Not Taking But Gaining Time

Investing Our Time To Get More Of It

December 10th, 2017

Taking an extra 5-20 minutes in a already packed day, can seem anything but relaxing. Thus, a lack of time is often cited as a common barrier for beginning a meditation practice.

Though, ironically, meditation practitioners often remark that it doesn’t take time from them, rather it gives them more time throughout their day.

Without some magical reversing of the clock, how could this be?

As stated before, practicing meditation is learning how to perform our actions with full mental presence; it’s mentally devoting ourselves to the activity we are physically doing.

When we bring a strong quality of vigilance, thoughtfulness and awareness to our current doing, we are able to do our actions with more attention, clarity and focus, which can lead to both increased proficiency, and efficiency. Also, when we are fully engaged in our work, doing such with more care, we commit less mistakes that usually would’ve consumed more of our time for reparation.

Further, think of the times, where daily tasks could’ve been finished, but instead feeds were scrolled through or current events were read. While we will never be free of distractions, we can learn to disengage from them more often, and have more discernment over where we put our mental energy, with the increased awareness and focus, which meditation allows for.

In summary, when we do more proficient and efficient work, make less errors, and also learn to work in the midst of distractions – all things, which may result from a consistent mindfulness practice – we are given back more time in our day from the small investment we made.