I have been looking into meditation to improve my ability to focus and to concentrate. The primary reason for this is that as I watch myself operate, and keep tabs on how I am performing, I find that I often multi-task in a very inefficient way. I move from checking email every minute, to five tasks that I am working on concurrently. This is on top of the things that I am thinking about and the interruptions outside of email that I get from team members.
My observations of my performance have led me to see these problems:
- Everything becomes a crisis, either my tasks, other people's tasks, or just projects in general.
- Planning becomes a chore b/c everything feels like it is changing too fast, and that you are always trying to fight the fires that come upon you when you have so many open tasks.
- My mind seems to be very inefficient and trying to close simple tasks, it goes into analysis paralysis or adding complexity where there really isn't any.
- I seem to add risk to every small project, even if the risk may not be there, or the likelihood of that risk becoming a real issue is very low.
So I am looking for a way to increase my ability to focus on the task at hand, and improve my ability to concentrate and solve that problem fast, effectively, and efficiently. In a nutshell, get into the zone to take my performance to the next level.
The trick seems to be what meditation teaches, the ability to empty your mind, to release all the open loops, and clear the mind to then focus on the most important item. Then concentrate on that item with the most the mind can deliver. It's amazing when I try the simple task of emptying my mind, how I hard I find that to be. I find myself looking for things to think about, or to look on the web while thinking, or reviewing my email.
It's very hard to get my mind to just focus on nothing. I can see how important learning that skill can be. What if you had the ability to do this before a big meeting with your general manager or a critical client meeting? Here is my goal.
One hour before the meeting, take 15 minutes to completely clear my mind, and focus on meditating and getting ready for the meeting. Then, once I am in that zone, focus on the top three items that need to be discussed, and accomplished during that meeting. Start with one item and concentrate on the top issues, what needs to be accomplished, what scenarios could come up, and responses and recommendations that need to be made. Then document those as notes to the agenda. Do that for the three items and then review those notes. Then leave ten minutes to clear your mind again and focus on your manager or your client. Concentrate on what they are looking for, what their concerns are, and imagine what they are going to do after the meeting. I think having this type of focus will lead to a tremendous ability to improve relationships, and really help your managers and clients understand your ideas, your innovations, and get those projects approved and/or implemented.
This is just one example of what I hope to be able to do, I want to see generally, if I can get more done, and more importantly, think about improving existing processes and developing better innovative solutions to existing problems than I have been able to over the last year.
I'm planning on trying meditation for the next two months and seeing what results I am able to achieve. I'll keep a running log once a week to see how I am progressing; should be an interesting experiment.
