Productivity tip: write things down

Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.

—David Allen, GTD for Teens

The more I hold in my head, the more my head flips around between thoughts, the less focused I am, the less productive I am.

Just write the thought down, bring it to a (temporary) closure, and focus on the task at hand.

Continue reading Productivity tip: write things down

Meditation observations: Reactivity

Today’s meditation session was on observing, noting and not-reacting to distractions.

There were three kinds of stimuli causing distractions – external sounds, body sensations and thoughts.

Chewie made some noise a few times while I was mediating. These sounds were the easiest distraction to recover from.

I felt a bit of a tinge in the lower back, and some funny sensations in fingers. These too were relatively easy and quick to recover from.

There were thoughts. Lots of thoughts, mostly about people and things that I would rather not think about. These were the hardest to recover from. And a few of them recurred during the session.

There was progress made though. By the end of the session, I was able to have longer sustained periods of focus without distractions. I noticed this (does noticing this and feeling happy about it count as a distraction?). And, on this very rare occasion, I wanted the session to go on for longer than it did :) Continue reading Meditation observations: Reactivity

Solace in Chaos

After yesterday’s heavy exercise, I needed a load of coffee to get myself working today. So, settled down in a cafe to work, instead of my regular work space.

It’s a shocking surprise how much more efficient I’m here in this noisy, chaotic cafe, than I’m at my usual, super-quiet work space.

One immediate reason I grasped upon was the fact that there is so much noise here, that I’m unable to comprehend, and thus get distracted by, anything. In the usual workplace, everything and everyone is so quiet that even a whisper across the hall is clearly audible and understood. Each whisper, each motion, every door opening is a disturbance, a distraction.

Ironic, but surprisingly true, I’ve found solace in this chaos :)