51 Best Mindful Productivity Tips and Strategies
Mindful Productivity: My 51 Best Practices, Strategies, and Tips!
You know that you should be more mindful and live in the present moment. But it’s hard to do so when your life is constantly filled with distractions. Mindful productivity is the solution and is simple to practice.
You feel like you’re always behind and never caught up, and you’re always doing but never getting anywhere. Your mind is constantly racing, and you’re feeling overwhelmed.
Lucky for you, this basic human ability is how you’ll rise above and move beyond it.
These tips will help you manage your thoughts and emotions to be consciously present. You’ll finally be spending your time doing and getting more done of what matters most in your life.
What Are My 51 Best Practices, Strategies, and Tips?
It may seem odd to some that mindfulness and productivity would fit together. However, each compliment the other, and the two pair into a powerful combination.
I began practicing mindfulness and mindful productivity to manage stress and anxiety at work and in my personal life. Soon, I realized that mindfulness and meditative practices let me let go of stress and disconnect from work. I became more consciously present and could stay focused on my life’s more profound and meaningful interests.
My journey since then has been tremendous and transformed my life in ways far beyond my initial hopes and expectations. If you’re seeking this transformation in your own life or know someone who is, these tips are game-changing.
I developed these mindful productivity best practices, strategies, and tips during my own personal journey. I assure you that they will help light the most productive path for moving forward.
So, take a deep breath, release your conscious thoughts, and join me in the present moment as you read on.
I’m presenting my tips in the framework of online mindful productivity courses, OYDLpro: Organizing Your Digital Life for Productivity.
Section One: Mindful Productivity – The Mindfulness of Time
1. Spend Your Time Wisely: No Refunds, No Exchanges
Few things are more precious than your time. Budgeting your money ensures you’re spending it within your means. Budgeting your time involves being mindful of how your time is being spent.
You make the most of your time by being in the present moment. The here and now focused on what matters most in your life, and what brings you joy is what counts.
Mindful productivity can help encourage you to be consciously present throughout your day and to say no to distractions or obligations that won’t help further your ambitions while saying yes to those opportunities which will add lasting value to your life. Always remember, how you spend your time is how you will have spent it. No refunds. No exchanges.
2. Become a Master of Maximizing Time & Value
Time doesn’t pay the bills, so you trade it instead, along with your skills, in exchange for money that does. But how do you know how much each moment of your time is worth? Unlike money, you can’t save time and spend it whenever you want. Your time is spent every second of every day. The truth is that you either use it or lose it.
However, when you’re being mindfully productive, you’re being mindful and aware of the value and scarcity of your time and the benefits of spending it wisely. The acquisition of money in exchange for your time requires a strategy of mindfulness at work to reduce stress, avoid burnout, and perform at the top of your game, which is where mindful productivity checks that box.
Remember, you can always make more money but can’t make more time. And, unlike cash, you never know how much time you have or when you’ll run out. So, the only guarantee you receive with your gift of time is that it will run out. Accepting this truth will reinforce positive emotions and open creativity the more you remain aware in the present moment.
3. Find Your Flow: Achieve Mindful Productivity with Time Accountability
Becoming more productive isn’t about overloading your schedule, and it’s certainly not about obsessive multitasking – it’s quite the opposite. Being mindful and tracking your time allows you to begin creating balance and anchoring yourself in the present moment. Your awareness of the time spent on a particular task or project allows you to recognize your natural productive flow.
Holding yourself accountable for how you’re spending your time allows you to stay focused on whether you’re spending it wisely. In addition, time accountability as a practice of mindful productivity encourages you to apply conscious thought in choosing to focus on one task over another and give that task your full attention in the time you give it.
4. Make the Most of Your Time: Analyze Over Several Days & Weeks
Much of your stress accumulates from a lack of awareness in your daily life of how your time was spent. Well, where did it go?
Mindful productivity is more than being in the present moment, assuming that whatever needs to be done will get done. Instead, being mindfully productive requires focusing on mindful strategies to do what needs to be done without all the stress and distractions that drain your mental energy.
Being mindful of your time over several days to a couple of weeks gives you the insight to recognize patterns of how your brain’s high and low energy cycles tend to influence your productivity and mental states.
Defining and refining how you design your time structuring becomes one of those eureka moments for ramping up your productivity.
Capturing your activity data in your digital calendar can produce reports and infographics detailing your progress over time. It’s also an excellent alternative to bullet journaling and benefits your ability to recall memories and events like a diary.
5. Start Making The Most of Those Spare Change Moments Now
Mindful productivity enhances your awareness of the value of your time. It helps you avoid wasting it by tossing away idle minutes like spare change that could otherwise be invested into your mental health and well-being.
Each moment you have is an opportunity to invest in yourself, regardless of how brief those moments may be. So, if you’re experiencing boredom, you subconsciously practice mindlessness when you should instead focus on practicing mindfulness.
The more you practice mindfulness throughout your day by being aware of your environment yet filtering out its distractions, your focus on productive thinking reinforces positive emotions and stimulates the creative process.
It’s an inconspicuous form of meditation you can practice anywhere at any time, even if only for a minute or two. Those moments become the spare change you’re investing back into yourself rather than simply letting them pass without benefits.
6. Eliminate Stress & Overwhelm Without Micro-Managing Your Day
Many productivity experts advocate the popular time management techniques known as Time-Blocking and Time-Boxing. I am NOT an advocate of either.
Let’s ensure we’re on the same page regarding understanding these terms. Time-Blocking is allocating a set block of time on your schedule to work on a specific task. Time-Boxing centers around setting timeline limits as an incentive to get projects done promptly.
Unless you are of such extraordinary importance in status with scheduling demands being made on every minute of your time and being managed by a personal secretary or staff, blocking and boxing your time is counter-intuitive, counter-productive, and a recipe for stress and overwhelm.
Instead, you’re seeking to focus your time and mental energy on doing more of what matters most in your life. I consider efforts to block or box our time as practicing mindlessness, whereas our interest is practicing mindfulness. The hyper-focused micro-managing this requires is the quickest way to no longer see the forest for the trees.
These methods typically result in frustration without a crystal ball or other means of prognostication. Derailments and distractions, continuously reassigning blocks and resizing the boxes to adapt to a dynamic reality is mindlessness. Hello, Overwhelm. So long, Flow. The present moment has left the building.
7. Farewell, Old Tomato! It’s Time to Say Arrivederci, Pomodoro
Another popular technique that many productivity experts recommend is the Pomodoro technique. Which, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment, I do not.
The Pomodoro technique sets a timer to perform 25 minutes of focused work, followed by a 5-minute break. By repeating this cycle three times, a reward of a break of 20-30 minutes is earned.
The Pomodoro Technique is well-intentioned, but here’s the scoop. 25 minutes of deep, intentional focus is not enough to positively impact any demanding task or project. A five-minute break bumps your mind out of focus and gives your brain an excuse to wander off. Then getting focused again can take another five. Farewell to ten minutes of what could have been a productive flow. Repeating this workflow three consecutive times is a perfect formula for mayhem, stress, and less-than-optimal results.
Again, I advocate for the value and benefits of using timers to achieve mindful productivity. I’ll elaborate further on the role of timers and time structuring in my methodology next. But, as far as I’m concerned, it’s time we say Arrivederci, Pomodoro!
8. Harness Your High & Low Energy Cycles to Reach Peak Focus
I disregard managing time by blocking it, boxing it, or throwing tomatoes at it. Instead, I developed a variation of the 45/15 rule that I practice every day and teach in my online courses.
Engaging in your mindfulness training and practice of mindful productivity reveals the patterns of your daily mental energy cycles. High-energy cycles are periods of peak focus. Low-energy cycles are periods when your focus wanes. Matching high-energy tasks to 45-minute focus sessions and low-energy tasks to the remaining 15 minutes is being mindful.
However, there is an allowable exception within this method. Mindfulness principles and mindful productivity practices encourage the benefits of achieving flow in the present moment.
In a flow at the end of your 45-minute focus session? You can extend your high-energy focus session for an additional 45 minutes without interruption. You’ll simply opt to append what would’ve been your 15-minute low-energy task activity to the next one.
Achieving your flow state within a high-energy task cycle is ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS more important than disrupting it out of a sense of obligation to perform any low-energy task to conform to the time-structuring template.
However, it’s also essential that you remain mindful of the importance of fulfilling your low-energy task cycles. So, when your high-energy flow state subsides, you’re still on the hook to perform those low-energy tasks. Or else, despite your enthusiasm, you’ll find yourself in the doghouse.
9. Stop Sacrificing Quality for Quantity: Minimize Stress & Maximize Output
Being mindfully productive and practicing mindfulness at work is the opposite of the old-school corporate and factory floor mindset of productivity. Mindful productivity is not about martyring yourself through the abuse of time and effort as punishment. It’s not a sentence of flogging yourself in some pointless self-flagellation.
Instead, being mindfully productive is more about following your path of least resistance and embracing slack. Overloading your schedule with good intentions is in no way an effective means to manage stress.
Your productivity quality is not measured by how busy you are with sustaining a frenzied hair-on-fire schedule and output. While I’m sure there are CEOs, Directors, and Supervisors who may feel differently, remember, there is no authority but yourself!
The most assured path to overwhelm and anxiety, hindering your productivity and mental health, is through over-commitment.
I recommend assigning no more than twelve meaningful tasks to your day, a combination of both high-energy and low-energy tasks. Your decision-making in choosing them should align with your priorities and meet realistic expectations of engaging.
10. Mindfulness, Marbles, and Mason Jars: Unlock the Power of Rewards-Based Motivation
An aspect of being human is that our mind craves rewards for good behavior and work. When I was in seventh grade, my science teacher Mr. Mason understood this well.
He would drop a few marbles into a mason jar when the class behaved properly. Once the jar was filled, the class was rewarded with a day of no lessons or lectures. Today, I continue to use Mr. Mason’s system to reward my daily productivity.
Within arm’s reach from where I’m typing now sit my stash of marbles next to my mason jar. Every evening, based on my verifiable daily accomplishments, I deposit my hard-earned pittance.
The tangible action of rewarding myself in this manner is particularly satisfying. As simple as it may seem, the fulfillment of tallying my marble count is sometimes the best motivation.
When the jar is completely filled with marbles, I reward myself with a day off, free of pressure or obligation. Then, I empty it out and start again with an empty jar the following morning.
11. Put the Doom Scroll Away! Why You Should Give Mindlessness a Miss
Mindfulness principles and meditative practices encourage you to be consciously present.
By contrast, mindlessness principles and anxiety-inducing practices encourage you to be subconsciously non-present. For example, when you’re doom-scrolling your way through your social media.
Rhetorical Pop-Quiz: Which of the above choices is most likely to reduce stress, improve your mental and emotional states, stimulate your creativity, and boost your productivity?
So, stop it! Or, at least, be mindful and aware that you’re consciously choosing to not practice mindfulness for mindlessness instead. It’s okay, and we all do it. But, before impulsively reaching for your phone, take a pause and a deep breath or two. Then consciously decide that this is how you want to spend that bit of time.
12. Why Do Today What You Can Blow Off ’til Tomorrow? Respecting Your Emotional and Mental States
Yep! You read that right. It is perfectly okay to blow something off today and do it tomorrow for the right reasons.
Allowing yourself to put off something you do not have the energy for today isn’t about laziness. It simply means taking charge of your time and prioritizing what is truly important to you.
Recognizing when it’s time to relax and refocus can be incredibly beneficial for productivity, focus, and creativity. Your mindfulness and meditation techniques will help clear your mind and recharge your body. Additionally, the quality of your work will benefit as well.
It is up to you to decide how you spend your time and energy. You are the only one who knows what will bring you mental, physical, and emotional fulfillment. So don’t worry about what others might think – focus on yourself and your well-being, and you can’t go wrong.
Whether you choose to tackle something head-on or blow it off for later, permit yourself to make that choice. Then take ownership of that decision without apologies or guilt. Always remember that you’re the boss of your time, not the other way around.
Section Two: Mindful Productivity – The Mindfulness of Organization
13. Mindful Organization: If You’re Not Organized, You’re Not Productive
As an initial step, I suggest harnessing the power of mindful organization to unlock and unleash your full productivity potential. Therefore, in my teaching, I focus on three distinct realms of organization: your physical realm, digital realm, and mental realm.
When chaos and clutter enter either of these realms, your mental and emotional states wobble, and your focus gets scattered. And your mind wanders, making attaining a productive flow state more difficult. So, I follow the immortal words of Anthony Bourdain “Mise En Place is the religion of all good line cooks.”
This French phrase, meaning “Everything in its place,” is about having everything ready and maintaining a well-organized workspace.
“As a cook, your station, and its condition, its state of readiness, is an extension of your nervous system. The universe is in order when your station is set up the way you like it. You know where to find everything with your eyes closed; everything you need during the course of the shift is at the ready at arm’s reach, your defenses are deployed.”
Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential
This little nugget empowers you with a workable strategy to approach mindful organization. Maintaining the Mise En Place of mindfulness in your physical, digital, and mental realms is key to mindful productivity. From your ability to flow while focused on a task to being in the present moment, mindfulness is freeing your thinking mind from silent distractions. Your Mise En Place allows you to focus your full attention on doing what matters most.
By purposely controlling our physical, digital, and mental realms through a conscious effort to tidy up – either in short bursts or longer sessions, depending on what’s needed – you create pillars that support you in staying present and focused as you work away at managing your tasks and achieving flow states.
14. Practicing Mindfulness and Mise En Place: Your Physical Realm
Your physical surroundings influence your creativity, thoughts, and emotions. So, you may have a quiet space that seems free of distractions. However, you must also be aware of what I call silent distractions.
Your work environment must be free of the silent distractions of clutter and disarray to keep your mind fully attentive. Unfortunately, underlying stress bubbles under the surface when your Mise En Place is more of a Mess En Place.
I recommend prioritizing decluttering and organizing your work environment first. Begin where you sit or perform most of your daily tasks, then expand outward as you go. Your creativity will quickly kick in, and your momentum will build with each bit of progress you make.
Keep in mind and be aware of your options that there are lots of simple, effective, and low-cost products available that can make massive contributions to the efficiency of organizing your work environment. Once you get going and your creativity flows, getting organized becomes fun and like a game for your mind. Therefore, I say that getting organized doesn’t have to suck.
15. Seriously, You Gotta Get Rid of This Stuff: Part I – Decluttering Your Physical Realm
Your emotional and mental states are influenced by clutter and silent distractions of your physical surroundings. Let’s consider three of my favorite physical decluttering strategies.
I mentioned beginning with your immediate work environment. Of course, your space is different than mine. However, I’ll assume for this example that you typically work from a desk with a workstation or laptop.
1. Beginning From a Clean Slate
Ripping it out and starting fresh is often the most productive way to make that initial push. Once everything is moved off and out of your immediate workspace, your creativity and mindful thinking will kick in. It becomes like a puzzle, and your brain will produce clever ideas as you place items back into your workspace.
2. Be Selective About What You Place
Only place items necessary for you to do your work comfortably and productively. Be mindful of the new space you’re creating so that what you use most frequently is readily accessible and leaves enough room to make cleaning simple and clutter-free.
3. Multitasking
I share my thoughts on multitasking in Section Three: Mindful Productivity – The Mindfulness of Workflow. However, decluttering and organizing present the perfect opportunities to multitask successfully. Listening to an audiobook, podcast, radio program, or music with your full attention while you perform the low-energy tasks of de-cluttering and organizing is a perfect example of mindful productivity and mindfulness at work.
The more clutter there is, the more time you’ll need to allocate. But you’ll be amazed at how much of a difference you will see in your work environment and your ability to stay focused, present, and productive.
16. One Small Task Can Make a World of Difference: The Benefits of Performing Super-Quick Tasks
One of the most recent additions to my daily life and mindful productivity practice is establishing the habitual self-discipline of cleaning, organizing, or putting away one thing in a space or room I’ve entered before I can leave it.
At first, it required some conscious thought to introduce this into my mindfulness practices and daily routine. However, after the first couple of weeks, I developed the ability to do it without thinking about it.
The benefits of this practice are massive because it takes so little time to perform these super-quick tasks. And like magic, my kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living room, and workspace always stay clean.
Again, it’s another example of the power of being mindfully productive and experiencing mindfulness’s benefits at work.
17. Practicing Mindfulness and Mise En Place: Your Digital Realm
Your life extends beyond your physical realm. The digital time you spend blurs and intersects with your physical world more now than ever. Likewise, your digital work environment extends your physical work environment. Mindful productivity relies on being well organized to ensure the same focus and flow as you work across tasks.
The methodology I developed for myself, OYDLpro: Organizing Your Digital Life for Productivity, is a comprehensive solution for integrating mindful productivity throughout your personal and professional work environment, emphasizing digital Mise En Place.
I developed this methodology after realizing and accepting that I had become a digital hoarder and desperately needed intervention. The more dependent you are on the efficiency of your digital workflow, the more vital it becomes to be mindful of the rampant amount of digital clutter you’ve accumulated and its effect on your mental and emotional states.
Organizing your digital life is more than simply decluttering. It’s also about content curation. There is deep satisfaction and joy in the mindfulness of properly curating the libraries housing your vast digital collections. Content curation can be quite a task and a significant project with work that will take time. However, the result is meaningful and purposeful while also doing wonders for the mind.
18. Seriously, You Gotta Get Rid of This Stuff: Part II – Decluttering Your Digital Realm
Your digital life is like the hybrid environment that exists between your physical realm and your mental realm. However, because your digital realm is not as apparent to outsiders, you’ll likely have a more cluttered digital life.
The clutter of your digital realm influences your emotional and mental states in the same way as your physical surroundings. So, for your consideration, here are three of my favorite digital decluttering strategies.
1. The Full Backup
As an openly confessed digital hoarder, I am grateful that I have the option of deleting and wiping out everything. But only if I’m confident I have an unquestionable and complete backup of everything. And have one, two, three, or more full backups across various clouds, drives, or whatever. Once you’re satisfied that you could retrieve any of your digital clutter, for whatever reason, you’re ready to move on.
2. Delete, Delete, Delete
Once you’re confident that you have a good set of backups, let the purge begin. I recommend taking this opportunity to wipe the device and do a clean installation. But only if you’re comfortable starting from scratch before restoring. Otherwise, see my digital decluttering tips below.
3. Apps and Automation
Decluttering and organizing your digital realm is much easier when you have the right apps and create basic automation. Identifying and removing duplicate content and implementing a consistent file naming convention throughout your digital environment are perfect examples of where leveraging the right apps will save you massive amounts of time. Essential automation utilities, such as rules and policies for managing your email, will also help you to achieve peak performance.
19. Mindful Organizing: Creating an Ideal Framework to Design Your Life and Keep It All Organized
At the core of organizing and optimizing your digital life and establishing a strong focus on your overall life design is building your ideal framework and developing your taxonomy. Now, this is a subject I teach in depth in my OYDLpro courses. I’m presenting it here primarily for awareness, although you may already be familiar enough to proceed.
Think of your framework as folder structure and file-naming conventions and your taxonomy as your system of categorizing and classifying your content and interests. This structure you create is unique and specific to you and your personal and professional life interests and goals.
This is where your mindfulness training and meditation practice immensely help you begin to achieve mindful productivity can help immensely. The root of your framework and taxonomy of your life design and digital organizing centers on defining no more than twelve distinct areas of interest and passion in your life. These become the foundation you will build everything else around within your digital realm.
20. Practicing Mindfulness and Mise En Place: Your Mental Realm
Mise En Place within your mental realm equips your brain with tools essential for reducing stress and anxiety. It also ensures you can stay focused with full attention and clarity. The quality of your mental and emotional states heavily influences the creative process. This carries over to your self-awareness and your ability to stay relaxed and to focus with your mind fully attentive.
Organizing your physical and digital spaces through mindful productivity and mindfulness principles limits how scattered or disorderly your thoughts become. Maintaining consistent organization of these realms enhances your ability to sustain being in the present moment.
When you practice mindfulness meditation, you are maintaining order and Mise En Place in your mental realm. This allows you to be consciously present, have better control over your emotions, harness your creativity, manage stress, and avoid burnout.
Imagine for a moment that your brain is that hard-working line cook like Anthony Bourdain references. When there’s a break in the action or at the beginning or end of your brain’s shift, much of that Mise En Place will need to be reset and brought back into good order to handle the next rush. When you meditate, you’re allowing your brain to re-establish its Mise En Place.
21. Seriously, You Gotta Get Rid of This Stuff: Part III – Decluttering Your Mental Realm
Mindfulness teaches you that stress is a consequence of losing your focus on being in the present moment. When you experience counter-productive thinking, such as negative self-talk, unpleasant emotions, and all the other distractions that occur while your mind wanders, the more mental clutter your brain must navigate through to do its job.
A cluttered brain becomes filled with obstacles that can be difficult to see and maneuver around. Like being blindfolded in a large, cluttered room, anxiety compounds, and stressful situations arise until you initiate a decluttering action. Each meditation you perform is a decluttering action within your mental realm.
Establishing consistency in your mindfulness meditative practices and even an action as simple as just taking a quick pause and a slow, deep breath or two are among the most effective techniques for staving off overwhelm and stress by keeping your brain decluttered.
22. Ending The Never-Ending Thought Cycle
Thinking non-stop is what your brain is designed to do, giving you all sorts of ideas around the clock. However, for all the promising ideas your brain produces, undisciplined minds wander off easily into the weeds of distractions. The mind, like a child, drops those clever ideas to play with whatever shiny new distractions come along.
David Allen’s famous quote, “Your mind is for thinking and having ideas, not holding them,” was one of those eureka moments. Simple as it reads, realizing the importance of thinking, capturing an idea, and writing it down quickly matters.
Whether consciously aware of it or not, your brain is constantly engaged in a creative process throughout your daily life. A brilliant idea arriving one moment may depart in the next once the mind wanders off to another thought.
But what about those thoughts and ideas that wake you up at 3:00 am?
Your mind needs to think about and process them then and there, creating a mental loop cycle. Left unresolved, it is unlikely that you’ll fall back to sleep until moments before the alarm goes off. But, when you quickly write them down, the loop cycle begins to settle, and you fall back to sleep.
You get those ideas when you’re out walking, at the gym, running errands, in the dentist’s office, or wherever. You need to capture them as soon as you have them.
Bonus Tip: Always have a notepad and pen within easy reach
I keep several small pocket-sized notepads with pens attached in multiple places. One is on the nightstand, in the kitchen, and in the bathroom. One is at my desk, in my car, and another doubles as my wallet.
Once noted, all the anxiety of losing the idea is resolved, and the mental loop cycle is broken. The stress is lifted, and you become free to let go as your mind wanders again. Best of all, allowing you to roll over and go back to sleep.
Bonus Tip: Don’t keep your notes all over the place
Transfer your notes into a centralized digital notebook or app as soon as possible. Scattered across notebooks or becoming piles of little paper, those ideas become clutter instead.
23. Get Clear on What Matters in Life and Design a Plan for Achieving It
I’m not an advocate of being overly focused on goals or deadlines unless necessary and only on a case-by-case basis. What may seem like an incentive at first frequently invites overwhelm and stress into the mix. When deadlines change, there’s wasted time moving many goalposts around to compensate for those changes.
Instead, I design my life around a personal mindfulness of what tasks matter most and assign them an appropriate priority. I approach these as focus sessions to ensure that each day is meaningful and purposeful toward completing them promptly.
The mindfulness of defining what a good day means to me then becomes a repeatable formula. Good day x 7 = Good Week, x 4 = Good Month, x 12 = Good Year, and so on.
I’ve always appreciated the famous inspirational quote, “It’s not the destination; it’s the journey.”
While commonly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, the quote’s origin is not Emerson. Instead, it appeared in a Sunday School Lesson by Lynn H. Hough in 1920, referencing a letter by Simon, aka Saint Peter.
Excerpt from Pastor Hough’s Lesson:
“He wanted his friends to realize that life is a journey and not a destination; that the heart must be set upon those matters of character which are eternal and not upon those matters of sensation which pass away.”
I’ve simplified this topic for brevity. However, this approach to life design is a core fundamental that I teach in greater depth in my OYDLpro online courses and coaching.
24. Forget The Gimmicks and Myths: Going Beyond Email Management, Simpler Than Imagined
It would be best if you accepted that email, texts, and whatever other messaging platforms bombard you with daily clutter are not going away. Instead, take ownership of it by leveraging mindful productivity strategies, such as automation, rules, and policies that minimize distractions and protect your focus.
Of course, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to create a 100% distraction-free work environment. However, achieving 70% or 80% is not difficult. Many methods and techniques exist, although some are better than others, and there’s more to accomplish than just inbox zero.
I decided to develop my own method, which I teach in my OYDLpro courses as part of my comprehensive Microsoft Outlook email, calendar, and task methodology.
There are numerous solutions to choose from if you’re still struggling with inbox overwhelm that do work. The most important thing is to find the one that works for you, be consistent, and end the struggle.
Section Three: Mindful Productivity – The Mindfulness of Workflow
25. Finding Your Stride and Rocking the Rhythm of Life: Synchronizing Your Energy Cycles
There’s quite a bit of variety in the studies on the human attention span and how long a mind fully attentive with its focus on one task can sustain efficient focus. For example, some studies suggest 20 minutes, while others offer 45 minutes, and so on. As discussed earlier in this article, you can refer to my advocacy of the 45/15 variation I practice for those comments.
Once you’ve established your time tracking and become aware and observant of the patterns of your high-energy and low-energy focus throughout your day, your ability to create predictable extended flow cycles into your schedule gets more manageable.
Being mindful of this rhythm and cycle allows you to balance and match your high-energy focus tasks with your high-energy and low-energy focus tasks with your low-energy cycles.
As you develop this self-awareness of your natural rhythm further, this creative process almost becomes second nature allowing flow to evolve into what I refer to as GROOVE.
However, despite your best mindfulness practices, you’re still human and vulnerable to the fluctuations of your thoughts, emotions, and focus. You can’t always be in the present moment, and your environment and schedule are often unpredictable.
However, the more you integrate mindful productivity into your daily life, having awareness and listening to your inner self, you’ll quickly adapt and adjust your tasks in alignment with those fluctuations while remaining productive throughout the day. And that, again, is the power of your mindfulness at work!
Mindful Productivity BONUS VIDEO #1:
Productivity – Ditch the Struggle, Master the Juggle!
Links to the content referenced in this video
Wired.com article “Here’s What Learning to Juggle Does to Your Brain” by Tom Vanderbilt
26. Stop Forcing the Wrong Fit: Avoiding Square-Peg vs. Round-Hole Syndrome
If you’re not mindful about aligning your focus in proportion with your tasks, your work output will be less than optimal, and your productivity will suffer. So if something isn’t working, listen to that voice, and take a moment to step back and check if you’re trying to pound a square peg through a round hole.
Nothing is mindful about forcing yourself to do something you don’t have the focus to do now. It’s not a forced labor camp. Mindful productivity is just as much about knowing when NOT to focus on a task as learning when TO focus on a task.
No doubt, you can succeed in pounding that square peg through that round hole with enough grit and grind, but what will you have gained? Probably not much more than a lot of damage with wasted time and effort, other than you can declare, “Yay, I did it!”
27. Exploring the Upsides and Downsides of Procrastination
When it comes to productivity, procrastination has long been thought of as an inhibiting force. But what if there’s another side to the coin? What about giving yourself space for the conscious incubation of ideas?
It may not feel like you are actively doing something productive. Still, patience is key here – creating thoughtful solutions requires you to permit yourself the time that may be beneficial for “incubation” before they bloom into reality!
Understanding that slow progress typically yields greater rewards will help provide a better outcome than hastily jumping to conclusions amid pressure or deadlines.
Mindful Productivity BONUS VIDEO #2
The #1 Productivity KILLER! (It’s Not What You Think)
Links to the content referenced in this video
5 Causes of Overwhelm and The Solution by Ryan Eliason
28. Harnessing the Power of Workflow, Flow States, and Joyful Productivity
Mindful productivity allows you to create workflows rooted in mindfulness so that experiencing flow states becomes more achievable than ever before while helping keep distractions at bay.
Workflows are the key to unlocking your creativity, focus, and highest potential. Taking the time to adopt a systematic approach can help you be more productive, focused, and efficient.
By creating workflows that transition seamlessly between activities, you’re rewarded with extended periods of flow, enabling moments of what becomes joyful productivity and empowering satisfaction.
29. Stop Getting Bitten: Breaking Free of Option and Analysis Paralysis
On the flip side of the procrastination coin, you must be mindful and aware of two productivity-paralyzing spiders: the dreaded Araneae-Optionus and Araneae-Analytus.
The antidote for option paralysis is to focus on the clarity and organization of your thoughts, ideas, and information and prioritize them appropriately.
The remedy for analysis paralysis is to do your homework, trust your judgment, and take action.
Implementing these mindful productivity principles into practice regularly makes it easy to be sure neither spider will have a chance at biting!
30. Your Time is Your Business! Flipping the Sign on Your Shop.
I begin my mornings with mindfulness as I review, prioritize, and assign myself the tasks for my day. Then, I commit my time to deep work tasks as a business, with a set number of hours to achieve my daily quota. Once reached, I save my work, put it away, and I’m free to spend time doing whatever I want.
I refer to this mindful productivity routine as opening and closing my shop. First, I open my shop with a clean slate and a fresh workstation reboot. Then, with a fresh cup of coffee, I review my messages and tasks, plan for the day, and figuratively flip the sign on my shop to open.
Finally, once I’ve reached my deep work task quota for the day, I follow a similar process and flip my shop sign to closed.
31. Master Your Digital Life with Mindful Automation and Synchronicity
Mindful productivity isn’t about making your brain do all the work. Automation and synchronicity across your digital devices are how technology allows you to work in a flow of mindfulness every day. One of my top tips is to simplify and centralize application and storage platforms across all your digital devices.
Limiting your use of single-purpose third-party apps and storage resources is a massive productivity boost! You can focus your skills concisely, reduce learning curves for yourself and your teams, improve collaboration, tighten security, and establish consistent workflows and automation, floating like a little butterfly as you work away from any of your devices.
32. Looking For More Structure? Organize Your Workflow Like An Automated Assembly Line
If you ever watch an automated assembly line, it’s like watching a mindful meditation in action, but with robots. Sorry, humans.
However, before you submit to your robot overlords, observing and being aware of how these tools work together in a consistent flow state without breaks is fascinating and a little intimidating. So when you create your workflows, think of it as building an assembly line. As well as being a basic human ability, the robots will be impressed with your work when they take over the world.
Here’s a random example. It’s 7:00 am, and I’m opening the shop; I’m reviewing my task and projects list, considering and revising priorities if warranted. I’ll choose two or three high-energy, focus session tasks and between six to eight low-energy tasks, again no more than twelve to like to do a little prepping of any materials or resources I’ll need to perform all these tasks throughout the day so that I can transition between them without speed bumps.
Then, depending on how my energy cycles are flowing, I’ll match an appropriate task and begin working my way forward in the 45/15 increments discussed earlier. I track my time as I go to ensure accountability, get into a flow, and even GROOVE until I’ve met my quota and it’s time to close the shop.
33. The Art of Mindful Multitasking: Discovering the Secret of Juggling Productivity
When productivity experts comment that “multitasking is a myth and doesn’t work,” they are mistaken. You do NOT need to avoid multitasking! On the contrary, multitasking is a fantastic way to boost productivity and make the most of your time. However, you must be mindful of what types of activities can benefit from multitasking.
Everyday tasks, such as housekeeping, prepping meals, exercising, driving, and so on, are ideal for multitasking since they don’t require intense mental energy. Pair these mundane tasks with those that need a focused mind. Listen to audiobooks, podcasts, radio programs, or music while checking off the remedial chores of your day, and your multitasking will achieve substantial productivity benefits.
34. The Perfect Soundtrack for Productivity, Focus, and Inspiration: Ambient Music and Sound
I live in an apartment, which means there’s usually some element of communal living ambiance that comes with it. I also have a bit of persistent tinnitus that I’ve come to live with over the years. So, ambient music and sound are two of my favorite tools to maintain my distraction-free environment, stay relaxed, and focus while engaging in deep work sessions.
There are times when even a quiet space can feel distracting. Like the method for multitasking I mentioned previously, you’re doing the same thing, but in reverse. As your full attention is on the deep work task, I recommend having a minimal and calming awareness of ambient music or sounds as a backing track.
I approach background music while I’m working in two distinct ways. Deep work tasks requiring focus pair well with ambient music lacking heavy beats or vocals, and natural sound recordings, like a rainstorm, work great for deep focus tasks.
In contrast, shallow tasks are not requiring much focus or energy and benefit from whatever music you want to throw at them. These tasks are ideal for deep listening to favorite records or playlists and giving those tracks the attention they deserve while you work on more mundane tasks.
35. Stop Making Your Mouse Do All the Work! Your Keyboard Isn’t Just for Typing (I know, but you’ll thank me later)
Suppose you want to boost your desktop workflow seriously. In that case, one of my favorite tips is to learn the keyboard shortcuts for performing the most common navigation and actions of your most frequently used apps and your operating system.
For example, I focus primarily on learning and practicing keyboard shortcuts for Windows, Outlook, and Edge (my browser of preference). I keep myself mindful of when I reach for the mouse when performing an action in either of those three environments and redirect myself to the keyboard shortcut instead.
It takes practice, and I recommend keeping a cheat sheet that you can quickly reference as you train your mind and commit the actions to memory. Not only will your work benefit from the added productivity, but it’s also an excellent mental workout for your brain that will help keep it active and healthy over time.
Trust me; once you get these keyboard shortcuts under your fingers, you’ll kick yourself for not learning to use them sooner.
36. Throw Away Your Phone! (Okay, Maybe Not) But Make It Easier with a Smartwatch
While most smartwatch marketing emphasizes how well the wearable device integrates with your smartphone and other elements of your digital life, there’s one key purposefulness I’ve yet to hear advertised. Not only will it tell you the time, but the best smartwatch will also save you time.
The less necessary it is to pull your phone out of your pocket, purse, or wherever it resides, the less tempted you will be to reinforce the mindlessness of doom-scrolling or whatever time-sucking activity competes for your attention once it’s in your hand.
Your smartwatch is fantastic at being a simple buffer between you and your phone. A good smartwatch can display quick messages and even manage calls without pulling out your phone. So less time on your screen, more time in your mind. And that’s usually the smarter way to spend your time.
Section Four: Mindful Productivity – Mindsets and Mindfulness
37. Stop Letting Resistance Steal Your Productivity! Fight Back with Mindfulness
The idea of productivity can be intimidating! When it’s brought up in a professional setting, you may feel like your boss is implying that you are either not working hard enough or smartly enough. This clashes with the concept of productivity itself, as feeling inadequate doesn’t foster an environment where people want to get things done.
That’s where the mindfulness fix makes the difference. The term productivity is long associated with industrial output. But, when mindfulness is introduced to productivity, it suddenly becomes personal and about the quality of output you produce for business or work and your overall human experience. That’s what mindful productivity is all about!
38. Resetting Your Headspace: The Mid-Day Mindful Meditation Brain Reboot
Pressing the pause button at least once during the core work portion of your day to give your brain a quick reboot can often be an unexpected meaningful change in how productive the rest of your day can become.
Your opportunities to do this often depend on your work environment’s nature. But, even if it’s only for a few minutes during your lunch break, finding somewhere to get away from all the distractions for even a five or ten-minute meditation to reboot your brain will do wonders for your productivity, focus, and your overall mental health.
Mindful Productivity BONUS VIDEO #3
Master THESE 4 Most Power Mindsets | Transform Your Life
Links to the content referenced in this video
Mindsets: What They Are and Why They Matter by Gary Klein, Ph.D., Psychology Today
Joy vs Happiness: 11 Important Differences Between Each by Sarah Kristenson, HappierHuman.com
39. Mindsets and Mindfulness: Part I – Cultivating a Growth Mindset
The growth mindset is about embracing challenges, finding worth in effort over the outcome, and viewing setbacks as learning opportunities rather than defeat. To truly hone this mindset means being mindful of your thoughts and emotions while surrounding yourself with positivity from supportive people who encourage us toward success – even during our most challenging moments!
Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., and author of the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success offers detailed insight into the differences and contrast between the Fixed Mindset and the Growth Mindset.
40. Mindsets and Mindfulness: Part II – Cultivating a Focus Mindset
Your thoughts, emotions, and environment shape your decisions – but what if you could stay present and mindful of this? That’s where the Focus Mindset comes in.
The Focus Mindset helps you to recognize how these elements interact so that instead of following every passing thought or impulse, you can consciously choose which actions will achieve balance within the present moment.
With this focused awareness, you can recognize what keeps derailing your progress so that more conscious choices are made in pursuit of successful productivity and work-life balance!
41. Mindsets and Mindfulness: Part III – Cultivating a Productive Mindset
The Productive Mindset is not about push, push, push, and it’s not about overwhelming yourself with frantic and mismatched multitasking. Instead, the Productive Mindset is about helping your ability to achieve flow and flow states as you perform your tasks and work.
Mindful productivity inherently nurtures the cultivation of the Productive Mindset. The power of this mindset is not just about having clarity of what needs to be done – it also means being disciplined and focused enough to take persistent action that aligns with those goals.
42. Mindsets and Mindfulness: Part IV – Cultivating a Joyful Mindset
Mindfulness lifts you above the world’s chaos and allows your mind to be focused on the present moment. The hours of focused work you perform, whether for a significant business project or the personal tasks you perform every day, should bring you joy.
Joy is profoundly different than happiness, and the Joyful Mindset is one of the most powerful tools for pushing back against negative thoughts and emotions. Your mindfulness practices and meditation allow you to reflect on your own thoughts and emotions with more profound personal and intimate meaning, which opens you to joy.
43. The Secret Sauce for Maintaining Momentum and Mental Health
How much intentional focus can your mind handle? How many hours is your brain fully present and aware? The body is a machine of the mind, and the brain is its conductor. The body can continue performing basic motor skills and tasks long after the mind and brain have checked out.
Mindful productivity relies on being mindful of when your mind and brain are telling you it’s time to quit for the day. Mindfulness is not sustainable when your mind is tired. To maintain productive momentum in your work, balance your thoughts and emotions, and preserve your mental health, you must rest. If you want to dream, you must sleep.
Sleep is the secret sauce to maintaining your momentum and mental health. Being mindful of being consistent in your sleep cycles becomes one of the most straightforward and powerful productivity strategies to leverage.
44. Mindfulness and Exercise: When You Feel Better, You Focus Better
Mindfulness and mindful productivity rely on nurturing your trifecta: your body, mind, and spirit. Exercise doesn’t just benefit your body, but it serves your trifecta in equal parts. Whether it’s high-intensity training, yoga, stretching, or even meditation, you provide your body, mind, and spirit with the fuel necessary to boost your focus, mental stamina, and overall health.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that carving out time to exercise often feels like an annoying disruption that can be pretty easy for me to blow off, especially if I’m in the middle of a flow or GROOVE. But, when you begin to understand your natural rhythm of high-energy and low-energy focus cycles, allocating time into your schedule for exercise becomes much more manageable.
I consider exercise as a low-energy task, which seems counter-intuitive. But I view high-energy cycles as being focus oriented. So I tend to fall into a low-energy cycle around 2:00 pm any day. And that’s when I do an hour-long workout, a 15-minute stretching session, and a 15-minute cool-down.
Without fail, following those 90 minutes of physical activity, my mind is refreshed, and I’m always back into a high-energy focus cycle and ready to get back into the game. Honestly, I’ve never finished a workout and thought for even a moment, “Wow, I wish I didn’t work out today.”
45. Overpowering Overwhelm: Mindfulness Meditation is Your Very Own Personal Super Friend!
The villain sabotaging your work and killing your productivity is neither procrastination nor old man Withers. Instead, pulling off the mask, you’ll find out it’s… OVERWHELM! And it would’ve gotten away with it if it wasn’t for your meddling mindfulness and meditation!
When you meditate, you practice mindfulness to quiet the mind, calm your thoughts, balance your emotions, and be in the present. Through ongoing meditation, you develop the skills to calm your thoughts and emotions during overwhelming moments. That’s what distinguishes mindful productivity from your standard run-of-the-mill productivity.
46. Mindfulness and Habits: Unglue Those Bad Ones and Super-Stick the Good!
Ancient wisdom of mindfulness teaches you that the thing that breaks a bad habit is replacing it with a good habit. But how do you go about doing this? Your unhealthy habits develop over time, as do those which are better for your health.
Your mindfulness practices allow you to calm your mind and observe the patterns of your thoughts and emotions that trigger unhealthy habit activity. You can then break the habit pattern and consciously take healthy action instead. Your meditation is a tool for unsticking a bad habit and getting a good habit to stick.
47. Cut Yourself Some Slack: Forgiveness is Key for Self-Growth
Taking time to be kind and forgiving to yourself is an essential part of living mindfully. Practicing self-compassion allows you to manage your emotions, thoughts, and behavior healthier, ultimately leading to well-being.
In addition, when life feels overwhelming, it can be especially beneficial for your mental health if you actively make space for presence, allowing all other distractions to melt away so that you can focus on what matters most: looking after yourself!
48. This Ain’t No Picnic: Mastering Your Practice of Self-Discipline
The second most cringe-inducing topic for many people, just under the word “productivity,” is “self-discipline.” Again, I understand, and I agree. Most disciplines are challenging, especially at first. But discipline is how good habits replace bad habits and how you build a positive trajectory and momentum toward living a meaningful and purposeful life.
It’s often stated that “If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.” Meh. Maybe or maybe not. There’s an assumption that living mindlessly must be easy because so many people do it. But, as a mindful observer, mindlessness is a much more punishing and unnecessarily tormenting lifestyle to endure.
Practicing mindfulness is easy; meditation is easy; you tend to perceive them as complex or challenging because they remain unfamiliar and intimidating until you engage in the practices.
Self-discipline and grit are essential traits you must foster within yourself to truly thrive. To keep striving even when the odds seem insurmountable requires courage, strength of character, and confidence in your abilities.
Mindfulness is a powerful tool that enables you to tune into your inner wisdom – so you can trust yourself enough not only to persevere but also to have faith in achieving success no matter what obstacles lie ahead. With this practice comes true self-discipline, an indomitable spirit with which nothing will stand between you and your goals!
Section Five: Mindful Productivity – Being Your Most Awesome Self:
49. You’ve Got This! You Chose This Path, So Why Not Embrace It?
There’s more than letting the days go by and letting the water hold you up to how you got here. You got to where you are at this current moment through a series of personal choices, both conscious thought and subconscious, resulting in positive, neutral, or negative consequences.
That is NOT to say that the randomness of luck and circumstances that influence your experience in life is of your choosing. Instead, it’s how you’ve chosen and continue to choose to act and react to them that has brought you over time to where you are in this moment.
Mindfulness principles embrace the awareness of your journey and the recognition that your emotional and mental states are within the realm of personal balance and control. Your self-awareness and conscious thought allow you to stay relaxed, reduce stress, and successfully navigate stressful situations as they arise.
Practicing mindfulness meditation helps train your brain and mind to balance the ebb and flow of your mental and emotional states. Mindfulness meditation training helps you manage stress and stay focused through self-awareness and being consciously present. In addition, mindfulness meditation teaches you to recover elusive positive emotions that otherwise might be lost among your distractions of stress and emotions.
To achieve meaningful and sustainable success, it’s crucial to take proactive steps and honor the journey that got you there – seeing how specific decisions have shaped where you currently stand and enabling you to be grateful for your challenging work.
50. Defy the Self-Sabotage to Unlock Your Inner Strength
One of my closest friends and bandmates who passed a few years ago would occasionally shrug his shoulders and remark on life with the comment, “some days you’re the windshield; other days you’re the bug.”
The more you allow yourself to calmly accept your good and bad moments, knowing that you have the strength to persevere, the humility to respect, and the awareness to appreciate, you succeed.
Controlling your tendencies to be overly reactive, to stay calm and consciously present is compassionate self-care. Mindfulness meditation is essential to your practice of self-care and all too often neglected due to the anxiety, stress and busyness we impose on ourselves.
Like any of us, my emotions will get the best of me sometimes, and I am admittedly my own worst critic. I’m an introvert, intuitive through feeling, and prone to stress and anxiety as a default state. However, I embrace all these aspects of my personality, except for that last one. As a result, I can approach my work and life with mindful productivity through mindfulness training and meditation practice.
The world is a rough enough place as it is. So, avoid wasting any of your mental energy by beating yourself up. No one can be perfect all the time – accept these moments as part of your journey where understanding and kindness towards yourself are essential.
51. Life Is Too Short to Be Taken Seriously!
This last one is a pillar of wisdom that my wife brought to light in my world and will gently remind me of when I let things get the better of me and find myself having slipped into the quicksand of overwhelm. As I struggle and fight it with all my strength and resistance, she extends to me this simple nugget of loving insight as the branch that pulls me out every time.
We all know that life is short. But do we live as we believe it? Too often, we take ourselves and our lives too seriously. We get wrapped up in trivial things and lose sight of what’s essential. But life is meant to be enjoyed! We only get one chance at it, so why not make the most of it?
What is Mindful Productivity?
Mindful productivity is an element of life design that combines mindfulness training with doing and getting done more of what matters most in your life.
By combining mindfulness training with strategies that improve our productivity, such as defining your priorities and organizing your resources with an awareness of the value of your time, you can better focus on achieving more of what matters most in your professional and personal lives.
By becoming conscious of how you think, feel, and act daily, you begin to see patterns in your behaviors hindering your productivity. This can be a foundation for setting new habits and goals that will aid your productivity, allowing you to move forward with more profound meaning and purpose, unlocking your true potential at work, home, and beyond.
Final Thoughts on My 51 Best Mindful Productivity Tips
You can change your relationship to time and design a life that feels good, even amidst your current circumstances. Creating priorities and being mindful of how you spend your time can help you live a more productive, joyful life.
Aligning your actions with your values is essential for sustainable productivity because it allows you to focus your attention on work that is both meaningful and energizing instead of draining. When you know what matters most, you can budget your time accordingly without guilt or stress.
If you want to learn more about how to do this, join my free OYDLpro Insiders Group now. You’ll get access to exclusive content and resources that will help you become more productive. Thank you for reading, and I hope this was helpful!
Frequently Asked Questions About Mindful Productivity
How does mindfulness help productivity?
Mindfulness is an effective tool to help stay focused, motivated and productive. Learning to stay in tune with your thoughts and emotions enables you to stay present, balanced, and on task during the day.
Mindfulness allows you to become aware of patterns that may hinder your productivity and modify them through conscious thought and effort. Mindfulness also supports a healthy work-life balance; it encourages you to pause, to appreciate your successes and daily accomplishments, and stay connected with co-workers and family members.
By learning mindful practices, such as meditation, deep breathing, or even taking regular stretch breaks, you set yourself up for success and develop healthy habits that lead to greater productivity overall.
Mindfulness meditation is known for benefiting what’s known as divergent thinking.
I recommend this fascinating article from the Harvard Business Review discussing how divergent thinking, which is key to problem-solving and decision-making, benefits from mindful meditation practices.
How does meditation promote productivity?
Meditation is a fantastic way to reduce stress, avoid burnout, and improve productivity. Taking even five or ten minutes several times throughout the day to clear your head can help you stay focused and productive for extended periods.
When done consistently, meditation helps reduce the clutter of everyday life so you can concentrate on what needs to be completed at home and at work. Meditation sharpens your focus, elevates your energy, reduces mental fog, and promotes clarity and calm to help you achieve more of what matters most.
Additionally, regular meditation develops better decision-making processes, more efficient use of time, increased creativity, enhanced communication skills, and improved physical and mental health.
If you’re interested in the scientific and clinical research on how meditation benefits your brain, particularly focus on the prefrontal cortex. While outside the scope of these tips for meditation, be aware that the prefrontal cortex is the region of your brain that is heavily involved in planning, decision-making, short-term memory, and much more.
If you’re interested in learning more about mediation’s influence on the prefrontal cortex and your brain, I recommend reading this excellent article from Scientific American.
How do you define mindfulness?
Simply put, mindfulness is being in the present moment by filtering distractions and focusing on your engagement and appreciation of your efforts. It’s an intentional practice of paying attention to your thoughts, feelings, words, and actions to cultivate awareness.
Your mind wanders as you go about your daily life; mindfulness encourages you to be aware of these distractions and practice bringing your focus back to the present moment and on the activity or task.
With practice, mindfulness helps you break away from habitual patterns and think more critically about how you feel and act without judgment or attachment.
Mindfulness empowers you with greater self-awareness to respond better to life’s curveballs.
I hope these best practices, tips, and mindful productivity strategies help make a positive difference in your life. I’m always happy to answer any questions, and I appreciate your comments and feedback. If you’re interested in learning about who I am and my personal story, I invite you to check out My Introvert Journey.
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