Want to seriously increase your productivity and success in only 15 minutes per day?

I’ve started meditating again. I used to do it as a daily practice several years ago but I got busier and stopped making time for it. It’s crazy that being busy makes you stop meditating when in actual fact it’s the time you need it most! Meditation is guaranteed to increase your productivity and success and there are lots of studies that prove this.

Anyway, that’s all changed this year, and I’m guessing I’m not the only one who has rediscovered the joys of meditation during lockdown. 

I realised that I was getting bogged down in detail and as a result, I was missing the big picture. I decided to make meditation part of my daily routine again. Several years ago, a great friend suggested an app called Insight Timer and I’ve been using it on and of ever since. The app makes it easier to stick to my goal. I urge you to check it out, it’s amazing and FREE and you can find out more about it HERE.

With the help of the app, and a newfound commitment, I’ve once again made meditating a part of my day: morning, lunchtime, bedtime. It’s not the only ‘time-out’ stuff I do, but I’ll talk more about the other things in another post. I also don’t spend a lot of time doing it, so don’t be put off by the fact I fit three periods of meditation into my day. The lunchtime one is very short, sometimes only one or two minutes, and the bedtime one can be similarly short.

Do you ever find yourself hunched over your desk in darkness because you didn’t notice day turning into night?

I’ve been there, in that situation, on more than one occasion. I’ve been blinded by the desire to complete what I’m working on. I’ve gradually sunk lower and lower towards the desk, my eyes have become blinkered, and my brain has become fixated. It’s NOT the way to achieve GREATNESS!

It’s interesting how the mind works. We think that pushing through and just getting s**t done at any cost is the way to get the success we want. The thing is your brain needs nourishment. YOU need nourishment, especially if you want to perform at your best. Peak performance can only be achieved if you honour your mind and body. Daylight, Water, Food/Nutrients – you are the same as the plants in those fields; you need all three to live.

I’ve got great news though! One of the best parts about being human is that we get to do more than simply live! We get to follow our dreams.

Where dreams go, reality flows

Have you lost sight of your dreams? If so, chances are that you aren’t taking enough breaks to nourish your mind. If you aren’t a fan of meditating, then I’d like to encourage you to look at something I call Creativity Breaks as an alternative. You can still use the Insight Timer app, just set it to the timer option. You can even silence it if you don’t want to use one of the pre-installed sounds.

The idea is to stop thinking about what you’re doing and instead think about where you’re going. What are your dreams? How would you be living your perfect life if you could create it however you choose? 

Another tip is to get some fresh air if you can. A 15-minute walk around the block will do you far more good than you might realise. Look at the birds, listen to the sounds around you, be in the moment.

You don’t have to be out in nature, you can be in the city and still find a few moments of peace.

Do this every day, even if it’s just for those precious 15 minutes and you’ll be amazed at how much your productivity increases. After all, that was the basis of this post, wasn’t it? How breaks increase productivity. Personally, I’ve found that I now have way more energy throughout the day. I also have sparks of ideas that enable me to do an even better job of reaching my ideal clients and serving those I already work with. My ideas are flowing so freely I can hardly keep up with them!

I guess meditation and creativity breaks help me to stay fully in alignment with my goals. Everything feels different because of the meditation I’m doing. I feel different. 

Meditation helps you to be more resilient and better able to navigate life’s challenges and opportunities. An important skill in these difficult times. Thanks to the benefits of meditation, you will have a clearer idea of where you are going, and you’ll be able to confidently create the next part of your life map. There’s no denying that clarity of thought is extremely liberating!

I urge you to start making time for creativity breaks to seriously increase your productivity and success.

What if your fears are keeping you stuck and preventing you from switching off for those 15 minutes?

Fear is a funny thing. It’s there to keep you safe, but it can’t distinguish between real fear and imagined fear. 

If you’d like to try meditation or creativity breaks, but you don’t think you can do it, remember that it’s ok to let your mind wander. It’s ok if you struggle to stop the mental chatter. The biggest win is to start from where you are with what you’ve got, and not worry about whether you’re doing it ‘right’. There is no right, there is just doing.

If you’d like to read more about fear, setbacks and failures I wrote about that in my article: Your Setbacks Don’t Define You (Don’t Let Your Setbacks Count For Nothing), which you can find HERE​.

What next?

I’d love to know if you meditate too and if you’ve tried the Insight Timer app. If you’ve tried to meditate but can’t manage it for more than a second or two, let me know in the comments and I’ll share some of the tips I use to keep me going when my mind wanders (which happens a lot more than you might think…).