Valuing a task mindfully

Often times we tend to categorize our tasks into priorities. This is good for attending to more important things first as an organization skill towards productivity. But somehow we also tend to categorize tasks mentally into priorities for their value. While this is great to choose what should and should not be pursued it can be detrimental to think of one task as less important than the other while you are in the act of executing it.

For example, if I know sketching daily is good for me and I have ascertained its value in my practice, then its important that I donot see it as less important than the other tasks in my day, like executing an illustration or a piece of animation.

While executing a task it helps to keep a frame of mind to do it to your best ability, mentally and physically. To do it lovingly. To not look at the task as lower or the time spent on it as imparting lesser value. To not judge it. To isolate yourself from everything else but the task. Making it a tool to meditate on.

I’ve felt and seen around me that when one cares deeply for the smallest tasks that one is to do, one is able to maximize the efficiency not only of that task but also the other tasks around them. The doing tunes the brain and sharpens it for focus and the same brain is thus more capable of doing other things.

Mind and actions

We commend some people for their achievements but we cannot agree with the entirety of their personality which has made them achieve them in the first place.

Actions and the mind are inter-twined. It is easy, from the outset, to separate the achiever from her/his achievement and diss the one and praise the other. It is easy to selectively say we desire a certain achievement and not consider what it takes to achieve it. Achievements are just by-products of a lived experience. When we cannot relate to the actions of a person that led to a particular result we are grasping at our own version of the achievement, which can be a dangerous thing to correlate with.

A man used to walking the highway will have a very different frame of mind than the one walking the woods and each‘s mental capability towards a future challenge would differ entirely even though they reach the same destination through their routes.

Next link in the chain

A small note on Anxiety that I’ve devised for myself to get over it in the moment when I feel it taking control over me

Think only of the next link in the chain and donot jump forward

When the mind is jumping from possibility to possibility there are many demons that we create in our mind that can paralyze us and disallow that one thing that is needed for us to get through it, ‘doing’. Doing our work, taking our steps to confront the problems, moving in the direction we desire, is the antidote to anxiety (in most cases). And while we are at it, do that next step mindfully, by being in the present and forgetting the larger outcomes. Doing it with love as Gibran would put it.

Some steps that I take when my mind is over-burdened

1. Write down a page or two describing the problem and what I’m feeling mostly in auto-writing style.

2. Meditate - Even if your mind is not able to focus, it helps physically to breath consistently

3. Engage deeply in some other task, I prefer gardening or cleaning the house

4. Listen to music singularly without multi-tasking (or if you play an instrument, even better)

5. Go out to do a chore - Being part of a different environment with a task is refreshing and allows for more perspective

In a larger perspective, going one step at a time towards any goal is the most efficient way to accomplish it. I hope to write more on that later