I’m pleased to announce that I’ve contributed an article to the latest Productive Magazine, “What Yoga Can Teach Us About Productivity.”  As you can probably tell from the title, this is a different take on getting work done than what we usually see in the popular literature, and I’m grateful to the magazine staff for their willingness to “explore strange new worlds” with me as far as this type of material is concerned.

By the way, you can read previous articles of mine in Productive Magazine here:

* “3 Keys to Developing Inner Productivity,” Productive Magazine Issue #9

* “How Getting Used to Silence Can Help Your Productivity,” Productive Magazine Issue #8

* “Three Ways Your Breathing Can Help Your Productivity,” Productive Magazine Issue #7

Enjoy!

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Recent Guest Posts

I was excited to recently contribute two guest posts to Lifehack.org:  “What Meditation Can Teach Us About Productivity” and “What Yoga Can Teach Us About Productivity.”

I didn’t announce these posts here earlier, because they are meant as introductions to my work, and I know this blog is only read by my advanced, graduate-level students.    But seriously, I thought I’d mention them here in the hope that my regular readers might get some value out of them.  I hope you are among those value-getting readers! 

Upcoming Talk and Workshop at EastWest Bookstore

Also, I wanted to mention that I and yoga instructor Rosy Moon will be offering an interactive talk on July 1, and a full-day workshop on July 2, at EastWest Bookstore in Mountain View, California.  If you’re in the Bay Area and you’re interested in finding more focus, peace and motivation in your work, this is definitely the place to be.  Looking forward to meeting you in person if I haven’t done so yet.

Best, Chris

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Ready to get off the “time management treadmill”?

You’ve tried all the usual productivity advice:  make to-do lists, reorganize your e-mail, color-code your folders, and so on.  You’ve probably bought more than enough books, CDs, planners, special notebooks, and “apps” as well.

So why do you still find yourself procrastinating, getting distracted, feeling anxious, and not making the kind of progress you want in your work?  Why does getting through your daily routine still seem like such a frustrating chore?

The answer goes deeper than planners and iPhone apps . . .

Although there’s a lot of sound advice out there, it usually doesn’t deal with the biggest obstacle we tend to face in getting our work done:  our own minds.  As I think you know from experience, arranging your e-mail subfolders in some fancy way won’t be enough to keep you on task if:

• You keep getting to the end of the day, and feeling like you didn’t accomplish enough
• You’re working from home, and it’s hard to stay on task when no one’s keeping tabs on you
• You feel overwhelmed when you see a lot of items on your to-do list
• Your mind keeps jumping around to all kinds of different ideas when you’re trying to focus on something
• You struggle with a sense that you’ve got to do everything perfectly, or not do it at all
• You have trouble starting a project you want to do, because you worry that it’s not going to be good enough
• You have difficulty saying “no” to requests, and protecting your time, when you’re trying to do a task
• You’re tired of beating yourself up and forcing yourself to work
• You get bogged down in resentment, because it seems like people don’t appreciate what you do

Most of us are in the habit of running from uncomfortable feelings and sensations like these when they come up as we’re working.  To distract ourselves from them, we check e-mail, play Minesweeper, get up and pace around, or do something else.  Unfortunately — and this is key — when we distract ourselves from our discomfort, we also take our attention off our work.

What if, instead of running away from difficult emotions and sensations, you could learn to accept and allow them? What if you could choose to move forward in your work, even when discomfort is coming up?

That’s what the Work Consciously Audio Course is all about.

For thousands of years, mindfulness practices like meditation, yoga and qi gong have helped people learn to be with silence and discomfort, concentrate on one thing for a long time, and even find peace and joy doing it.  This program is about using practices like these “in real time” — while you’re at your desk doing a task — to stay focused and motivated as you work.

To get a sense of what this is about, next time you find yourself wanting to turn away from your work, pause instead, and notice what you’re feeling.  What kind of discomfort is there — tension, heat, itching, or something else?  Where is it in your body?

Now, see if you can keep breathing, relax your body, and just allow that discomfort to pass away on its own, without trying to fight it or flee from it.  Notice how, the more you welcome the uncomfortable feeling or sensation, without resistance, the easier it is to be with.

This is just a taste of the practices offered in the Work Consciously Audio Course.  In this program, you’ll learn how to:

• Let go of anxiety that used to paralyze you in your work
• Develop a longer attention span and feel less distractible
• Stay focused even when you’re feeling the urge to procrastinate
• Motivate yourself by getting in touch with your desire to contribute to the world
• Return your attention to the present when it’s drifting off
• Become aware of the unconscious ways you sabotage yourself in what you do
• Set boundaries with others and protect the time you spend on your projects
• Move through writer’s block, and even use it as a source of inspiration
• Bring the “real you” into your work by letting go of the “work persona” you put on in what you do

What others have said

“I found Chris’s material in the course amazing!  And what I mean by that is the value that he provides, the wisdom he shares and the practical applications he leaves us with can literally transform our life and work.  And he does it all, with the most loving and authentic approach.”

- Evita Ochel, author of EvolvingBeings.com

“We all need some nudges along the way to keep our thinking, writing and designs fresh and refreshing.   The [Work Consciously Audio Course] is a good work out.”

- Patricia Hamilton, author of PatriciasWisdom.com

And here’s some of the wonderful feedback I received about Inner Productivity:

“Chris Edgar has taken an exploratory dive into the procrastination pit and come up with a cogent explanation of this phenomenon as well as an elegant set of techniques to transcend it.  It’s a great read and a useful guidebook for turning the daily grind into something much more interesting and engaging.”

– David Allen, bestselling author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

“Inner Productivity will show you how to clear your inner clutter and create a pathway to success!”

– Marshall Goldsmith, bestselling author of What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

“Real productivity doesn’t come from forced behaviors.  Inner Productivity can help you connect with the inner state of being that can empower you to act in new ways, choose new perspectives and have a different experience.  There is no greater productivity than connecting with your true self.”

– Tama J. Kieves, bestselling author of This Time I Dance!: Creating the Work You Love (How One Harvard Lawyer Left It All to Have It All)

“Inner Productivity is packed with practical examples of how to achieve greater results and peace of mind at work.”

– Laura Stack, bestselling author of Leave the Office Earlier: The Productivity Pro Shows You How to Do More in Less Time . . . and Feel Great About It

“A wonderful guide for organizing both your physical and your head space.”

– Peter Walsh, bestselling author of Enough Already!: Clearing Mental Clutter to Become the Best You

Download the introduction

To get a sense of what the course is all about, you can listen to the introduction here free of charge.  If you’d prefer to read it, you can view a text version here.  Whether you buy the program or not, I’m confident that just listening to this section will fundamentally shift the way you think about your work and what’s possible for you in it.

One unique part of this course is that, if you download the program, you’ll also receive a 100-page document with the entire text of the course.  If you prefer reading to listening, or you’d like to review the exercises you’ve done in written form, this will be an ideal resource.

Buy the course

The audio course is available for $24.95.  I’ve tried to keep it affordable because I want everyone, including people who want help getting through the job application process — and who benefit a lot, I’ve found, from my book Inner Productivity — to have access to this program.

You can buy the course using this PayPal button:

If you’re done with buying fancy gadgets and notebooks, and you want to really get to the source of what’s holding you back in your work, this is the program for you.  I think you’ll find this course will help you bring your creative gifts into the world, find the efficiency you want in your work, and even have some fun in what you do.

Wishing you the best in your work and elsewhere,

Chris Edgar

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“The strife is o’er,” as the hymn goes — I’m all done recording the Work Consciously Audio Course.  I’m writing up the “liner notes” right now — that’s what I like to call them, anyway, because it has me feel like I’m releasing a rock and roll album.

In the meantime, I’d like to share with you the introduction to the audio course, and hear any feedback you might have on it.  If you’ve read Inner Productivity, you’ll be familiar with some of the ideas I present here, but there’s plenty of new content that I’ve developed over the year I’ve spent speaking and leading workshops on the book.

The course will feature both exercises you can do “in real time,” as you’re sitting at your desk, to restore your focus and motivation in what you’re doing, and guided meditations I’ll lead you through for developing awareness around what’s holding you back in your projects.

Whether or not you pick up a copy of the audio course when it comes out, I think you’ll get some useful insights out of just listening to this portion of the program.

I’ve linked to the mp3 file of the introduction in this post, and I’ve copied the text below in case reading works better for you.  It’s long, so you have my blessing if you want to read the first couple of paragraphs, or listen to the first few minutes, and leave a comment. 

Download the Introduction (28 mb MP3 file; right-click and select “Save As” to download)

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to the Work Consciously Audio Course.  I’m looking forward to working with you.  I think you’ll find that this course takes getting work done and enjoying what you do to a deeper level than what you’ve probably experienced before.

When most of us think about productivity, a pretty predictable group of images comes to mind.  We tend to think of all the usual organization and time management tools people recommend — creative ways to organize your e-mail inbox, color-code your folders, find the right iPhone apps, and so on.

What you’re going to hear about in this course will be very different from all that.  Don’t get me wrong — there are many great productivity techniques out there.  But one thing I’ve noticed about these tips and tricks is that they tend to be almost exclusively focused on our outer circumstances — the ways we have our to-do list or our desktop organized, and so on.

What the usual techniques don’t tend to focus on, though, is what I think is the biggest obstacle we usually face in getting our work done — and that, we might say, is ourselves.  It’s our own minds and bodies.

Why There’s No “App For That”

Here, I’m talking about those moments when we find our attention getting scattered all over the place — maybe replaying some piece of music in our heads, or replaying memories of that bad relationship from twenty years ago, or something else.

I mean those times when we find ourselves feeling sluggish or unmotivated, like we have to drag ourselves through the mud to accomplish the task we’re trying to do, and it’s all we can do to keep our heads off the desk.

Maybe we feel paralyzed with anxiety, worrying “what’s the boss going to think of this presentation I’m doing,” and second-guessing every word we write.

As I’ll bet you know firsthand, if you’re having one of these experiences, having a really well-organized e-mail inbox probably isn’t going to cut it.  That is, it isn’t going to be enough to keep you on track in what you’re doing, no matter how great the tips for time management and organization you’re following may be.

If you’re paralyzed with fear about what the boss is going to think of this presentation you’re doing, that paralysis isn’t going to go away because you’ve achieved a zero e-mail inbox, or because you’ve made a multicolored to-do list.

Getting Off The “Time Management (Product) Treadmill”

Unfortunately, because — like I said — productivity literature tends to be focused solely on our external circumstances — on how our workspace is arranged — people tend to assume the only way to get more done is to find the right method of organizing their work environment.

So, people often get locked in a cycle of buying a book or taking a seminar, finding what they learned isn’t working for them, going out and buying another one, and repeating this process until they get tired of the whole productivity thing and give up.

Also, to be totally upfront, I think one of the reasons the usual organization strategies are so popular, even though so many people have trouble actually putting them into practice, is that people feel kind of virtuous and responsible when they learn new material on getting organized, or overcoming procrastination, or something along those lines.

They get a temporary high when they buy that new planner, or e-mail application — that frustration they’re feeling, and all the self-flagellation they’ve been doing because they feel like they’re not doing enough, temporarily fall away.  But very soon, those feelings come back, and the procrastination and inefficiency come back too.

If you can relate, one of my goals in this program is to break you out of that cycle of frustration.  I want you to be able to actually benefit from these organization strategies you’ve been learning, rather than just trying them for a day or for an hour and giving up, which unfortunately is what I think many people do.

So how do we start dealing with the ways our own minds and bodies tend to disrupt our focus as we’re trying to get something done?  I’ll begin to illustrate this by telling you a little story about my friend and the frustrations he’s been experiencing around e-mail.

The Core Experience:  An Illustration

My friend is really into these tips and tricks for organization and time management — he’s probably what a lot of these productivity websites would call a “productivity ninja.”  His most recent goal has been to curb his habit of compulsively checking his e-mail.  I imagine you’ve struggled with this at times yourself — or maybe you just, you know, know someone who has.

What my friend has committed to himself to do is to check his e-mail only twice a day while he’s at work — at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.  In theory, this sounds like it would help my friend save a lot of time.  But in practice, he’s never actually been able to keep this commitment to himself.

This is what happens for him.  He gets into work at about 8 or 8:30 in the morning, and he’s able to get about half an hour of fully focused work in, even if he’s got a nagging curiosity in the back of his mind about whether there’s anything interesting or important in his e-mail inbox.

But when that half-hour mark rolls around, my friend’s curiosity actually starts to intensify into physical discomfort.  He starts to feel a tension in his shoulders and a tightness in his chest.

If he leaves that curiosity for long enough without doing anything about it, it almost starts to feel like a shortness of breath, and he starts wondering “oh my goodness, am I going to die if I don’t check my e-mail?”  So, it seems like a pretty serious situation to him in the moment.

So, of course, to relieve this tension that’s coming up for him, my friend goes off and checks his e-mail.  When he does this, he takes his mind off the tension he’s feeling, and so he gets a break from it.

Unfortunately, while he’s checking his e-mail, he’s also taking his attention off the work he’s trying to do.  And because this keeps happening throughout the day, he keeps arriving at the end of the work day having accomplished less than he wanted.

The Core Experience:  What It Means

The moral of the story here, of course, is not that my friend doesn’t know enough organization and time management techniques.  He knows plenty of those.  He’s got a super-organized e-mail inbox with about 100 different sub-directories.  But no matter how he tweaks his e-mail organization, that burning curiosity still seems to come up.

The point of the story is that, when my friend tries to sit and concentrate on his work, these sensations come up in his body that he finds uncomfortable or even disturbing.  And to relieve those sensations — to take the edge off, as people often say — he checks his e-mail.

In other words, my friend is caught up in what I call the Procrastination Cycle.  He sits down to work and is able to chug along in what he’s doing for a short period of time.  And then, that pesky sensation, which I call the Core Experience, comes up for him.

I call it the Core Experience because, no matter what type of project you’re having difficulty moving forward in — whether it’s starting your dream business or cleaning out the garage — you’re going to find this particular nagging experience lurking in the background.

In order to get away from the Core Experience, my friend uses what I call an Escape Route — that is, he checks his e-mail to distract himself from what’s going on inside.

Then, after a little while, he returns to work, but within a short time the Core Experience arises again, and he repeats the cycle over and over again throughout the working day.

Everyone’s Experience Is Unique

I imagine you can relate to this story — that you can relate to trying to get your work done, but being confronted with thoughts, emotions and sensations — or, what I call inner experiences — that you’d rather not be having.

Now, of course, not everyone has a problem with a burning curiosity about their e-mail.  Everyone’s mind and body is different, so everyone has their own variety of inner experience that tends to come up and make their life difficult when they’re trying to get something done.

For example, maybe, for you, it’s a painful memory that keeps nagging at you while you’re trying to accomplish something.  For instance, maybe you keep replaying an old argument you had with someone in your mind as you’re sitting trying to code your computer program.  And, to make matters worse, this only seems to arise when you’re trying to do a project that’s particularly important to you.

For other people it’s just an unpleasant physical sensation that arises when they’re trying to get something done.  Maybe they feel this jumpy, anxious energy in their body.  Maybe they find their shoulders tensing up.  Maybe it’s a sinking feeling in their stomach.

Whatever it is, it seems to come up most often, or perhaps most loudly, when you’re trying to get something done.

An Awareness-Building Exercise

What kind of experience tends to come up for you?  Maybe the thought or sensation that you keep experiencing is easy to bring to mind.  But for some people it isn’t immediately clear — when I ask what inner experience is giving them trouble, they’ll say “I don’t know — I just keep finding myself putting things off.”

If you find yourself unsure about what the particular feeling or thought is for you, I think you can start to get an idea of what kind of experience it is by doing a brief exercise.

Right now, think about some project you’ve been wanting to work on recently, but you’ve been putting off.  As you recall this project and the frustrations you’ve been having around it, notice what you’re feeling in your body.

Notice the places where it’s tensing up — where it feels uncomfortably hot or cold — where you feel a heaviness or nausea — or whatever it is you’re feeling.  Do you get how unpleasant that experience is for you?

Now, what I’d like you to do is consider the possibility that, when you sit down to work on the project you’re thinking about, this is the experience you’re having — these are the sensations that are coming up in your body.  Whenever you put off working on this project, it’s because you don’t want to be feeling these sensations.

And I think you can see, as you experience the sensations right now, firsthand, why you might be doing that.  Of course you’ve been fleeing from them, given how unpleasant they are.

The Core Experience: Fighting and Fleeing

So, I think we all have some troublesome inner experience that comes up as we’re trying to complete our projects.  But importantly, I want to suggest to you that this experience alone isn’t enough to create procrastination.

The mere fact that we’re feeling some kind of discomfort doesn’t force us to put off our work.  Instead, procrastination happens when we do what I call fighting or fleeing from the experience — basically, when we choose to try to avoid having it.

What do I mean by fighting or fleeing?  I’ll start with fighting.  By fighting the experience, I mean trying to punish or shame yourself into working when that experience is coming up.

For instance, suppose that, like my friend, you tend to experience a burning curiosity about what’s in your e-mail inbox when you’re trying to work on a project.

If you try to shame yourself into working despite that experience, maybe you’ll tell yourself something like “oh, I can’t believe you’re so lazy and distractible — I can’t believe you’re thinking about your e-mail again — what’s wrong with you,” and so on.

Or maybe you’ll threaten yourself with punishment, as I know some people do.  Maybe you’ll say to yourself “you know, if you check e-mail again, you don’t get to play any XBox 360 tonight — no video games for you tonight if you check it again.”

Some productivity writers actually recommend doing this — making threats, or using what’s sometimes called “negative reinforcement,” to force yourself to work — but I don’t.

Why not?  As I’ll bet you’ve experienced, when you try to beat yourself into submission and make yourself work, that only creates more resistance inside — it only tends to intensify, in other words, that unpleasant experience you’re having.

In fact, I know that, for myself and others I’ve talked to, doing this can actually be physically tiring — by beating ourselves up, we can drain ourselves of the energy we could have been using to accomplish something.  This is a good example of what I think Carl Jung meant when he said “what we resist persists.”

What Fleeing Means

The other thing we tend to do, as I said, is that we flee from this painful experience.  Whenever that unpleasant memory, or that worry about the future, or that pain in our lower back, or whatever it is, comes up, we do something to distract ourselves from it.  Maybe we’ll play Minesweeper, or call a friend on the phone, or surf the Internet, or something else.

When we take our minds off the sensations we’re feeling, the benefit is that we don’t have to experience those sensations.  Unfortunately, there’s an obvious cost as well, which is that we don’t accomplish anything when we’re in this self-distraction mode.  While we’re messing around on Facebook, playing video games, or whatever, we aren’t getting anything done.

Now, one recommendation you’ll often hear from people who write about productivity is that you should just take away all the “toys” you could possibly “play with” when you sit down to do a task for a long stretch.

In other words, take away all the tools you might use to distract yourself — leave your cell phone in your car, disconnect your internet, and so on.  When you’ve got nothing to divert your attention with, you’ll be forced to work on your project.

Unfortunately, if you’ve ever tried this strategy, I’ll bet you’ve seen the flaw in it.  No matter how many “outer distractions” you switch off, you’ll always be stuck with what we might call your “inner distractions.”

You can always use your own mind and body to escape from that pesky inner experience, even if there’s nothing else at hand.  Maybe you can start thinking about a pop song you like, or drumming your fingers on the table, or getting up and pacing around.  The last problem I guess you could solve by tying your legs to your chair, but how far do we really want to take this?

All Right, Then What?

So, merely rearranging your workspace isn’t going to be enough to break you out of the habit of fleeing — of distracting yourself from — these unpleasant thoughts and sensations that you’ve been going through.

Now, imagine if, instead of fighting or fleeing from the experience, you could just calmly accept that the experience is coming up, and choose to move forward in your work.  Suppose that you could stay relaxed, keep breathing, maybe notice for a moment “oh, there’s that experience again,” and stay focused on what you’re doing.

Imagine the sense of freedom and ease that this could give you in your work, and how much more this would allow you to accomplish.  Learning how to do that is the heart of what this course is about.

Awareness of the Core Experience

I see dealing with this inner experience as basically a two-step process, and I call these two steps Awareness and Allowing.

I’ll start explaining this by talking about what Awareness means.  By Awareness, I mean that we become aware of the Core Experience that we’ve been running away from, and the Escape Route we’ve been using to run away from it — that is, calling friends on the phone, messing around on social media, playing Solitaire, and so on.

Remember I talked about my friend, who came to me and complained that he couldn’t concentrate on his work, because this burning curiosity about his e-mail would keep coming up that was almost painful.

In a sense, my friend’s situation is unique — perhaps you could even say he’s lucky — because my sense is that most people don’t have that level of awareness of what the Core Experience and Escape Route are for them.

Let me put it this way — have you ever gotten to the end of the workday, and wondered to yourself “where did the whole day go?  Why didn’t I get anything done?  What could I have been doing with all that time?”  And you feel frustrated and confused.  I think most of us have had that experience from time to time.

My sense is that, when we have a day like this, this Procrastination Cycle I’m talking about is happening outside our awareness.  It’s happening unconsciously.

Throughout the entire day, this is what’s happening:  we work for a few minutes, then that Core Experience — that jitteriness or resentment or whatever it is — comes up, and then we turn our attention away from our work — we follow our Escape Route.  The cycle repeats again and again, and we’re not even aware that it’s happening.

How could this be?  What I’m going to suggest is that you’re doing unconscious behaviors like this all the time.  For instance, have you ever gotten into the car, and just watched your hand shoot out and turn that car radio on, as if you didn’t even have to participate in the process?

Breathing, of course, is another good example — most of the time it’s happening even though we’re not doing it consciously.  This Procrastination Cycle, if we’re not aware of it, becomes just another one of these unconscious behaviors going on in the background for us.

Awareness by Itself Can Be Curative

The good news is that, when we become aware that this Procrastination Cycle is happening, we start to gain some control over the way we move through our workday.

Sometimes, just being conscious of the Core Experience we’re avoiding, and the Escape Route we’re using to get away from it, can free us from this Procrastination Cycle, without us having to develop a lot of self-discipline and constantly monitor ourselves to see whether we’re back in our usual habits.

Fritz Perls, the inventor of Gestalt psychotherapy, said that “awareness by itself can be curative.”  In other words, awareness by itself can create transformation.  I think this is true, and I’ve certainly seen evidence of it in my own life.

For example, I used to be in the habit of clenching my jaw and grinding my teeth.  I wasn’t consciously aware that I was doing it — the only thing I knew was that my jaw would be strangely sore a lot of the time.  Eventually, someone close to me pointed out that my jaw seemed really tense, and I had an amazing experience — my jaw just spontaneously relaxed.

In other words, I didn’t have to do any work to accomplish this — I didn’t have to get a jaw massage, or acupuncture on my jaw, or something like that — thankfully, no needles needed to be involved.  All I had to do was become aware of the tension, and it naturally fell away.

I’ll bet you’ve had an experience like this — you were doing some habit, like tapping your fingers on the table, or tensing up your shoulders, or something like that, and when someone pointed out to you that you were doing it, you effortlessly let go of the habit.

That’s what I want for you when we do the awareness-building exercises I’m going to talk about in this program — to spontaneously let go of ways you may have been hindering your progress in what you do.

Allowing the Core Experience

Unfortunately, just becoming aware of this procrastination cycle I’m talking about isn’t enough to help some people break out of it.  Some people are acutely aware of the Core Experience — of that troublesome thought, feeling or sensation — that keeps coming up when they try to focus on their project.  But that doesn’t stop them from habitually running away from this experience.

I think one reason is that, for many people, this Core Experience is actually kind of disturbing and scary.  When that anxiety, or anger, or distraction, or whatever that sensation is comes up, it can seem like a really serious or dangerous situation.

Some people get the sense that, if they just let that feeling be there without trying to do anything about it, it might stay there forever, or they might somehow be hurt or destroyed.

It’s almost as if your body is a steel pipe, and there’s pressure building up inside when this Core Experience is arising, and if you don’t open the valve and let some of that pressure off, maybe you’ll explode or implode or disintegrate or be destroyed in some other horrible way.

What Allowing Means

This is where what I call Allowing comes into play.  Allowing a sensation means to keep breathing, relax your body, and let that sensation pass away on its own — to just let that feeling flow through you and dissipate, without resisting it.

For example, suppose you’re sitting there chugging along in a project at your computer, and suddenly, like my friend I described earlier, you start to have this burning curiosity about what’s in your e-mail inbox.

Before, you may have been in the habit of beating yourself up for feeling that curiosity, like “oh, I can’t believe you’re so lazy and distractable,” and so on; or, perhaps, you may have been in the habit of giving into the urge by checking e-mail.

But this time, I invite you to try something different.  Instead of fighting or fleeing from that sensation, just sit there, and breathe, and relax your body, and allow that burning curiosity to pass away on its own.  Just let that tension or discomfort, wherever it may be coming up in your body, just drain out of you by itself.

The Core Experience Is Fleeting

What I think you’ll discover, when you practice Allowing in the way I’ve described, is that this Core Experience — this sensation you haven’t wanted to be with — is actually fleeting.  That is, it’s temporary, and it passes away quickly when you don’t resist it.  In that sense, it’s like any other thought or emotion we experience as human beings.

Take anger and sadness, for example.  If you feel angry or sad, as I’m sure you have at some point in your life, usually those emotions don’t stick around forever.  Normally, they pass away, and they’re replaced by some other thought or feeling.  That’s just the human experience.

What you’ll find when you take on this practice of letting the difficult experience pass away is that, in fact, the Core Experience is exactly the same as other thoughts and emotions in this sense.

Just letting it be there, without trying to force it away, isn’t going to make you spontaneously combust or disappear or be harmed in some other way.  Instead, it will simply fade away on its own.

Once you experience, firsthand, the fact that this Core Experience is fleeting and temporary, I think you’ll start to observe something remarkable, which is that you’ll actually begin to get more comfortable and more familiar with that Core Experience.  It will start to seem more manageable, and less disturbing and scary.

Moving Through The Core Experience

And ultimately, when you get comfortable enough with this Core Experience, this experience that used to be difficult for you to tolerate, you become able to keep moving forward in your work, even when that Core Experience is coming up.  In other words, you become able to make progress in the project you’re working on, even when that sensation is arising.

It’s as if, when that anxiety, sadness, tightness, or whatever it is comes up, you become able to say “yes, I’m feeling this sensation — and, I’m going to keep drafting this presentation, or coding this computer program, or sculpting this sculpture,” or whatever activity you happen to be doing.  And when you develop that ability, that’s when you really start to get the sense of ease and flow you want in your work.

This attitude of Allowing is similar to the practice of yoga.  If you’ve done yoga, you’ve probably had the experience of getting into a pose that involved a really deep stretch — and choosing to hold that pose, despite the intensity you were experiencing, and just allowing the sensations you were feeling to be there, without trying to do anything about them.

You may have had the urge to get up and run out of the yoga studio, or take a break and fold your socks, but you consciously chose to stay with that feeling.

I imagine you noticed that, as you stayed in that challenging pose, the intensity you were feeling in your body started to seem more comfortable.  You started to understand that you could be with that feeling, and that it wasn’t going to envelop you or destroy you if you just allowed it to be.

In the same way, when we allow the difficult sensations that come up as we’re working to just be, rather than distracting ourselves from them, we start to see that we can actually handle that intensity, and that nothing awful is going to happen to us if we continue working when that intensity is coming up.

How To Use This Course

So, like I said, the method of finding focus and motivation in your work I’m talking about in this program has two basic steps:  first, becoming Aware of the Core Experience you’re avoiding, and the Escape Route, the way you’re habitually escaping from that Core Experience; and second, learning to just Allow that Core Experience to pass away on its own, without resisting.

The exercises we’re going to talk about in this program are all about bringing this two-step process of Awareness and Allowing into your everyday working routine.

One last note:  as you’ll notice when you listen to this course, the course consists mostly of exercises.  It’s important to actually do those exercises if you want to get the benefits out of this program — this isn’t about just passively soaking up information.  The good news is that, for all of the exercises, you don’t need any special props — you just need your own mind and body.

With all that said, let’s dive right into the perspectives and exercises I’m going to talk about in this program.

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In this first video, I talk about how to develop a longer attention span, and thus get more done in a single sitting in your work, by practicing holding your attention on your breathing or an object:

In the next video, I talk about how being able to say “no” to requests is an important part of staying focused and motivated in our projects.  Often, this is a matter of getting comfortable with the intense sensations that can come up when we refuse a request:

Here, I answer a question about dealing with job interview-related anxiety, discussing how useful it can be to find the place in your body where you’re feeling the nervousness or tension, and breathe into that place.  This can be helpful for anxiety in other situations as well:

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Last time I re-read the post, it proved to be more than just a source of nostalgia — it gave me the idea to put out an audio program dealing with the questions people asked in the comments, and in the many other settings where I’ve spoken to people about Inner Productivity.

I now have voluminous notes about what I’m going to say in the program, and I’ve started recording it.  Before I release it, I want to check in with you to make sure I’m not leaving out any concerns you may be dealing with in your working life, whether it comes to focusing, staying motivated, letting go of anxiety, actually enjoying what you do, or something else.  Simple as that.

So, I want to throw the floor open to you.  Maybe “throwing the floor” isn’t the most coherent figure of speech, but you get the point.  I want to know what you’d like to hear me address in the program, and if you let me know I’ll do my best to cover it.

To get the creative juices flowing, here’s a list of some common issues people raised in our earlier conversation:

Self-Starting:  “I’m working from home, and it’s hard to stay on task when no one’s keeping tabs on me.”

Overwhelm:  “I feel overwhelmed when I see a lot of items on my to-do list.”

Perfectionism:  “I struggle with a sense that I’ve got to do everything perfectly, or not do it at all.”

Inadequacy:  “I have trouble starting the project I want to do, because I worry that it’s not going to be good enough.”

Image Consciousness:  “I’m having difficulty doing the work I want to do, because I get too concerned about what others will think of it.”

“I haven’t done enough”:  “I keep getting to the end of the day, and feeling like I didn’t accomplish enough.”

Resentment:  “I get bogged down in resentment, because it seems like people are asking so much from me in my work.”

Distraction:  “My mind keeps jumping around to all kinds of different ideas when I’m trying to focus on something.”

How about you?  What issues would you like to hear about in the program?

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I’ve been doing a lot of speaking recently to groups of job-seeking professionals (one reason I’ve been MIA on the internet for two weeks), and predictably I tend to get questions about dealing with job interview anxiety.

But if I get the chance to explore the issue more deeply with people, I often find that they’re not really interested in reducing their anxiety.  Instead, they want to convince the interviewer they aren’t anxious.

I usually discover this when someone asks a question about interview anxiety, and I respond with some ideas from meditation and yoga, like bringing your attention into the body, noticing where you’re restricting your breathing, and so on.  They then give me a puzzled look, and say “but don’t you have any practical advice?”

When I ask what they mean by practical advice, they’ll reply “you know, things like how I should spin bad stuff on my resume, how long I should spend answering a question,” and so on.  In other words, what they really want to know is how to look like a confident, competent person.  Their own feelings aren’t important — only the interviewer’s view of them matters.

Image Obsession Creates Anxiety

I think this attitude is in keeping with the conventional wisdom in our culture.  For any situation in life involving “selling yourself” — marketing, interviewing for jobs, dating, or something else — most advice out there is about “making” people have the “right” thoughts and feelings about you.

The trouble is, in my experience, this attitude is actually a big source of anxiety.  The more deeply we’re concerned about our image, the more scary and exhausting relating with people becomes.

For example, suppose you went into a job interview having memorized ten questions you’re “supposed” to ask, five “confident body language” tips, seven “interview mistakes” to avoid, and so on.  Wouldn’t trying to remember and follow all these rules create stress for you?

But that’s not all — suppose you also went into the interview believing that “how I feel doesn’t matter — only this interviewer’s feelings about me are important.”  In other words, your sense of self-worth is riding on the interviewer’s opinion of you.  Don’t you think that might cause some freak-out as well?

What Do You Want?

So, if memorizing a lot of interviewing tips and obsessing over your image isn’t the key to overcoming interview anxiety, what is?  I think all the techniques I usually talk about regarding breathing, focusing your attention, and so on are wonderful, but here’s an even more basic starting point:  try focusing on what you feel and want.

That is, instead of going into the interview worrying about what the interviewer will think, see if you can get curious about questions like:  is this job in keeping with my career goals?  Does this seem like the kind of working environment I’d enjoy?  What would I need to know to feel comfortable taking this job?

If you’re in the job market, one thing I think you’ll immediately notice about this attitude is that it actually allows you to have an informative, and even enjoyable, dialogue with the interviewer.  Focusing on what you want out of the job helps you to ask questions you’re actually curious about, rather than parroting canned questions from some interviewing book that don’t really matter to you.

Although I’ve been talking about job interviewing, I think the attitude I’ve discussed is useful for any “selling yourself” situation.  I’ve found that focusing on our own wants and feelings, rather than getting caught up in strategies for manipulating others’ experience, can help make these situations easier to endure, and maybe even fun.

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New Bay Area Meetup

I’ve started a Meetup group in San Jose, California, which I’m using to offer free evening events on finding focus, motivation and peace in your work.  I’m excited about the next meeting, which will be on Monday, June 28, because yoga teacher Rosy Moon, who co-leads my full-day intensive workshop, will be joining me.

We’ll be talking about how yoga can help us accept and even embrace the tension, frustration, fatigue and so on we feel in our work — and, of course, doing some yoga with participants.  We’ll also demonstrate how the deep inner work we do in our workshop can help people let go of the blocks that have them avoid truly giving their gifts to the world.

If you’re in the Bay Area, I encourage you to drop by — you’ll definitely learn a lot and have fun!

Inner Productivity Intensive

I think I’m still digesting how powerful an experience the last Inner Productivity Intensive was.  My friends are like “okay, time to finish processing and feel happy about it already!”    Not only did Rosy and I have a blast, but we got some incredible feedback — here’s a sample:

“I wanted to let you both know how much I enjoyed the workshop.  It was a great experience – I learned a lot and actually enjoyed most of it!  It may be the best single day workshop I have attended in my professional career.”

- Aidan C., San Francisco, California

“The Inner Productivity Intensive Workshop was amazing, maybe even transformational.  I’ll use some of the practical techniques I learned pretty much every day for the rest of my life.  At the same time, I also gained deeper insights into myself and my relationships that were incredibly valuable.”

- B.P., San Francisco, California

Almost as soon as the last participant left, Rosy and I were talking about scheduling another one.  If I procrastinated about putting it together, that would make me a big hypocrite, and I didn’t want that.  So, I wasted no time in setting up the next workshop for August 15, 2010.

If you’re ready to get conscious, and let go, of patterns of thinking and behavior holding you back from giving your deepest gifts to the world, this is the workshop for you.  You can find out more about it and register here.

Some Great Recent Interviews

I had the privilege of appearing on two wonderful radio shows recently — both hosts had read and deeply appreciated the book, which led to discussions that were educational and fun.  I’ll post the links to them below.

* Welcome Changes Radio with Velma Gallant, June 2010

* Good Vibrations Radio with Solarzar and Kyralani, May 2010

I hope I get the chance to meet more of you in person, and I’m looking forward to more opportunities to help the world make working enjoyable and meaningful.

In gratitude,
Chris

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“I teach people how to use mindfulness practices, like meditation and yoga, to focus while they work.  I help them bring these practices into their in-the-moment experience of working — to go beyond just using them on the yoga mat or the meditation cushion.”

This is a correct description of what I do.  Unfortunately, it also tends to make people’s eyes roll and/or glaze over.

I know this all too well, because I delivered this “elevator pitch” many times.  What’s more, for many months, I kept describing what I do in this way, even though I knew it was boring and confusing people.

Why did I keep saying this to people, despite its obvious soporific effect?  The answer is that lots of resistance came up inside when I thought about changing it.  Because I found the resistance uncomfortable, I left my pitch unchanged so I wouldn’t have to feel it.

Welcoming My Resistance

I finally started getting traction around this issue when I decided to re-read my book and take my own medicine.  Rather than fleeing from the resistance, I chose to sit with it.  I got intimately familiar with its contours — where I felt it in my body, whether it manifested as a tingling, pulsing, tension, or something else, and so on.

As I’ve experienced so many times, putting my full attention on the tightness in my body actually dissolved it.  My solar plexus, where the most tension was, relaxed, and I sighed with relief.  And, as usual, with that relaxation came helpful insight.  What I saw was that I was clinging to this dull description of my services because, in my mind, it made me sound intelligent and unique.

After all, even if people didn’t buy my book or take my workshop, at least they wouldn’t see me as just another rah-rah jump-up-and-down-to-”Simply-The-Best” motivational speaker.  At least they’d know I don’t spout self-help cliches like “take action!  Think happy thoughts!  Like attracts like!”  You see, I use sophisticated words like “mindfulness,” and that makes me different!

In other words, I recognized through self-exploration that I was afraid of looking average — and, most importantly, that I was allowing that fear to control my business decisions.  I was letting concerns about my image get in the way of actually delivering value to people.

Allowing My Averageness

Getting conscious of this fear also helped to liberate me from it.  After all, I realized, what’s really going to happen if someone sees me as average?  Will I disintegrate or spontaneously combust or something?  Probably not.

What’s more, I recognized that, no matter what I accomplish, there are many ways in which I’m forever doomed to be average.  Studies have shown, for example, that I share approximately 99.999999% of my DNA not only with you, Dear Readers, but also with orangutans and mandrills.  Why go to such lengths to conceal my built-in averageness?

Armed with this new awareness, I came up with a much more clear and concise summary of what I do.  It goes a little something like this:

“I help people get focused and motivated at work.”

I’ve noticed that this produces a lot less nodding off, and a lot more purchasing of my stuff, among potential customers.

What about you, Dear Reader?  How are you letting image-consciousness get in the way of giving your gifts to the world?

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In the last post in this series (over at Urban Monk), I talked about some yoga asanas, or poses, that can help us restore our focus and motivation as we work — without even getting up from our desks.  In this article, I’ll speak more generally about how yoga helps us develop what I call Awareness and Allowing — two capacities that are key to giving us the efficiency and enjoyment we want in what we do.
 
1.  Awareness.  Almost immediately, when I started doing yoga, I became much more attuned to the sensations coming up in my body.  I noticed all this tension, tingling, heat and so on that I hadn’t been conscious of before.
 
Another thing I began to notice was that certain sensations would come up right before I’d find myself procrastinating or putting off a project.  I’d start getting this antsy, jittery feeling in my arms and legs, as if there were some danger I needed to run from, and then I’d find myself checking e-mail or pursuing some other distraction.
 
I eventually realized that I was putting off my work because I didn’t want to experience those antsy feelings.  Because I found those sensations disturbing and uncomfortable, I’d fallen into the habit of checking e-mail, surfing the Web or doing something else to distract myself from them.
 
Understanding that those jittery feelings were what I was trying to escape helped put my procrastination in perspective.  If discomfort in my body was really all I was running from, why was I running at all?  Wasn’t moving forward in my projects more important to me than avoiding those sensations?
 
Of course, yoga isn’t the only way to develop Awareness — you don’t need to learn to contort your body into a pretzel shape to be aware of the sensations you’re feeling.    A simpler approach, in my experience, is to pause whenever you find yourself about to put off a task, and just bring your awareness into your body and notice what’s coming up.
 
2.  Allowing.  If you’ve done yoga, I imagine you’ve had the experience of getting into a pose that involved a really deep stretch, and brought up intense sensations.  Perhaps you stayed in the pose, despite its intensity.  And when you did, you noticed the sensations becoming more comfortable and less threatening.
 
By Allowing, I mean just that — staying with an uncomfortable sensation that’s coming up, rather than resisting or fleeing from it.  This attitude of Allowing, I think, isn’t just for the time we spend on the yoga mat or the meditation cushion — it’s also very helpful in our working lives.
 
Suppose, for example, you’re working on a project and you start getting bored.  Most of us would react to that boredom by doing something to “take the edge off” — maybe playing a few hands of Solitaire on the computer, messing around on social media, and so on.
 
What if, instead, we chose to stay with that feeling — breathe, relax our bodies, and just allow the sensations to wash over us?  What if we decided, instead of pushing our boredom away, to get intimate and familiar with it?
 
The biggest benefit of learning to Allow the discomfort that comes up as we work is that it gives us control over our own schedules.  Most of us are like Pavlov’s Dogs, automatically turning away from our work whenever unpleasantness arises.  Developing the ability to drop our resistance to that unpleasantness, and keep moving forward, helps put us in charge of what and how much we get done.

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