To find your focus, own your attention, and function at your peak, invest 12 minutes a day in contemplative practices.
For beneficial effects on attention, mood, and stress, particularly in high-stress groups, practice meditation for about 12 to 15 minutes, four to five days a week.
To train your attention, focus on breath-related sensations with specificity, and when your mind wanders, engage meta-awareness to notice it and redirect your focus back to the breath.
Engage in ‘mental push-ups’ by focusing on a target object, noticing when your mind wanders, and then redirecting your attention back, which helps train all three attention systems.
Round out your contemplative practice by incorporating loving-kindness (rebranded as connection) to extend care, concern, and interest towards yourself and others, which resonates with ethical and professional mindsets.
If you practice meditation for more than the minimum recommended 12-15 minutes, you will benefit more, experiencing a different level of impact and a better quality of mind.
To counteract biases like confirmation bias, cultivate meta-awareness to perceive the raw data of an experience, ensuring that your pre-existing stories do not cloud your ability to see what is actually happening.
Cultivate awareness of your current mental state, such as being reactive, fatigued, or irritable, to negotiate what is best to do next, rather than pretending everything is great.
Conceptualize mental training, like cultivating presence of mind and non-judgmental awareness, as an active, effortful process that requires consistent practice to maintain its benefits, similar to physical strength.
To break out of cognitive biases and see reality more clearly, practice de-centering, which involves defusing yourself from the stories you hold and taking a bird’s eye view of your experience, often cultivated through open monitoring meditation.
Deliberately allow your mind to wander freely and simulate without a specific goal, as this can lift positive mood, aid visioning, problem-solving, deliberation, and action planning.
To combat the crisis of attention and prevent mental exhaustion, intentionally create ‘white space’ in your daily life by refraining from always engaging with technology during downtime, allowing your brain to rest and wander freely.
When allowing your mind to wander and you find yourself stuck in ruminative loops, worry, or catastrophizing, use meditation tools like an open monitoring orientation to unhook yourself and reset, allowing for a freer mental flow.
To preserve your attentional resources, avoid task switching between multiple high-demand tasks simultaneously, as this toggling depletes mental energy and reduces efficiency.
Protect your focus by turning off social media notifications and, when engaged in a task, treat it as your primary focus, consciously returning to it after any necessary, brief, goal-oriented diversions, avoiding unrelated distractions.
If you must task switch, be aware of the costs—you will be slower, more prone to errors, and exhausted—and communicate this, for example, by telling someone you need a moment to reorient before fully engaging.
To learn how to pay attention to your attention and practice focused awareness, access the ‘Find Your Flashlight’ meditation available on the 10% Happier app.