How Using Mindfulness Made Me Double My Productivity

5 techniques I didn’t believe in until I tried them and saw they do work

A deep and meaningful life is just the sum of thousands of “stupid little tiny things” performed together.

When I understood and believed in that, I began the way to fulfillment, which always ends up in happiness.

At the beginning, I was an unbeliever

I’ve always been skeptical but, as soon as I changed my mindset from that position, is when I did really grow in life.

I understood that I needed to give things a chance to fail. Even to myself.

I first heard about mindfulness in 2010, when a friend of mine told me he had been practicing it in a retreat.

It sounded odd to me, and I perfectly remember what I thought: “Another stupid thing to sell to stressed people”.

Yes, that was me not so long time ago. Once again, I was wrong.

From that day on, I started hearing, reading, and seeing mindfulness everywhere.

Fortunately, at that time, I had a principle that I still keep on using: “If you see a lot of people doing something, pay attention to it. Maybe it’s worth it”.

That’s what I did. I started reading, watching videos, talking to people, asking, investigating, dedicating time to draw my own conclusions.

The point was how I could practice it

I need to put things into practice.

I can’t stand things that only “work” on paper. Great phrases that are nothing more than that: phrases.

I need facts, “how-to’s”. Something that tells me, “Hey, do this… TODAY”.

I need to test, practice, and feel things. I need to do. I need to see outcomes, tangible results that make me move forward to give sense to my daily actions, to my life.

I’ve developed my own techniques, and I polish them every day, becoming better step by step. Here I share 5 of them.

1. Yoga

I started practicing yoga because I wanted to stretch after practicing my workouts.

Soon I saw results, and I decided to incorporate yoga into my morning routine because I got hooked.

Yoga is not only about stretching.

Yoga makes it possible to focus my attention on balance, concentrate on the positions, and fully in the present.

Practicing yoga gave me no choice to think about anything at all but the present time: NOW.

2. Meditation

Meditation is not only for calming people down.

It has allowed me:

• To know me better.
• To improve my performance.
• To be able to concentrate sooner.
• To get into a flow state much faster.

The more I practice it, the more I like it, the more outcomes I receive.

3. Visualization

Visualization is critical for me.

It allows me to “come back to present”, as I say in this article: “Why a Rope Can Take You Back to Present”.

I’ve developed many different techniques to bring back my mind to present whenever it flies away, and I don’t want to. This is just one of them.

4. Freeing my mind

One of the essential concepts in my life is “autopilot”.

Creating processes that run on autopilot is vital to liberate my mind. To leave it to focus on the real important things. Those that matter. Those I do really care.

Whenever I see something that can be automatized or executed without thinking at all, I immediately do it.

When I start liberating my mind of hundreds (even thousands) of things that don’t need to consume my energy, my energy levels begin to grow.

It’s when I’m fueled up to perform at my best.

I use this “liberating technique” with the most stupid things any human being can think about. For example, one of my “morning pre-decisions” it helped me a lot was leaving all my clothes and things ready to go the night before.

That makes me “drive” my morning on autopilot, without having to make a decision.

That leaves my mind free to work on focusing, mindfulness, enjoying each of my activities inside my morning routine, and taking the best out of them.

The simpler my pre-decisions are, the easier they will fit into my life, becoming a habit and summing towards that “great life” I’m looking for.

5. Practicing mindfulness at any moment

I’m practicing micro-mindfulness moments throughout all my day.

They come to me naturally, effortlessly, because I’ve trained a lot, and I keep on training daily.

My morning routine is one clear example.

Mornings are always amazing moments for me.

They have become a perfect “excuse” for me to go to bed the night before full of happiness because I’m looking forward to the day after with motivation, illusion, and joy.

The focus is always the same for me: mindfulness.

I focus on the experience I’m living JUST NOW and forget about everything at all. It doesn’t matter if it’s an important day, a normal one, or whatever. I just focus on the thing I’m doing NOW.

This drives me to such many little great moments, full of pleasure and good vibes, that my motivation is at its highest level when I arrive at my office.

Motivation for me is just feeling nice, calm, and relaxed.

These are those micro-mindfulness moments I enjoy a lot:

• Drinking water when I wake up, just looking out the window, “feeling” the silence.
• Walking with my dog, smelling the fresh morning air, listening to birds and all kind of sounds.
• Cold shower, feeling the water, and “seeing” it’s just that: water. When I started this practice, my brain thought it was pain. Today, it’s pleasure… That’s how brains work… as “stupid” as that.
• “After-shave” moment. Feeling how it refreshes my face, smelling it intensely.

I will add here 2 key elements that helped me to associate these micro-mindfulness experiences with positive emotions:

• No rush at all. I don’t push myself while I’m doing these activities. If I’m tempted, I always become conscious of it and slow me down. This is CRITICAL. I’ve noticed a lot of improvements because of that.
• Listening to jazz music while having my shower and getting dressed. This, again, was life-changing. I used to listen to the news. This “stupid” change brought me into a whole new world of peace, calm, concentration, and joy.

Why my performance has doubled using mindfulness

As I said at the beginning, I always look for tangible outcomes when I do something.

I always focus on quantity outcomes and quality ones.

Here are the quantity results I doubled after practicing mindfulness:

• I doubled the number of tasks performed each week.
• I doubled the number of projects completed each month.
• I reduced half the time consumed performing the same tasks.

Last but not least, I always pay attention to quality results. In this case, I’ve improved a lot my peace of mind. I feel calm and relaxed.

That state allows me to feel better about myself and how I interact with others. Life runs smoothly when I’m living in this state of mind.

Takeaways

Mindfulness has been life-changing for me.

These “stupid little tiny things” are the ones that make me focus and concentrate whenever I’m facing an important thing, such as preparing a presentation, an essay, an e-mail, a meeting…

That’s the moment in which those “stupid little tiny things” make sense and converge into an amazing “torrent” of energy that allows me to perform at my best.

It allowed me to know myself better, make me a better performer, and perform at levels I didn’t even know existed.

When I perform at my best is when I feel proud of my work, of my life. Motivation knocks on my door. Illusion appears. Joy. Fulfillment. Happiness.

I feel I control my emotions. I feel confident, solid, rational, calm, relaxed.

It’s by enjoying the present to its fullest that I can create the future I’m pursuing, the one I’ve previously drawn in my mind.