Learning Mindfulness IRL
The morning I was scheduled to take the GRE I did jumping jacks and breath of fire, gathered water and mandarins, then sat down and clicked the link in my registration email.
It seemed Safari wouldn’t support the test, so I switched to Firefox and began clicking through the setup instructions — a Pandora’s box of installation prompts, support chats and hypnotically circumambulating loading icons. My 9:50 am start time came and went, and I couldn’t figure out how to start the test. This went on for twenty, thirty, then forty minutes; I didn’t know if my testing time had started at the scheduled start time, and I was seriously stressing out.
Finally, at the peak of my agitation, a message box popped up from Edgardo C., introducing himself as my proctor. Then my cursor stopped responding to my direction. Browsers and app icons began disappearing from my screen. Edgardo was controlling my computer.
Whatever I was stressing about, whatever happened with this test, even if my time had already started and I had to re-take the test another day, it was out of my control.
As Edgardo controlled my computer, I thought about faith and about mindfulness. What if there were some ultimate force, some ethereal proctor governing our screen time, closing the browsers distracting us from our core purpose, ensuring that we’re focused single-pointedly only on the task immediately at hand, and monitoring our attention to it.
What if we trusted that if we just showed up and offered our full effort that we would be guided through obstacles to do our best work?
What if we treated every single task as though a proctor were watching, made it a point to remember their name and thank them for their support?
What if that presence were active throughout our days, not just on our screens?
Mindfulness is the state of choosing to believe that our attention and actions benefits from being monitored, and the practice of doing the monitoring for ourselves — of serving as our own proctor.
Here are a few tips courtesy of Edgardo:
Show up to your computer clear about and devoted to the task at hand.
Open only one program or browser dedicated to that task; close all others.
Eliminate distractions in your work environment.
Put your phone on Do Not Disturb, or turn it off.
Read and follow instructions.
Ask yourself what tools or knowledge you have to apply to the task at hand, and then apply them.
Give yourself appropriate breaks.
Relax and go with the flow of your work.