How Can You Turn Work Into A Meditation?

Any time or place that you consider “impossible” for meditation is a time or place where you need meditation the most.

When you start a meditation practice, it feels easiest to meditate in a quiet room with soft music, incense burning, and gentle guidance from a teacher or video.

The deeper you get into your practice, the more you realize that you can meditate anywhere, and anytime.

Many meditators consider time spent doing things that they dislike, such as working, as an exception to meditation, particularly if they dislike their job or the task at hand.

Time spent working, or doing anything that you dislike, is actually the perfect time to meditate, and has the capacity to transform through meditation.

Here are 4 ways to turn work into meditation:

Meditate right before you start working, and don’t do anything in-between.

The goal of turning work into meditation is to blur the lines between your meditation practice and work so that they eventually become one. Meditate in your usual space or at your desk right before you start a task. Beforehand, decide on the task you’ll complete after meditating so that you can maintain the focus that you cultivate during your practice.

Observe any urges to look at your phone, make a cup of coffee, or do anything in-between meditating, and starting the task at hand.

Much like you do in meditation, watch your desire to engage in these distractions, and instead of letting them take you away from your focus, take a deep breath, and come back to the task you’ve intended to complete.

Break up your work into single tasks, and only do one thing at a time.

This is a productivity tip that many entrepreneurs preach, rightfully so.
Dharana is a Sanskrit word that means concentration on a single point.

Meditation teaches you to concentrate on the single point of your breath, and in doing so, teaches you to concentrate on the single point of the present.

When you want to get a task done, the fastest way to finish it is through single-pointed awareness on it. In modern times, it’s common to practice multi-pointed awareness, otherwise known as multitasking.

To want to finish the task of say, writing a proposal, and yet intermittently answering phone calls and texts, watching TV, and checking social media.

When you practice dharana in your work habits, you’ll be shocked to see how much you can get done in a single focused hour, instead of letting a task take 6 hours to complete because your awareness is scattered on many tasks.

Create a vortex

In my experience, the fastest way from A to B for professional tasks is to create a temporary vortex of concentration.

If you find yourself rationalizing your lack of focus by saying that you’re distracted by notifications, people, or other stimuli, it’s simply because you haven’t consciously cleared space for focus.

In order to do this, you must put your phone on Do Not Disturb. Turn off email notifications. Close all browser windows except for the ones that you need to complete the task.

Let anyone in your area (colleagues if you work in an office, roommates or spouses if you work at home) that you are working on something that requires full concentration.

To complete the vortex, I recommend listening to binaural beats while you work. Binaural beats are sounds that change the frequency of your brainwaves and are associated with increased focus, memory retention and improved sleep.

Furthermore, played loudly enough, they block out sound and distraction, helping you maintain single-pointed awareness on your task.
Stimulating your other senses, besides sound, also helps you stay in the vortex.

Multi-sensory experiences lead to single-pointed awareness

Your senses are portals of information about the present, therefore creating sensory stimuli helps you stay grounded in the present, which is the goal of meditation.

Adding sensory stimuli to your work environment, besides sounds, can help you remain anchored in your task.
Stimulate your sense of smell with pleasant-smelling candles or incense in the room.

Stimulate your sense of taste by sipping on a fragrant drink, like tea, while you work.

Stimulate your sense of touch by making your work set-up extra comfortable, maybe adding pillows to your chair or propping up your feet.
When all of your senses are stimulated, especially by pleasant, calm stimuli, you are more likely to remain relaxed, and focused on the task at hand.

It’s just a practice

In meditation, the practice is not to stay perfectly focused on the breath the whole time – it’s to observe when your awareness moves away from the breath, and to bring it back without judgment.
In the same way, turning work or unpleasant tasks into meditation isn’t intended to make you judge yourself for multitasking or getting distracted. Life happens.

It’s simply a practice of noticing when your awareness moves away from the task, and to bring it back without judgment.