When you’re snowed under at work, or not getting work done because your mind is wandering, you might need to step back and get your brain in order. There’s a lot happening all the time in the neural puzzle behind your forehead, so much so that sometimes it can get on top of you.
This issue has been addressed by humans for millennia. Meditation is at the core of Buddhism, one of the world’s largest religions, though in western countries mediation still has a hippy association and is not really considered something you do in your suit.
Rasmus Hougaard (pictured) is aiming to change that. He’s the founder of Potential Project, a venture that has developed mindfulness training programmes for the corporate setting. Hougaard started his career with Sony here was a HR manager and researcher in organisational development. He launched Potential Project in 2009 after working with scientists, corporate executives and mind training experts to develop a programme tailored to a modern office environment with mindfulness at its core.
Potential Project now operates around the world. In Ireland the trainers are Stephen Stynes and Grattan Donnelly, who were with Hougaard recently at an IMI event where scores of executives gathered to hear about the benefits for themselves and their businesses of serious brain training.
Mindfulness Defined
So what is Mindfulness? One definition is focusing attention on what is, rather than being distracted by what isn’t. Good mental habits related to brief, daily periods hold out the promise of rewiring how the brain responds to stress, boosting people’s creativity and facilitating more rational decision-making.
In Association with
This workplace trend made its mark a few years ago in Silicon Valley; in 2012 Google even started a school called the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute to spread word about mindfulness techniques. The practice has gained traction in large corporates such as Apple, McKinsey, Procter & Gamble, Accenture and Carlsberg in Denmark, where Hougaard hails from.
Many American business schools now have mindfulness training on the curriculum, while in Ireland this form of meditation has a growing following among secondary school teachers (for their pupils).
According to Hougaard, if we want to be effective at work, we need to bring mindfulness, not multitasking, to the office. “The focus of our programmes is to help individuals and managers in organisations manage the challenges of productivity and effectiveness in the era of information overload,” he explains. “This is achieved by teaching them how to manage their attention and mindset thereby helping to reduce stress and increase productivity.
“Mindfulness is really about speeding up our mental processes whereby we can be more effective with whatever we’re doing. It’s about learning to manage our attention and to develop the ability to stay focused with what we want to be focused on while still being aware what’s going on around us.”
Managing The Mind
When people learn to mediate properly, to be mindful, they become more effective at doing the task at hand as well as noticing what’s going on around them. “So the trick of mindfulness is not to get a total silent, clear, blissful mind. That doesn’t happen. Mindfulness is a practice where we learn to notice our thoughts, let go of the thoughts, and return to the object of choice. If we don’t manage our mind, our mind has a mind of its own and will start to manage us.”
In Hougaard’s view, the trap busy people fall into is multitasking, which is enemy number one in the mindfulness realm. “When we try to do more things at the same time, our brain simply can’t keep up. Multitasking is basically shifting from one thing to another at a rapid pace, and the brain does not thrive in that environment.”
So how do you train your brain? You could go to Amazon and buy one of the hundreds of books related to DIY meditation techniques. Hougaard has one of his own called One Second Ahead, which describes how the brain works and how to integrate mindfulness into daily routines.
Workplace Techniques
Most of the book explores workplace mindfulness techniques, which start with controlling daily routines such as email and meetings. If you can’t unclutter your work habits, then it’s hard to find the focus for brain training.
Hougaard advises that performance breaks are about giving your mind a reprieve from thinking. He believes that everyone should consider ways that introduce more performance breaks into the workday.
“Taking mindful performance breaks is a time-efficient and nourishing way of maintaining focus and clarity all day long,” says Hougaard. “A mindful performance break is basically a very brief mindfulness training session of under a minute. You can take mindful performance breaks once an hour, every hour during work, before shifting gears between projects, or any other time in your day.”
Such techniques can be self-taught, though it’s easier in the classroom setting where there are no, well, distractions. It’s also the reality that when individuals and companies pony up cash for training, they take it more seriously and get more out of it.
Final word to Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post. “Although I’ve known its benefits since my teens, finding time for meditation was always a challenge because I was under the impression that I had to ‘do’ meditation. And I didn’t have time for another burdensome thing to ‘do.’ Fortunately, a friend pointed out one day that we don’t ‘do’ meditation; meditation ‘does’ us. That opened the door for me. The only thing to ‘do’ in meditation is nothing.”
TRY MINDFULNESS NOW
To practice a mindful performance break, decide to let go of your activities for a minute. Close your eyes or keep them slightly open. Direct your full attention to your breath and for three breath cycles, do the following:
+ Breathe in while noticing your breath; breathe out while relaxing your shoulders, neck, arms.
+ Breathe in while focusing fully on your inhale; breathe out while focusing on your exhale.
+ Breathe in while enhancing the clarity of your attention; breathe out while maintaining that clarity.
