercises aimed at helping you bring your mind to the present, from quick grounding exercises, to step-by-step aids to nudge your mind back to the present. ZEN-it can be with you on your journey, to help you become more mindful, and more effective.
Here's a wish for your health, prosperity and well-being. Be ZEN with ZEN-it!​
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Interested in Productivity hacks? Check out our blog: Being Effective Vs Productive.
FAQs
How long should each mindfulness practice take to see noticeable improvements in productivity and well-being?
There are many factors such as age, work schedule, home situation etc. which will affect the time it takes to notice improvements in productivity. The key, though, is consistency. Regular, daily practice, even for a few minutes, can lead to noticeable benefits within a few weeks to a couple of months.
​Can these mindfulness practices be adapted for children or teenagers, and if so, how?
Children could benefit immensely from simpler and shorter exercises. This could be as simple as reflecting on how they showed love towards themselves that day, or what they were thankful for. Mindful colouring, short, guided meditations or simple breathing exercises tailored to suit the needs of children and teens can go a long way in helping them become more aware and connected with themselves, their surroundings and their family and friends.
Are there specific times of day that are most effective for performing these mindfulness practices, or can they be integrated flexibly throughout one's schedule?
ZEN-it’s Uplift visualization exercises are most effective when practised at the start of the day, and Meditation exercises can be practised at the end of the day, as a way to unwind and destress. Centering exercises can be practised during the day, at any point, though it would help to set a routine for these mindfulness practices.
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Ready to Redefine Productivity? Start your journey with ZEN-it today!
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