My (final) Maternity Lesson #5: Practice mindfulness
(or: my Marie Kondo guide for declutterring the mind)
A rite of passage
During my maternity period, a mix of physical exhaustion, constant baby worrying/planning, tech overload (the needless rush to the phone) and the usual/unusual life events played with my attention span. At times, it felt like I was trying to catch a goldfish.
It’s a rite of passage, I resolved. The fact that I was there. And the fact that I was aware of it. It was the opportunity to restore and polish my capacity for mindfulness.
Getting to this point was not without pain, however. One day, on speaker phone with my child’s surgery, while browsing a number of tabs on the net, answering emails and checking Whatsapp new messages all at once it seems, the person on the other line asked me for my contact number. And I blanked.
How did this happen? My mind was over-crowded. Mum-colleagues had warned me: you will miss your usual focus, you will become forgetful.
What is it, a mums-virus? Apparently not.
The global issue of mindlessness
A recently published study from researchers at the Technical University of Denmark suggests the collective global attention span is narrowing due to the amount of information that is presented to the public.
In our lives it happens quite often: the pervasiveness of comms and the impulse to be there, on demand, with everyone and with all at once erodes our headspace. At work protracted, busy periods of adrenaline-infused “productivity” eat our energies away.
The harsh reality is, we like to keep busy (“busy” being the most socially accepted reply to the trick question: “How’s work?”). Number of meetings had. Number of emails sent (and how quickly, too). Number of trips taken. These all count towards work done. At the expense of productivity. Because thinking time is not productive, from the looks of it…
It’s important that we take note, as mental health awareness week draws to a close, that mindlessness, lack of focus and shorter attention spans are signs of an overburdened mind and sometimes they can point to anxiety and other mental conditions. It’s time we start recognising these signs early, talk about them openly and reward those calling them out. It affects all, from new parents to employees, from founders to executives, from job-searching students to over-indebted borrowers.
What I find positive is the increasing level of interest the public has for the practice of meditation. It seems that this (intense, difficult) form of “not thinking” is socially accepted — and increasingly welcome.
Let’s start somewhere
In many a brastfeeding sitting, I was accompanied by Ed Milliband’s and Geoff Lloyd’s podcast Reasons to be cheerful (whatever your political views, some of their interviewees are worth a listen to). Professor Harari, of Homo Deus, was invited to the show to discuss his new book 21 Lessons. What is not widely known about Prof. Harari is his meditation practice. He meditates daily, every morning and evening. Once a year, he attends a 60 days meditation retreat that he calls the essence of his research discipline: to train and to ready the mind to make sense of the complexity he deals with in his research.
After listening to the show, I downloaded the app Headspace. Aware that meditation can be a tool to declutter the mind — and become smarter. I listened to one Headspace track. And then I erased the app from my phone.
Headspace doesn’t work for me.
It became just another annoying notification. Ironically, another excuse to pick up my phone again. To choose not to “take a moment”, sitting in with life.
Observing a ray of sun shine on the floor, or listening to the sound of the wind outside: taking a moment helps me not only clear my mind but also, and therefore, it resurfaces forgotten thoughts.
A good friend of mine, successful start up founder, once gave me this wise, unconventional advice about sofas that is a beautiful expression of his own capacity for mindfulness. My husband and I were having dinner with him and his wife, complaining about our first-world problem of having to choose and buy a new sofa for our dining room, because the TV in the sitting room was taking up our family time.
“Why don’t you just get rid of the TV ?”, he suggested. He left me speechless. Such clear-minded advice. Simple. Yet so hard to do! Get rid of the clutter.
Learning to de-clutter in the digital economy
Creating headspace by ridding ourselves of things/thoughts instead of buying stuff that is packaged as solutions to deal with things/thoughts is a discipline that our tech-infused, app-pervasive, gadget-obsessed world has lost.
I think the bias towards doing vs not doing, thinking vs freeing the mind from thoughts comes from industrial age, consumerist economy systems of thinking that reward factory outputs over life outcomes. It has become, I think, a deeply human psychological block.
How often at parties the introductions go: “So what is it that you do?”, or “What do you like to do in your free time?”. Answer “nothing” and you are sure to enjoy some quiet, thinking time at that party!
Nourishing our capacity to think again, and not just do; to focus, to pause and to reflect is not something today’s workplace encourage — much unlike through our education.
Why so? Why does thinking become a luxury after we are done with studying?
My Marie Kondo guide for the mind
Preparing to re-enter the work place after maternity leave, I have been thinking about what lessons I have learned in this period, what skills I have acquired and which mindset shifts I have experienced.
For the first time, at this important milestone in my journey, and through my rite of passage, I am also profoundly aware of the need to preserve my mental headspace (and energy) and to practice mindfulness.
Today, I stop searching for Google’s answers to practicing mindfulness. Instead, I switch off my phone and start to think.
I did not come up with much. But here are a few starting points I choose to socialise for accountability sake:
- To read one novel, in non-digital version, on each new holiday. Character descriptions and unfolding situations that need following. No double-click opportunity to open new tabs. An exercise of attention. And reflection, if anything
- To limit the number of open tabs in my browser to five: it helps to have a fixed number
- To leave my phone in a different room when I go to sleep. Early/late emails alike deserve a work mindset, not a sleepy one. So they can be dealt with in my study instead
- To signal in a conversation (even if to myself) if my mind is elsewhere and I need a moment
- To build ten minutes of silence at the end of my day — eventually leading to meditation (this requires planning, discipline and mutual respect in a co-living situation)
- To keep up my good maternity leave habit of reading a few pages from my book(s) every morning (therefore I have deleted from my phone time wasting apps like Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest)
Rites of passage are critical. I am grateful for the lessons that my maternity period has left me with. I am excited about bringing these into other parts of my life, including work.
I have very much enjoyed sharing about this journey through my blog. And I welcome comments to each of my entries. Next, I am starting a new series about the Future of Work, something that I have been looking at in my years working in tech.
