7 Ways to Incorporate Mindfulness at Work

By Glenn Seth, F3 Wellness Connections, LLC

Do you ever find your mind drifting while you’re plugging away at your desk? Do you ever have those moments during the day when you suddenly realize you don’t remember a word of what you just read? Do you wish you could manage your time better to get more done?

​Mindfulness during the workday can help you find your focus, be more productive and stay on track to advance your career and land that next promotion. Here are some time-tested techniques to improve your mindfulness while putting in a long day at the office. 

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1. Be present. This sounds obvious, but this is the most important key to mindfulness. If you aren’t at work with your entire mind, body and spirit, then your work will suffer.
2. Eliminate distractions. Take an honest assessment of those things that steal your attention during the day. Whether it’s social media notifications, online shopping or stressors with your family, reduce or eliminate those as much as possible.
3. Put your phone on silent and out of sight. This goes hand-in-hand with eliminating distractions, but that smartphone we all know and love can be the biggest mindfulness killer of all. When you silence it and put it away, you can be intentional about catching up with messages and calls instead of letting every notification break your concentration and waste your time.
4. Don’t rely too heavily on email. When possible, meet in person. Sure, email is great when distance is an issue and when small things need to be shared, but when it comes to larger discussions and decisions, get in a room with your colleagues. It’s much easier to stay focused when you are in-person, speaking with someone directly across a desk from you.
5. Relax. Maybe it’s playing soft music or having just that right aroma streaming from a scented wax warmer, but find some ways to relax while at work. No, we don’t mean curl up under your desk and doze off for the afternoon, but rather, do something to take a bit of the edge off of the tensions of the work day. Maybe it’s taking off your shoes at your desk, playing some smooth jazz or sipping a cup of hot tea. Just be sure you relax enough to focus but not so much that you daydream.
6. Be intentional. Make mindfulness a priority. Don’t let it be something that you hope will just happen. After all, if it happened naturally, we wouldn’t need to blog about it, would we?
7. Be healthy. Proper diet and exercise are the surest way to improve mindfulness at all hours of the day, both at work and on your own time.