Want to be more patient on and off job? Try Mindlessness
One day as I entered the house after work and a toy car raced towards me. It was balancing a glass bowl on its roof filled with some popcorn. I immediately snapped at my 6 year old ‘What are you doing? The bowl can fall and break. The popcorn will create a mess.’ In a meek voice, my daughter replied ‘I had prepared a snack for you. You must be hungry.’ My heart sank and I hated my demeanor in the moment!
Do you wish that your work stress doesn’t lead to an outburst at your family?
Do you wish you can handle stress better on and off work, be collected and calm even under fire?
Do you wish that you had more energy to play with your kids? Do you wish to spend some quality time with them, everyday after work?
Do you wish that you could compartmentalize your brain? When playing the role of a mom, you could be a mom and when an employee, you could turn off all the maternal instincts?
Juggling these roles and transitioning from one to another is exhausting and unsettling. Unsettling because we constantly feel that we aren’t doing enough justice to any role. At the same time there is so much on our plate that it’s humanly impossible to get to all of it.
What if I told you that I have found a trick that worked splendidly for me and it could work for you too!
I simply and deliberately started taking 5 minutes ‘me’ time between major transitions. It could be before stepping out of my car for work, after work, before entering home or before bed time. Whenever I felt the need for it!
In this ‘me’ time, I decided to do nothing. NOTHING at all. I’m sure you know how big deal that is! These 5 minutes were exclusively MY time.
On some days I caught myself gazing at the windshield.
At times I used breathing exercises to help me get centered and ready for the next role.
Sometimes I was in the mood to take a short walk and do some walking meditation.
This strategy worked so well for me that I was compelled to research on the topic. Why does this method work? Here’s what I found:
When we are ‘idling’, we are preparing ourselves to for a future burst of creativity. When our conscious mind is shut off, our unconscious mind gets active. This might be the very reason we have all heard of stories of famous people coming up with the most revolutionary ideas when doing seemingly mundane activities like bathing or strolling.
While mulit-tasking is a norm today, neuroscientists have identified this activity to be very expensive for our brain fuel ‘glucose’. When doing ‘nothing’ we are saving that fuel for activities that deserve it.
In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport explains the ‘attention residue’ phenomenon. When we switch from meeting to meeting or one task to another, there is residue from first task. This residue impacts the performance of the second task for a non trivial amount of time. “Me” time can help bring the previous task to a full closure before moving on to the next one, for better performance.
According to distinguished professor at INSEAD — Kets de Vries, “Being constantly busy is often an excuse to avoid uncomfortable feelings and thoughts.” ‘Me’ time could help address those difficult thoughts and feelings instead of shoving them away. Unconscious mind gets a chance to reflect on the previous events and come up with creative solutions to any problems.
In other words, short breaks between tasks help prepare your unconscious mind to:
- Find creative solutions for future tasks
- Reflect on past tasks, emotions and experiences
- Allow the brain to completely switch from one task to another.
Having said that, mindlessness not a waste of time.
It prepares us be sprinter making interrupted but deliberate moves towards the target rather than running a marathon with no clear finish line.
