Mindfulness with Jon Kabat-Zinn

As engineers we should be looking at root cause, not fixing the superficial symptoms. The root cause here is that we don't have 100% control over the decisions that we make. The way to gain that control is not via willpower or superdiscipline, but rather through meditation which trains our brains to recognize the moment where we are about to fly off to Facebook/HN/Twitter. Mindfulness is the key word, see [VIDEO] Its almost embarrassing how much that video changed my perception of my decisionmaking.

Jon Kabat-Zinn gave an hour-long talk at Google I found excellent too (they talk about it in this interview). Both restful and thought-provoking. If you're mildly interested, I recommend watching the video. I think this is the link -- [VIDEO] -- but I'm in China, which blocks YouTube, so please correct if it's wrong. Edit: his Wikipedia page -- [LINK] -- links to a bunch of talks he's given -- [LINK]

I've had success with the approach of Jon Kabat-Zinn -- see his talk @ Google: [VIDEO] ... his book, Full Catastrophe Living is a good read as well.

I have not practiced in a long time, but the core idea of mindfulness meditation is to enjoy the "right here right now". If focusing on your breath isn't for you, you can focus on something else that puts you in that state, like closing your eyes and simply listening to the sounds around you. This should help in quieting your inner monologue. When you find your brain trying to restart that monologue, just acknowledge that it happened and refocus. Remember not to think of these events as somehow being bad or failing since then you are dwelling on the past, just refocus without judging. Edit: you may find this presentation that Jon Kabat-Zinn gave at Google interesting: [VIDEO] I also found his audio book "Mindfulness for Beginners" very enjoyable. The second cd contains 2 guided meditations which may help you get started.

I actually just happened to be watching a really good talk by Jon Kabat-Zinn at Google: [VIDEO] where he leads a meditation session, and provides some basic concepts to refer to as well. Relatable, articulate.

There's an excellent introductory talk that was delivered by Jon Kabat-Zinn for Google. It's available at [VIDEO]

Do something that brings you into your body and out of your head. Dance, music, exercise, meditation: all these practices encourage you to take your attention away from explicit verbal thought and focus on your somatic experience. It will be difficult at first: your mind is a muscle, and its currently in the habit of listening to itself talk, but the more you practice rooting your attention in your body and it's experience of the world (which is far, far richer, by the way, than we're usually aware of, thanks to our predisposition to thinking), the better your right hemisphere will be able to inhibit your left, and your mental chatter will begin to quiet, allowing you to be more fully present and focus on rejuvenating activities. (Don't worry -- when you go back to work, you'll be able to pick right back up where you left off, only you'll be more energized and balanced.) If you're into it, here's an (hour-long) intro to mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a well-known name in Western meditation circles (he basically rebranded meditation as mindfulness to bring it into Western medicine): [VIDEO]

A good intro to this frame of mind (and also relevant, since the dude works at Google ;) ) is to watch this video of a talk by Chade-Meng Tan - [LINK] And then if that interests you, see if you get through this one: [VIDEO]