Bring Mindfulness Into Your Practice
Mindfulness has been found to reduce stress, reduce chronic pain, support heart health and blood pressure, and improve sleep.
Adding mindful practices to each workday can help you and improve focus, get more work done in less time, and improve your ability to work under stress. Bringing presence to each day can be as simple as including a few practices that bring you into this moment.
Start the Day With Meditation
When you meditate first thing in the morning, you set the tone for the day.
If you already have a meditation practice, adding a session before you get into your work will help you stay focused and calm during your deep work.
If you’re out of practice, or you have never meditated before, you can start slowly. Set aside just 5 or 10 minutes each morning to get in the habit. You can sit and focus on your breathing, listen to a guided meditation, or practice mindfulness while you walk or do a mundane task — like washing dishes or folding clothes.
If you have set yourself up as a client in your MBODY360 app, you can use the meditation timer for your practice. When your time is up, a gentle bell will ring to let you know that your session is over.
Make Time for Focused Work
The eight-hour workday was originally established during the industrial revolution, and it was based on what workers could accomplish doing factory work.
With work that requires focus, communications, and technology, most people are only productive for about 3 hours per day.
As a health coach, it is important to carve out work blocks so you can have that deep focus to move your business forward in a meaningful way.
Your best use of time for focus is doing activities that will help you grow your practice — creating content for marketing, reaching out to prospective clients, and serving the clients that you have.
You can bring mindfulness to your focus hours by blocking yourself from distractions.
- Turn off alerts on your phone — or put it into airplane mode
- Block your browser from social media sites
- Shut off your wifi
Make it easier to stay in the zone by breaking up your focus time with mini-breaks.
For example, you can set a timer for 30 minutes to work on one task. When the timer goes off, give yourself a 5-minute break where you get up and step away from your work. Stretch, drink water, and rest. Then you can set another timer and do another 30-minute round of focused work.
When you give yourself time for deep work, you can get a lot more done in less time.
Get Mindfully Organized
You can also bring mindfulness into the way that you organize your work. Two easy ways are to make sure your workspace is set up for mindful work and that you focus on the right tasks.
Create Space to Breathe
An organized physical workspace can help you stay more mindful and focused. Several studies have found that physical clutter can make people feel less focused and more stressed. Conversely, clearing the clutter can help lower stress and cortisol levels, making it easier to concentrate.
To keep order in your office, you can make a daily habit of straightening up your desk for 10 minutes right before you quit for the day. When you come to work the next day, your space will feel fresh and make it easy to dive into your work.
Choose Tasks That Matter
The simplest way is to write down 3-5 targets you want to reach each week and tasks to complete them.
On Monday, write down your targets and create a list of 3-5 tasks you need to do each day.
It may be tempting to keep your task list electronically on your phone or your computer.
But you may find that it’s better to make these lists on paper, because you can more easily see what you need to do when you have your list physically in front of you.
It’s also easier to acknowledge all that you accomplish when you write your list on paper. You can have the satisfaction of physically crossing off each task as you complete them so you can see your progress. At the end of each day, revise your list so you know what to do for the next day.
The more mindfulness you can bring into each day, the easier it can be to accomplish more of what matters — and do it in fewer hours. Building a mindfulness habit will also lower your stress levels and help you go with the flow of whatever comes your way.