3 Ways To Be More Mindful At Work

Practicing mindfulness on a day to day basis can have many benefits on your mental and physical health, but how do you manage to fit in ‘being mindful’ to your hectic working day?!

Truth is, most people are their most busiest at work. With emails to reply to, phone calls to answer, trying to squeeze in time to be ‘mindful’ is probably last on your to do list.

However, practicing mindfulness at work is a great way to help you feel more alive, awake, present in the moment and most importantly productive!

We’ve listed 3 ways you can incorporate mindfulness into your working day:

1. Avoid multitasking

Although many pride themselves as a pro multitasker… truth is, nobody can really multitask. Your brain is simply switching from one task to another, and often getting confused or making errors in the process. By tackling one task at a time, you will be able to focus on exactly what you are doing, be present in the moment, really think about each of your decisions which will reduce the amount of errors made and therefore improve your productivity!

To avoid multitasking a few things you can try are:

• Create an organised ‘to do’ list and tick off as you go along. Don’t move on to another task until the first is fully completed.

• Set time frames for each task - set the amount of time you wish to spend on a certain task. This will avoid you spending too much time on one task, not having enough time to fully focus on your other tasks and therefore slip back into rushing and multitasking!

• Switch off distractions! So for most of us, our phones are our biggest distraction! The best way to avoid distraction is to either put it away in your draw or turn it off completely! If your willpower is really lacking… a great app for time managing tasks is ‘ ‘ which has a setting that ‘disables’ your phone for that period of time so you can’t physically use it!

2. Be consciously present

Quite often our minds can run wild with us, we could be in the middle of an important task and suddenly we’re daydreaming about out pet dog or worrying about what to have for dinner that evening! To be consciously present at work means to be aware of everything you are doing and everything you are feeling! While completing a task, being mindful is to be completely focussed on that task, and not thinking about or doing anything else!

Ways you can avoid becoming mindless at work and instead more consciously present are:

• Make an effort to work more consciously, even if that means working slower than usual at first. Doing this will help you complete each of your tasks to a higher standard and be generally more productive.

• Keep reminding yourself of the benefits of being mindful at work to motivate you to do so and prevent you slipping back into your stressed, rushed, multi tasking ways!

3. Feel gratitude!

As humans, we tend to focus on the things that have gone wrong rather than things that have gone well! This eventually leads to a very negative way of thinking which isn’t good for productivity or your general mental state! By practicing gratitude you will feel a lot better within yourself, your mood will lift and your motivation & productivity will improve!

To practice gratitude, try to remind yourself daily of the things that you are grateful for, no matter how small. Think about what’s going well in your job… Is your pay good? Do you enjoy your working hours? Do you get on well with your colleagues? Whatever it is, keep these grateful thoughts at the top of your mind to avoid focussing on the negative aspects of your job! Another great way to practice gratitude is by keeping a gratitude journal. Every morning before you go to work or every night before you go to sleep, write down 5 things that you are grateful for in your day to day work life. This will not only help you feel happier at work but you will feel much more motivated and productive!

Let us know how you get on and if mindfulness helps you feel happier and more productive at work and If you have any more tips on how to practice mindfulness at work, comment below - we’d love to hear them!

Lastly, if you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a DM - @lucyhitchcock_@sassydigital