Lockdown Diaries 3: Meditate against Remote Working Apathy
I must admit, this lockdown has been too long.
My life´s highlight has been going to a barber for the first time in three months. I don´t think I have ever used sweatpants so much in my life.
Neither of these feel like massive accomplishments.
And even though many countries are opening up, the uncertainty is still quite high.
You might be experiencing the same thing: first remote working went like breeze, but after a while it has started to be more and more cumbersome. You are starting to be fatigued. Reminiscing the good old days when you were able to go to gym, restaurant or move freely between countries.
Researchers have been talking about “remote working apathy” which is caused by five things:
1) Loneliness
You feel distant as you lack the informal connections to your colleagues. In many ways we can even be more effective during remote work, but work is not only achieving things. Best teams are tightly knitted together and it requires informal bonding to create that mutual trust among your peers.
2) Monotony
Despite how satisfying or interesting you find your job, the remote working days are more monotonous than your usual working day. Ice cream tastes good, but too much the same ice cream just annoys you.
3) Lack of balance
The lines of work and life are blurring, so person might get a feeling that there is a lack of focus for both aspects of life. I have called it “Covid-19 Balancing Act”, you balance between being a bad boss and a bad father.
4) Bad habits
Remote working enhances your bad habits. If you are slacker, you will slack more. If you are workaholic, you will overwork yourself.
5) Uncertainty
Remote working during COVID-19 is like doing a long run, but you do not know whether the finish line is 10km, 40km or 100km? You have the mental and physical capability to do them all, but how to pace yourself when you do not know where the end will be?
As going back to the office does not seem like a feasible option in a while, how to fight against this remote working fatigue?
As lockdown measures vary between different countries, one-size-fits-all solution is hard to find (e.g. in some countries you cannot go out for walk).
However, there is one method you can do pretty much anywhere and with proven health effects:
MEDITATION
Don´t just believe my word for it, Bill Gates is doing it as well.
Yuval Noah Harari meditates for 2 hours every day.
So meditation seems like the perfect cure for these anxiety-ridden times.
How to get started?
Meditation is a practice where an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state
There are multiple different ways to meditate such as Vipassana that is Harari´s tool of choice. For simplicity I just divide them in two:
1) Focused meditation. You focus on single thing such breathing, mantra or specific activity (e.g. yoga) in a sustained fashion. It emphasizes clearing your mind of attention and distraction.
2) Open-monitoring meditation. You let your thoughts come as you try to have broadened awarences of your environment, train of thought and sense of self.
These are not mutually exclusive and both have different benefits.
For meditation you do not necessarily need any equipment or app, especially if you are more experienced practitioner. To get the habit started guided meditation apps (e.g. Headspace or Calm), meditation courses or even retreats can be benefical.
Gamifying meditation
I am not particularly spiritual person. I have done yoga, but always regarded it as just one form of exercise. Despite quite overwhelming evidence of meditation benefits, I never really got into it. That was until I combined three of the following aspects to my meditation practice.
1) Gamification
2) Technology
3) Competition
I know that it is slightly counter-intuitive to add these elements to meditation and pretty much is against everything meditation should be about.
Couple of years ago in SXSW I bumped into this product called Muse, which is a meditation headband translating your brainwaves into guiding sounds of weather. When your mind is calm and settled, you hear peaceful weather. When your focus drifts, you’ll hear stormy weather. When in you are in very deep calm you can hear the birds singing.
Maybe this is all bullshit?
Can be, but at least it makes me to meditate 10 minutes daily. For me the meditation is the moment when you are only focusing on your breath and not dwelling on the mundane challenges of the day. For my competitive spirit, it gives certain gratification to see that I am able to be in calm state for the whole time or break my previous record. Focusing on birds singing helps as well.
My meditation routine
I had recurring meditation practice before I became father. New life situations change your habits, so I dropped it out of my habit portfolio (maybe 5 minute calming down felt like better spent sleeping). When the lockdown period happened, I picked up meditation again (using mostly Muse for that). Again a proof of how crises are opportunities to change your habits for good and bad.
I start and end every day with 5-minute meditation. I try to do 5 minutes also after lunch to regain the focus or calm myself down before big presentation. I don´t always use the headband (it looks quite ridiculous and takes a while to set-up). Then I use the unguided meditation timer in Healthzilla app and occasionally the breathing app in Apple Watch.
Does it help?
On mornings I am generally quite focused, so I have not seen big impact on my ability to work on the early morning hours. However when meditating after lunch, I seem to be able to skip the usual lunch slump and get faster to productive working. Especially when I drink cup of coffee before meditation (I think my meditation routine raises eyebrows among purists), it seems to give me right dose of calmness and energy to fight against afternoon challenges.
All in all, the meditation has helped me to keep sane during this lockdown.
(If your classification of sane person is someone wearing a meditation headband)
Muse is connected to Healthkit so it is used to calculate your stress score in Healthzilla.
Riku Vassinen is advisor for Healthzilla, who has done mental gym exercises for almost three months.
