Leonard Ng

Horror: The Ultimate Procrastination Inducer

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Image by Krzysztof Krupa.
Image by Krzysztof Krupa.

Have you ever felt that you simply can’t get started or simply can’t focus your attention on a specific task?

It’s like the task has a force field around it, a sort of deflector shield that keeps moving you away on a tangent to go start doing something else.

This task could be anything.

It could be writing a report, preparing a lesson, filing your taxes, crafting an ad, going for a run, killing a roach, reading a textbook, sending an email, making a phone call, filling out a form, cleaning your kitchen.

It could be a big project that feels too large to tackle, or a small project that requires a significant mental shift from what you’ve been doing.

Whatever it is, it feels like the task is beyond you. You procrastinate like mad. It escapes you, it deflects you, you’re completely paralysed when you try to deal with it, your brain somehow seems to shut down and stop working.

And whenever you try to get it done you always seem to wind up doing something completely unrelated instead.

This happens over and over again, becoming increasingly traumatic each time.

I have a name for this state of affairs.

I call it horror.

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How to Be Mindful When You Don’t Have Time

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hawk
Image by Adrian Kirby.

Meditation is good, but you don’t practise it.

You’re too busy, or you have too many things to do, or you’re always in a hurry to get somewhere, or you’re too tired at the end of the day.

And even when you do sit down to try and empty your mind, you feel a massive sense of guilt about everything else you ought to be doing instead.

(Oddly enough, sitting still for 15 minutes feels like a giant waste of time, while 15 minutes spent on social media doesn’t…

…because one forces you to pay painful attention to the messed-up inside of your head, while the other lets you take refuge in comforting distraction.)

Whatever your reasons, it all boils down to one thing:

You don’t have time.

So here are three ways to remain mindful even when you’re on the go — quick check-ins that will bring you back to the present moment and allow you to centre yourself before your next activity.

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What Kind of Goals Are You Setting?

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Sunrise road
Image by Karsten Würth.

It’s the start of a new year now, when many of us lay out our personal goals and aspirations for our planet’s next revolution around the sun. This is the season when we make our resolutions: statements of purpose for the changes we want to bring about in our lives.

Some goals, however, will make a much bigger difference to your life than others. So today I’m going to talk about the kinds of resolutions that will allow you to hold your head high by the time the year is done.

Let’s get to it.

Two Kinds of Goals

The goals people set themselves tend to fall into two categories: consumption-based goals and achievement-based goals.

The two differ in what they require from you. The first chiefly requires money. The second chiefly requires effort.

Let’s look at them both in greater detail.

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Meditation for People Who Can’t Empty Their Minds

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snail
Image by Aaron Burden.

People talk to me about meditation a lot.

But what they say generally falls into two categories. The first is a question: How do you do it? And the second is a statement: I can’t do it.

Today I’m going to address both of these concerns. But first let’s consider a couple of more fundamental questions:

Why meditate at all?

And what exactly is meditation, anyway?

Why Meditate?

You’ve probably heard about some of the benefits meditation brings: inner peace, deeper calm, fewer worries, reduced stress.

All of these benefits are real. Meditation stabilizes my emotions and clarifies my thoughts. It helps to make me a calmer, happier, wiser person, and my life is better as a result of it.

But to me the greatest advantage of meditation is probably the one least talked about:

Meditation makes you significantly more effective at kicking ass.

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Don’t Force Things, Flow with Them (Part 3)

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Surfer at Sunrise
Image by Frank McKenna.
A Rhythmic World

Life on our planet is all about rhythm.

Everything oscillates: inbreath and outbreath, high tide and low tide, day and night, waking and sleeping.

Our hearts beat in rhythm. That’s what keeps us alive.

Rhythm is made up of rise and fall, activity and rest. Often we think only in terms of activity, measuring our days by what we’ve done; but rest is what shapes our actions and makes them meaningful, just as the pauses between notes allow us to make sense of music.

The same applies to our own energy.

Four Kinds of Energy

Energy is about much more than physical tiredness. Generally speaking we have four kinds of energy: physical energy, emotional energy, mental energy, and willpower.

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