Exploring Mindfulness… with a Business Grad

A boost for work and mind.

I deal in hard numbers, stacks of data, and endless excel sheets. Everything is so concrete, well digitally concrete, and can be analyzed, traced, and verified. I definitely don’t execute on the abstract, and I don’t touch uncertainties without having blown through multiple models telling me to the decimal what my likelihood of success is. There isn’t room for error or creativity, there is only a place for the known. That’s how it is in most corporate businesses because the stakes are perceived to be too high to make any error. The companies are too slow and afraid to make change because failure would reflect poorly on them. If you fail using a proven model you can blame it on the model, but if you fail doing something new you blame it on those that implemented the new model. A loop that cements corporate business in the past.

So yes, I deal with certainties for the oh so scary reasons above that would surely cripple any eager minded company. This sort of fear to fail means you have to deal with the known facts. You can’t risk thinking and looking into the abstract concepts so many in the corporate world fear. The irony is the dark void that is the abstract is what takes down most long standing companies. Look at Kodak, a company firmly planted in photography that was decimated by the age of digital cameras and completely erased by the the smart phone. Blockbuster, another laggard swept away by Netflix, digital movie downloads, and a leaner Redbox. You can even see the kings struggling today. Take a look at the major cable companies trying to adapt to the “cord cutter” generation, petroleum companies collapsing under an oil glut brought about by new technology, and those poor bastards who don’t even know they’re getting squeezed right now.

Even though I’m a business graduate and a corporate employee I understand the need to change and the want to embrace the abstract, but I never took a look at mindfulness. It’s wrapped in this mystical, almost religious, realm of confusion. People sitting in yoga-like positions, eyes closed, just breathing. How can breathing help you better understand yourself? Furthermore, how can meditation help you improve your work performance? The only way corporate taught me to get more work done is to do more work. Taking a 10 minute stroll to focus on your thoughts is 10 minutes away from the desk, 10 minutes of me not getting something done. So why would I look into a practice that separates me from my work?

Maybe I could learn a lesson from these fallen companies who were too quick to dismiss unfamiliar concepts. I spoke with a couple friends. A few meditated or practiced mindfulness daily and a few had tried for a while but no longer practiced. Constantly, I read about successful people in varying industries all of whom meditate, and by varying industries I mean some of the top hedge fund managers to actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger. This was something I couldn’t ignore.

I decided to take 10 minutes out of my day to introduce 10 minutes of breathing. That’s it, so simple, but yet it’s a world so unknown to me that I didn’t understand its complexities. I sat each day for two weeks, 10 minutes at a time, just breathing and focusing on that breathing. It felt good to detach from the world and drift off, only concentrating on that presence of breath.

After those two weeks I thought things were going well, but I knew there was so much more I could explore. Afterall, this is its own practice and like any new practice I thought it was best to get a tutorial. I looked through some guided meditations and found one I liked. On the first listen I was intermittently laughing for about a minute. I don’t know if it was the combination of the voice and my need to be serious about this mediation or just me being a child. However, I persevered and found so many good pointers. New ways to be present, ways to distinguish your thoughts and emotions.

I was building this library of knowledge about myself. I could assess how I felt very bluntly. Maybe I’m tired, stressed, and anxious or excited, happy, and nervous. The important thing I found was not to think I needed to feel relieved after meditating. What was important was to notice the way I felt, and it didn’t matter if I felt good, bad, or frustrated. The key was to simply understand those feelings. Now this didn’t mean that the next day when I went in for a business presentation that I wasn’t nervous. That somehow I was the master of my emotions and could control anxiety on a whim. What it did do for me was to help me understand why I was nervous. It helped me analyze myself and tell myself that I was anxious because I wanted to keep up my image of being a great analyst. It made me present.

There it was, I could see some results from my meditation, but I knew I could dig deeper. What about that performance increase I thought was such a ridiculous idea? Could I start to clear my mind and boost my work efficiency? I know this seems really corporate, turning a mindfulness practice into a mental boost for the office, but I think efficiency gains should be used anywhere. And hey, forget the office, maybe I can finally remember what I need to get for groceries or that I ran out clean underwear. I know, too much. What really matters is how nice it would be to have a clear mind somewhat uncluttered from my heap of daily to-do items. If that rubs off and increases my work output and consistency it’s a bonus.

The big question is, how do I measure this? There are so many variables (the analytics are really kicking in) that I’m not sure what would prove to be the catalyst for my performance one week to the next. If I come in hungover Friday can I level that off by meditating before work? Does that throw off my entire week performance evaluation? No, too deep in the weeds. I would need to look more on a month to month basis to smooth out the bumps, and I need a more holistic view of my mental performance. It can’t just be related to work it needs to be my entire mental state. Got it. The key is to measure how I feel every morning. So each day I record that feeling and build up a monthly view on those individual points.

Shit I could even plot that in excel, throw some values in, and create a mental performance stock. The markets flux everyday and the smaller the time frame the harder it is to tell how the stock is doing overall. So, if I build up a data set of my daily performance and step back to a monthly view I can get a good basis for my overall gain or loss. The only problem is that I’m now an insider trader who has free reign to move the stock up and down. So just like judging emotional states after meditation I only need to factor how I feel. It doesn’t matter if I feel slow or distracted. The only thing I need to consider is that unbiased state of, I feel fucking dumb today or I feel smart enough to out trade Wall Street. That’s it. Done. Mark it down. Once month end comes I can evaluate that movement and see how these practices are really affecting my mental state.

So there it is, a little meditation and some daily mindfulness to assess how I feel both performance wise and emotionally. These may not be the best ways to measure my mental state but the takeaway is to find new ways to learn about yourself. I didn’t want to worry about finding the perfect practice, instead I wanted to start something I could curate and improve over time. So in concert with learning about the mind I can learn about these techniques. I can develop both.