2040: Bring Purpose and Mindfulness to Your Work by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits on Meaningful Productivity

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[00:01:00] This is Optimal Work Daily. Bring purpose and mindfulness to your work. By Leo Babauta of zenhabits.net. Our work lives are filled with busyness, distraction, procrastination, responding to messages, checking on messages, and getting lost down rabbit holes. We struggle to be mindful and to focus on our meaningful work. And yet, many of us want to create a life of meaning, focus, and mindfulness. We know this, and yet we struggle. Why?

[00:01:28] What keeps us from this life of mindful focus and meaningful work? In this guide, I'll talk about why we get pulled away, and then how to bring mindfulness to the process to find focus and create an impact with your work. Why we can't focus. If you think about how you spent your last few days, most of us would say we're more distracted than we like. We procrastinate more. We procrastinate more. Or we're super busy, responding to a thousand things, making lots of decisions, and not very mindful during this chaotic work day. What's going on?

[00:01:58] A number of things. One, we're actually afraid to focus. The work we want to focus on is hard, full of uncertainty, uncomfortable. We want to do it, but we're putting off the moment we have to enter into this uncertain space. We're going to the comfort food of our distractions instead of the discomfort of the focus. Two, we're afraid to simplify. To focus, we have to clear away all our distractions. Say no to social media, our phones, our messages, our email.

[00:02:27] We have to say no to the easier tasks that we're really good at. This kind of simplicity is uncomfortable for many people, and again, we go to comfort food distractions and easy tasks instead. Three, we're constantly pulled away. You might put yourself in a space of simplicity and focus, but then your attention gets pulled away. We have so many notifications, so many messages, so many shiny distractions, and our attention is like a little monkey jumping from tree to tree.

[00:02:55] In some ways, this is because technology is designed to grab our attention, but we allow this to happen. And four, we're unsure about what path to take. We know we should focus, but shouldn't we also be doing this other important task, or those three pretty important tasks, or checking for an important message or email that might come in. We have fear of missing something important, fear of choosing the wrong thing, fear of taking the wrong path when there are many available.

[00:03:22] This uncertainty can freeze us or cause us to constantly switch. Okay, so it's fear, uncertainty, discomfort, and pulled attention. How can we bring mindfulness to bear on these four horsepersons of distraction? Bring mindfulness into the arena. Armed with the knowledge of why we're not able to focus, we're going to further arm ourselves with mindfulness and walk confidently into the arena of meaningful work. The first thing to acknowledge is that it's okay to be afraid.

[00:03:51] Okay to want to comfort yourself with easy tasks and distractions. Okay to feel uncertainty. We're not horrible people for being this way. We're human. So we can look at our habits and smile on them with unconditional friendliness. Let's practice mindfulness in our workday with a series of questions. Question 1. What's the best way to structure my day? In this inquiry, we're wondering if it's best to constantly switch from messaging app to

[00:04:16] a messaging app, from email to social media, from news sites to blogs, from small admin tasks to other quick tasks, filling up our day and not focusing on our most meaningful work. In my own inquiry, it brings mindfulness to how I spend my time, how fragmented I allow my attention to be. And then it brings me to an intention to simplify and focus. I still need to check email and messages and do the smaller tasks, but I can lump them together at certain times of the day and clear space for big chunks of focus and meaningful

[00:04:46] work. This intention isn't always met, but the inquiry brings me closer to it. Question 2. What do I want to focus on? This isn't a question many people ask themselves each day. Ideally, you'd ask it at the beginning of each day, but also at various points throughout the day. It shifts you. You go from, what should I check right now? Or, what can I do quickly right now? To, what is the meaningful work I want to do now and give my full focus to? In other words, what do I care deeply about?

[00:05:16] What kind of dent do I want to make in the world, and how can I start to make that dent right now? It shifts from saying yes to your million things and messages to saying no to those million things so you can say yes to your meaningful work. So, you can say yes to complete focus and mindfulness. Question 3. Why am I not focusing on it? If you picked something to focus on, and you're working on it, great. But if you're not, why not? What's getting in your way? What are you afraid of? What are you comforting yourself with?

[00:05:46] If you can identify the fear instead of allowing yourself to habitually run from this fear, lean into it. Go towards it. Allow yourself to feel the fear and stay in it. Befriend it. Then go into your focus zone in the middle of the fear, and let the fear be your guide and your friend. It means you're alive. That you're pushing yourself into discomfort for the sake of what you care deeply about. That you are creating meaningful work instead of running. Beautiful. Question 4.

[00:06:13] What is my intention as I focus? As you get started with a focused session, even if it's only for 10 or 20 minutes, it helps to ritualize it. Have a clear beginning, and even a clear end. What will you do to mark the beginning? Maybe stretch, smile at your work, and set an intention. An intention isn't a goal, but how you want to go about doing the task. For example, I might say, I want to stay focused on this task, put myself into this uncertainty

[00:06:41] for the sake of the people I care about and serve, and stay present in the middle of it. Keep this intention in your heart as you put yourself into this focus session. And question 5. What is this moment like as I work in stillness? Now you're in the middle of the focus session. Bring mindfulness to that task. That's simply a matter of awareness and curiosity. Bring awareness by asking, what is it like right now? What sensations can I notice?

[00:07:07] How does my heart feel as I take this gorgeous action filled with uncertainty? Bring curiosity when you feel like switching tasks and running, by asking, I want to run from uncertainty, but what would it be like to stay? The truth is, we don't know. We think we know that we won't like it, but actually we really don't know until it happens. So take the curiosity stance. Let's seek to find out. Come to this task with an open mind and you might find a gentle wonder that you didn't expect in the middle of your meaningful work.

[00:07:37] Now you can do this for your meaningful work, but you can also do this for any task. Responding to an email, answering a text message, reading an article online, contemplating a decision with care. Bringing purpose and mindfulness to your work can be a place filled with joy. If you allow yourself to move into that space with intention and curiosity, inquiry, and love.

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[00:08:57] Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash podcast. That's indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And thank you to Leo, who is a great guy with a really unique personal story of being an overweight smoker to eventually going vegan, losing 65 pounds, and becoming a marathon runner and business owner, all while having six kids. Leo is originally from Guam but moved to San Francisco in 2010.

[00:09:27] And you can actually see him featured in the Netflix documentary Minimalism, which is a topic that he talks about regularly on his blog. So for a lot more, come by zenhabits.net. And again, thank you so much to Leo for letting us share his work. But that is it for today. I thank you for listening, and I'll catch you back here tomorrow for the Sunday show, where your optimal life awaits.