Image © 2012 Shelly ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ . Licensed under CC-BY Here's a story about how my brain got stuck, and how I eventually managed to unstick it. Yesterday I belatedly got around to putting a credit freeze on my credit reports in response to the Equifax data breach (you should too if [...]
Both experience and common sense tells me that being able to hold awareness beyond the incessant chatter of my own thoughts is going to make me more effective at work. But what objective evidence is there for this? Walking as we are through a forest of dense and shifting fads, fashions, and [...]
Sitting meditation is the classic mindfulness technique. Other practices like mindful walking or mindful eating may seem more accessible, and sitting in silence may seem a little intimidating. But sitting has a lot of merits as a way to get introduced to the experience of mindfulness. This post is [...]
Let's say you've become convinced by whatever means that mindfulness brings concrete benefit to technology delivery. You're now wondering: "what can I do about that?" Here is an outline of a 7-step plan. This plan starts and ends with what you do, not what your team does. (That very interesting [...]
On page 1 of Mindfulness for Beginners (which does seem like a very good place to start!) Jon Kabat-Zinn defines "mindfulness" as follows. To make its components clear I've laid it out poetry-style: Mindfulness is awareness, cultivated by paying attention in a sustained and particular [...]
While there's plenty to say about other positive outcomes of mindfulness, this post is about business benefits for technology delivery: meeting milestones, keeping stakeholders happy, and delivering value to customers. Any incremental sanity is a bonus. Mindfulness helps you identify unexamined[...]
On the island of Crete in ancient times, a unique form of bullfighting developed. It involved facing a charging bull and, at the last possible moment, grabbing hold of its horns and swinging up on its back (see the diagram to the left). Nikos Kazantzakis, author of Zorba the Greek and The Last [...]