Increase Your Productivity by Mastering Singular Focus and Mindful Meditation | Emma Seppälä

In order to be successful, people often think they have to constantly be achieving, constantly going from one thing to the next, crossing things off of their to-do list. But as a consequence, they're not in the present moment. And their productivity would be so much greater if they stayed present, as well as their performance on their tasks. What's more is that their relationships would improve drastically.

So what research on charisma shows is that highly charismatic people are people who are able to be so fully present with other people, and that's what leads to that incredible connection and that influence that they have. Research shows that our mind actually wanders about 50 percent of the time, and research also shows that when our mind is wandering, we are never as happy as when our mind is in the present moment. So if your mind is in the future, worrying about something that's going to happen, or in the past because you're regretting something or angry at somebody, you are more likely to feel more negative emotions. But when you're in the present moment, even if you are doing a task you don't particularly like, you'll actually feel happier.

But also, what we know is that you'll be able to be more productive when you're in that state because you're going to naturally be focused. One way that you can start to bring your mind back into the present, given its tendency to wander, is through breathing exercises and relaxation exercises. If you relax your body, your mind will naturally start to settle down, and breathing is a very effective way to do that very quickly.

So meditation practices can really help you observe your mind, become aware of its tendencies, for example, its tendency to wander, and help you through that awareness and shift your attention back into the present moment. Meditation is an exercise in which you are engaging fully with the present moment. So it's a fantastic way to train your mind to be more present with what is going on right now.

We currently are in a time and an age where multitasking has just become the norm. We're constantly being pinged by our devices; we're constantly receiving emails, and all day long it's as if we are being interrupted from our stream of thought. What's more is that we interrupt ourselves. So we'll interrupt what we are doing to check our phones, for example.

So multitasking, however, is very draining on our system. Our attention is constantly in demand. It's as if you're working on 12 different things at the same time; you can't give your all to one of those things. With meditation practices, you can really train your mind to be more present and help you to stay on task with what is going on.

Research shows that people who meditate can increase their attention span. In fact, in some research studies, we use a task called The Attentional Blink Task, in which you show people a number of different images in very fast sequence, and usually, we would only pick up every fourth image. We don't actually see the others; that's why we call it the attentional blink.

Well, research has shown that after meditation retreats, people tend to not show that attentional blink or to show it less, which is very interesting. It means that if we calm our mind, we're somehow able to pick up things better in our environment, which also makes sense in terms of how divided our mind is with regards to multitasking and so forth. When our mind is very settled, then we're able to literally see more things, register more.