How to be productive in mindfulness?
- Magical Mindful Living
- Mar 7
- 4 min read
Being productive
Productive can mean different things to different people. Imagine a man on a fishing boat. Being productive for this guy is catching more fish. And he would do anything for that. He would paddle his boat to better parts in the lagoon. He would wake up early than other fishermen. And repair his net everyday, so the fish remains in the net.
If you compare this to a factory being productive means the output. Imagine a Tesla factory. If number of cars made this year is more than the last year we call this year is more productive. And if all of them sell that is even better, due to productive marketing stratergy.
So if you consider everything we do, all of these activities are associated with some outcome. And this outcome if more than our expectations we are happy. If less than our expectations we are sad. Even washing dishes is associated with a feeling of accomplishment once its done!
Philosophy of being productive in life.
So you may ask, what is the philosophy in it? I would say that there is a simple definition for our lives. If we go to a church we expect to come out as saints. If we read an article we want to be wiser at the end of it. If you sleep you would wanna wake up fresh. If you do nothing you expect an empty silent mind. You live a life, and in this life all we do is doing something expecting something.
Now imagine a task where the expectation is not there. Can you imagine that? We are so used to outcome based success that we cannot do this. Even if you sit down for meditation you would try to achieve something. But what if I told you mindfulness is different in this matter. In mindfulness, in proper mindfulness if you try to expect something you will not understand anything.
How mindfulness is opposite of being productive.
Mindfulness is peace. Mindfulness is happy. Mindfulness creates profound experiences. But during the time of doing it you would not know that, as Mindfulness is living with the experience at that moment. Since you are not comparing this experience with anything from the past, or projecting it to future, at the time of mindfulness you would feel nothing. However as the time goes on, while you are back to the mindless days, you would understand the mindful moments were the best moments of happiness. I can give you an example.
Have you ever been to a waterfall? Have you ever looked at a tree? For the sake of doing that? In the book "the power of now" Ekart Tolle talks about being aware of a tree just in front of him as his moment of enlightment. You may consider this a joke, what can a simple tree teach you about life? I would not comment. You just have to see. Every little thing you see or hear is a pointer to yourself. They try to teach us a lesson that we will never learn from teachers, books or reading. Our minds are more than capable of generating its own knowledge. This wordless knowledge about self is the most valueble of all, cause its unique.
I have written about the experience about a waterfall, I had years ago. I did know nothing about mindfulness during the time of the travel. That mindfulness is the pathway to the truth. But I just wanted to remember what I saw. So as I was looking at the waterfall, I chose to stay silent and observe everything I see. I did not do it for half an hour, just 15 minutes, I listened and watched and listened and felt. I did not judge waterfall was beautiful or not. I did not try to compare it with other waterfalls. I did not do anything other than letting the mind observe. I observed the trees around it. There was a massive tree which stood almost the height of the waterfall itself, I didnt try to judge its height in meters. I saw the sky through the gaps in its canopy. And I did not care that was a valueble experience or not.
Being productive in mindfulness The paradox
Now after more than five years later I can still close my eyes and go back to that place and re-live that experience. Its costed nothing when we compare how much we spend to make ourselves happy. We might spend thousand dollars to reach far unknown corners of earth looking for a novel experience. But novelty of the experience is not there outside. You can make a profound experience even in your backyard looking at a chillie plant if you chose to just do that. And when you do that, my suggestion is try not to be productive. Try not to create experience. Try not to gain anything. And the nature does work in paradoxes. And one day you will know you have gained everything you wished from life in those little moments you chose to be aware.
There’s a lot of happiness to be had when you are aware enough to see and appreciate variations in colors. To look at a tree’s leaves and not just see green but to see all the different shades and shadows made visible by how the light is cast onto them.