How to work and not to forget while living

In this article, Jenny Dearborn, senior vice president and director of training at SAP, will tell you how to stay efficient, less straining your brain.

If you are like me, you probably often do several things at the same time, knowing that this does not bring you much benefit. We (the whole society) are nervous a lot, but we do little, thereby causing damage to our thinking and productivity .
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Most of us believe that this is a modern standard of living - we are used to combining several responsibilities. The fact that we have taken (albeit reluctantly) our attitude towards things prevents companies from taking the measures necessary to keep employees in a state of high productivity and concentration .

A workplace where everything is on the verge, where a nervous, tense situation cannot be called a workplace of the future. Managers have to make changes to the current work culture, developing a cult of attentiveness and empathy. This is precisely the concept that is called “mindfulness” in the working circles (that is, self-awareness or non-judgmental contemplation of the current moment). This technique involves the abandonment of hustle and bustle, and a full concentration on what has the highest priority.

Research has shown that self-awareness (mindfulness) in work can increase employee efficiency, engagement, ingenuity, and innovative potential and lead to tangible business results. Below are three tips on how to increase self-awareness in order to cope faster and less nervous.

1. Engage in mundane, everyday affairs.

Research in the field of neuroscience shows that even a small amount of self-awareness training can, to a certain extent, reduce stress and increase employee interaction and team cohesion . In other words, attentiveness, a feeling of well-being, happiness, and the ability to empathize are skills that complement executive behavior, this can be learned, this can be practiced and succeeded.

There is one more thing: you do not need to go to yoga or spend a lot of money to become self-conscious. You can start with a simple one - pay more attention to one, at first glance, routine morning work before other pressing problems take their toll, such as brushing your teeth or making breakfast. Listen to the sounds that accompany your movements, and watch every action you take.

Another good moment to practice self-awareness is waiting. If you arrived at the meeting ahead of time, let your mind wander for a while, and then gently return to reality.

Neuroscientists are still trying to figure out exactly how this is happening, but numerous scientific studies, including those conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison), prove that the “restarting” of the brain is very useful for the body.

Having clarified your mind and letting it rest, you will increase your efficiency, necessary for holding a meeting, and you will achieve much more.

2. Inspire your colleagues for self-awareness

You should not be self-aware alone. Once you develop this skill, see how factors related to self-awareness, such as quick decision making or good social relationships and working atmosphere, can affect the well-being of your organization, and share your thoughts and experiences with team members.

You will not be the first to try to introduce the idea of ​​corporate self-awareness. Many Silicon Valley companies have discovered the value of this skill. Google, for example, offers relevant professional short-term courses conducted by the ideological inspirer of self-awareness training in the company - Chade-Man Tang "Meng", who joined Google in 2000 as a software developer and now performs perhaps the most pleasant duties of a fun guy .

As Mang told during the annual TED (technology, entertainment, design) conferences, he set off on a journey to find the happiest man on earth and to recreate this experience. One Matthew Ricard, a French academic who became a Buddhist monk, allowed me to measure my brain activity in order to determine the level of my happiness. He was meditating, reflecting on compassion, while his level of happiness was measured and reflected in the diagrams. Inspired by Ricard, Meng began to teach corporate executives to use compassion in meditation and created a circle of students, founding the whole institute Search Inside Yourself.

Corporations, large and small, use his teachings in their own interests, and leaders around the world, becoming teachers themselves, share a positive and modern way of thinking with their colleagues:

• The award-winning mindfulness program, developed by Genentech Inc., has increased its 800 IT employees from the lowest to the second level throughout the company, in just four years. In addition, 88% of participants in the program reported that they began to feel the significance of their work and to get more pleasure from it.
• Intel reports that its nine-week program to increase self-awareness led to tangible changes, embodied in the sense of happiness and well-being of employees, increasing their intelligence, creativity, ability to generate new ideas, ability to focus, and also to reduce the level of tension in the team.
• At SAP, the training was conducted by Peter Bostelmann - Director of Mindfulness Programs. In order not to distract people to the concept of "self-awareness", he called his course "Learning mindfulness", and received many good reviews from companies around the world. One C-level manager said that the program significantly changed his sense of happiness, and also increased his personal and professional performance.

3. Practice Conscious Behavior

No matter where you learn self-awareness, corporate training, yoga, or at your desk — practice is the best way to succeed. Mindfulness and self-awareness, like muscles - the more you train, the stronger they become.

It is also good that you do not need to be an expert in self-awareness, or spend years on meditation to see the results. In recent studies, volunteers spent only seven hours studying the Buddhist practice of compassion meditation. After a daily half-hour listening to online instructions aimed at training feelings of concern for others for two weeks, participants demonstrated significant progress in altruistic behavior.

This is an upward spiral of self-realization. In the world of constant information overload, the top is the right direction for us and for our companies. We must get rid of mental chaos and become more productive.

PS We recommend another article on the topic - How to choose the key aspects of life in order to invest time and energy in them.

Translated by Vyacheslav Davidenko, founder of MBA Consult