Leonard Ng

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 to Do Before You Burn Out

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Image by typographyimages.
Image by typographyimages.

You know what it feels like. You dread going to work. You feel tired all the time. You get upset about little things like people not saying hello to you in the morning.

You’re far too busy and overloaded to get the job done right, so you’re just phoning it in. You find it hard to focus. You stare into space a lot.

You used to love your job and you worked very hard at it. Now it seems like work never ends. It’s all-consuming. You no longer have time for former friendships and hobbies.

You feel like you no longer care about anything anymore.

All you want to do is escape.

And you hate it.

Welcome to Burnout

What is burnout, anyway? Here’s my definition:

Burnout is what happens after a period when your energy expenditure has been consistently greater than your ability to recover, draining your reserves to the point where you have no energy left.

That is, you’ve been draining the tank for too long and now you’re running on empty.

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5 Pain-Free Ways to Use Social Media Less

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Social Media
Image by Wilfred Iven.
The Language of Addiction

I Quit Social Media And This Is What Happened, scream the clickbaity headlines.

Social media cleanse. Social media fast. Social media detox.

Just look at the language we use when we talk about the issue. Cleanse. Fast. Detox. Quit. As though social media is somehow filling our lives up with digital toxins.

That view isn’t entirely wrong.

The Dark Side of Social Media

Social media sucks people in and keeps them there, resulting in hours and hours of time lost. In fact, social media sites are deliberately designed to be addictive: companies like Facebook want you to spend as much time on their sites as possible, so that they can sell you targeted ads.

A lot of the stuff being shared around is also just plain bad for us. Often it makes us angry, self-righteous, and judgemental. These qualities do not make us better people. They certainly don’t make for a better world.

Thus, if we’re not careful our precious mental space can get filled with an avalanche of clutter all day long.

And that can make it hard for us to think clearly, creatively, or wisely.

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