What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness means being aware of and in control of what you are doing in the moment, being aware of why you are doing it and also keeping track of time how long you have been doing it. It means being intentional in your action. It is also the opposite of carelessness.
Every day, every hour, every waking minute you should be aware of answers to above questions.
It is that state of mind when you feel in ultimate control of your actions and time. You are doing everything purposefully without any compulsion. You accept your reality and act accordingly with your 100% devotion to the task at hand.
It is the superpower that we lack in this distraction filled world.
What is not Mindfulness?
Flowing with your emotions and loosing track of time is not mindfulness.
Eating while watching videos on your phone or TV is not mindfulness. You don’t pay attention to what you are eating and how much you have eaten. Your diet is the number 1 determining factor for your health. 80% of your fitness is dependent on your diet. So eating without paying full attention to your food is not Mindfulness
Multitasking (except for listening to music – lyrics free) is not mindfulness. Dividing your attention on two different tasks results in unnecessary tension in your brain cells. You are constantly in a state of being pulled towards to two sides. It is similar to a feeling being torn apart when both your hands are pulled in two different directions.
Endless Doom-scrolling without saying is the number 1 mindless activity we all indulge in. Sometimes we develop such reflex actions that without our brain noticing we pull out our phone and start scrolling our favorite doomscrolling app or website.
Why Mindfulness is important?
Your time in this life is limited. You need to carefully use it on the things that make an impact in your life and the world around you. No body likes a wasted life and Mindfulness prevents you from loosing this most important resource. Before you were born there were a billion years, after your death there will be more billions of years but the approximately 80-100 years you get are the only micro drop of water in the ocean of time you get to live and make an impact.
People like Einstein, Newton, Christopher Nolan, Michael Jordan, Christian Ronaldo and other great people who have walked this earth paid the utmost attention to their current task at hand without loosing track of their time. Always being conscious of their larger goal in life.
Paying attention to minutest detail of their world. With this practice of mindfulness they have created such a big impact in the life of other beings in this universe. With mindfulness comes the ability to make such an impact.
Mindfulness creates a sense of control in your life, you channel your energy wisely into things that matter the most. It helps you create your dream life style.
If every person was mindful on this planet we would immediately get rid of 80% of all world problems. From climate change to world hunger, all vices can be solved if every person was mindful of their actions.
Paying attention to what impact our actions will create on the world around us, we will be able to choose our goals and life style in accordance with the nature. Obesity and other life style disease will be a thing of the past. Disease free, crime free, people will live an overall happy life.
Finally, Mindfulness will help you in clearing your mind of all the clutter which gets generated when you don’t pay attention to your actions and indulge in all the available distractions around you. It will help you remove chaos from your thinking and in turn from your life.
How to be Mindful as a software engineer?
We as software engineers are most exposed to all the digital distractions of the world. Things which actually waste our time to things which we believe might be beneficial for us are all too abundant in front of us, ready to take every waking moment of our time if we are not careful. Therefore below are the steps which will helps us practice mindfulness
Step1:- Start Small and Move your body
First and foremost all good things have to be started small so take your time in bringing this practice in your daily life slowly. By starting with your morning first and then covering your whole day with mindful activities.
I believe the first hour of your day sets the tone for the rest of your day and the person who wins this first hour sets himself up for winning the whole day. Being mindful of each passing minute in this hour is the most important activity you can do to be mindful. So I would recommend starting from this first hour for first 30 days of your journey.
I would also like to draw upon the concept of keystone habit formation. An activity which is the center of all your good habits which unleashes its power in all areas of our life.
For me and I believe for 90% of us, it is the habit of exercising that can help in our journey of being mindfulness the most. Plan your first hour such that you get least 20-30 mins of movement in your life. Even a casual walk outside without your phone can be very beneficial. Not to mention the benefits of taking sunlight first thing in the morning (as Mr huberman suggests in his podcasts). So after your morning ablutions, get straight out the door or into your gym to spend at least 20-30 minutes moving your body.
One thing that will immensely help with is not to take your phone to the bathroom if you are in the habit of relieving yourself right after getting up from the bed. Do your business as quickly as possible without any input to your mind. Be careful of the time you spend in the bathroom.
Step2:- Track your Time
Use a watch, a timer, and a tracking service to keep track of the time you spend while awake. For me my Apple Watch helps me a lot as I wear it right before I go outside for a walk in the morning.
My watch automatically tracks my exercise and also I can set timers using built in timer app and keep track of time using a free app called Toggl.
I used to use the Toggl track timer to keep track of how much time I spent on a certain activity but sometimes I used to forget the timer is running and started to indulge in multitasking or distracting activities. But then luckily I came across a YouTube video where the creator mentioned he used both Toggl track and timer app in conjunction. It turned out to be a game changer.
I want to track my time for which Toggl is great but I also want to spend a given amount of time on the task mostly in increments of 25-30 mins, for which the timer app is really helpful. So I start my activity tracking on Toggl and also start a countdown timer on my watch for 25-30 mins. This creates a sense of healthy urgency in my mind to divert all my focus on the task at hand as I am committing to it in 30 mins chunks.
So as a software engineer, I understand coding needs more than 30 mins on a stretch to make sense of the problem, initialize variables in your mind and then code up the solution and a healthy programmer gets tired only after 90 mins of sustained work. Therefore for programming keeping track of your 90 mins with Toggl and also simultaneously taking each 30 mins using timer can be a game changer in making you more mindful of the activity at hand.
Also, time your breaks, check with your mind how tired it is and schedule a timer for that much amount to freshen up your mind. Indulge in activities which freshen up your mind. But only for that set time. Once that timer goes off return to your next task. Don’t forget to add it to Toggl so that you know how much breaks you need after each productive session and what you need to freshen up your mind.
Use tracking for the full waking part of your day. It can be overwhelming to track each and every activity so track what you are doing at every 30 mins from the time you wake up until your work day ends at around 5PM, after which you can choose to track hourly until you go to bed.
But this is the most important activity for being mindful of how you are spending your time.
Step3:- Plan your day in advance
With all the different activities we software engineers have to do everyday, it makes a great deal of sense to write down everything that we need to do the next day and put it in our calendar. Plan all the 30 mins block of your day in advance the night before.
Use a digital planner as it will be the fastest to copy paste any repeated activities. Make sure you capture every task in a single place. For me it is my Todoist inbox where at the end of my work day I write down all the tasks I need to get done. Then before sleeping I put a time block in my calendar for the tasks I think needs to be done the next day. And I make sure I plan for all the 30 mins block right from the time I wake up i.e. 6AM until I complete my work day which is around 6PM.
When you know what you are going to spend your time on each day in advance you are really mindful while doing that activity in that planned time block.
I know urgent items do arise quite often but try to keep as much part of your day planned in advance as possible especially the morning. Do not let the first hour slip into anything other than your health and personal growth activities like reading or coding.
Weekly planning can help as well but sometimes when you are just getting started with all the chaos in life planning for the whole week can be deeply paralyzing, therefore just focus on the current and next day plan. Slowly over time you will get control of your whole week in advance and you can plan for the whole week over the weekend.
One thing that definitely helps, also recommended by Dr Cal Newport, is the quarterly or seasonal planning, which will help in giving general direction to your overall activities and align your daily and weekly tasks towards bigger goals in life. Hence do spend some time in writing high level projects for the next 3 months that will take you closer to your goals.
Step4:- Have Goals
As I touched upon in previous step the importance of quarterly planning to keep you directed towards your goals. Without goals you cannot do this step. Hence you should write some major goals that you want to achieve in next 5-10 years. I think 10 years is the sweet spot for long term goal planning.
It gives you good balance and enough time horizon to be generally directed towards and also not get bogged down by the daily urgencies and setbacks.
One good way to plan for your goals is life-style centric planning, again recommended by Dr Cal Newport. Imagine how you want your overall life to be in next 5 or 10 years. Where do you want to live, what kind of relationships you want to have, what kind of wealth you want to accumulate, what kind of service you want to provide to this world. All BIG questions which are very helpful in making you mindful towards the overall purpose of human life.
Write down your goals by hand on a paper every day, do not print and paste them, do not read them, but instead write them everyday. It will have the most impact in motivating you to work towards them and never forget them. Making you mindful every day of the bigger picture of your life
Step5:- Keep Time for Serendipity
Serendipity means “the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for“
So to make yourself lucky enough to come across unexpected beneficial information, keep a time slot to bring new things in your life.
For me I keep 1-2 hour over the weekend to look across various websites like hacker news, Kaggle, other social media sites to bring new information to me. Let the algorithm recommend me something, This will help in getting new information into my brain.
It can also mean going to new places for a mini vacation, watching good movies, meeting and spending time with friends, helping in community service. Anything that exposes your to previously unavailable stimulus. It is very important to bring your consciousness in line with this world, that also stops you from stooping too deep into your own world disconnected from reality
Therefore do plan at least 1 hour of serendipitous time in the whole week
Step6:- Eat less and healthy. Do not drink alcohol
Try not to get lethargic during the day. Number 1 thing that makes us sleepy and loose track of our time is food induced lethargy. Hence make sure your eat less than what makes you full. Avoid high carb and sugary stuff during the day.
Eat healthy food like salad, soups etc, foods that are high in protein and low in carbs. Do not drink any sugary drink like soda etc.
Lastly, it goes without saying that if you want to be absolutely mindful of your time then you must not consume any mind numbing substance. Not only it is harmful in the moment but also in the long run. Alcohol consumption can lead you to unwanted diseases of the heart liver kidney and brain.
Step7:- Do not procrastinate on important things in your life
Delaying things which are most important to you causes a friction in brain like no other. This friction always keeps a noisy background in your brain. You will find it hard to focus if you have a task that is so important that needs to be done urgently.
For ex renewing your passport, filing your taxes etc. I know these are boring admin tasks but they have to be completed on time or else you will face fines and legal actions. Hence always prioritize these important tasks above everything else to keep your brain free to focus on larger things in life
As Jeff Bezos says it is not too much work that makes us stressed it is the feeling of not doing anything towards our most pressing tasks that makes us stressed. Even a small step towards completing our most pressing tasks relieves a lot of stress in our brain. Therefore always do something towards the things that are most pressing. If required break it down into small chunks and keep chipping away.
Doing this will be immensely helpful for living a meaningful life.
Step7:- Have a clear end of work day ritual
I learned this important habit from my favorite author and podcaster Dr Cal Newport. If you want to have a peaceful sleep in the night it is important to close all open ends on your work plate at a set time in the evening. Dr. Newport suggests having a shutdown ritual where you close all open loops by putting them in their right place. Planning the next day , responding to critical emails and cleaning up your task list at the end of the day. He also suggests saying out loud a phrase called “Shutdown Complete”.
Step8:- Don’t watch YouTube videos in your free time mindlessly
This one is highly applicable to me as I used to consume a lot of videos on Youtube. I need to seriously cut down on watching videos because videos – even if 10 mins long can easy take up hours out of my day.
Youtube is like your TV but in your pocket always available with new content recommendation. Youtube is good for learning new things and finding tutorials about things you want to do. But the recommendation engine is too good in enticing you into a black hole of mindless time wastage.
Therefore delete Youtube from your phone and only use it on your TV or Laptop that too with a extension like Unhook which hides all Youtube recommendations.
Step9: Unwind every day
Sometime the best activity is to relax and loose track of time for a while, it helps in unwinding from the daily run of the mill activities. It bring freshness in your brain and helps form healthy relationship with your loved ones
To unwind I keep the last hour before going to bed, to watch a show with my family, to listen to music or audiobook which we all enjoy. The idea is to sit back and relax and not force anything to change. Let the entertainment come to you.
I have two kids so listening to music while I play with them on the bed before we all go to sleep is the best unwinding activity for me.
And lastly I like to read even if it is 10 mins before finally dozing off so I keep my kindle on the bed side to help me push through a non fiction book before I close my eyes for the day.
Conclusion
In summary being mindful is a highly desirable attribute if you want to accomplish your goals and dream life. Above steps have helped me becoming more mindful of my time and can help you as well. Start slowly and make sure you do track your time religiously if you want to become a mindful person. Your creativity and productivity will sky rocket if you follow all these steps.
