{"id":712,"date":"2017-09-14T21:43:41","date_gmt":"2017-09-14T21:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/?p=712"},"modified":"2017-09-20T14:59:25","modified_gmt":"2017-09-20T14:59:25","slug":"7-steps-toward-bringing-mindfulness-to-tech-delivery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/2017\/09\/14\/7-steps-toward-bringing-mindfulness-to-tech-delivery\/","title":{"rendered":"7 Steps Toward Bringing Mindfulness to Your Tech Delivery Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let’s say you’ve become convinced by whatever means<\/a>\u00a0that 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<\/em> do, not what your team<\/em> does. (That very interesting question needs its own post.)<\/p>\n

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  1. Start with yourself\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong>As Gandhi never said<\/a>\u00a0(but didn’t have to say in order for it to be useful), “be the change you want to see in the world.” Whatever your role, your mindful attention to what’s really going on will impact your whole team’s ability to function at a higher level. Your mindfulness can de-escalate stress. Your mindfulness can make it more likely that the right questions will get asked. Your mindfulness can keep your team focused on doing the right things and not running from fears or chasing after fantasies.<\/li>\n
  2. Do something<\/strong>\u00a0While “mindfulness” may seem conceptual and abstract, the benefit doesn’t come from thinking or reading about it. Cultivating a mindfulness awareness that shifts the way you relate to your experience is something you do. So the first step is deciding that you’re going to do something: you’re going to find a period of time, however brief (maybe the length of one breath), to focus your awareness on your experience rather than your cognition alone. Any dimension of experience will do (those experiences are always out there, ready for us when we drop out of our obsession with thinking): breath, body sensations, movement, sounds, taste, aroma, spatial environment… There’s much more that could be said here; here is one\u00a0set of concrete activities<\/a>\u00a0for staying mindful at work.<\/li>\n
  3. Start small<\/strong>\u00a0Do not underestimate the power of 10 seconds a day to initiate a transformation in your experience. It’s likely that the 10 seconds will grow over time, but it’s OK (and in fact supremely wise) to start small and keep expectations simple.<\/li>\n
  4. Be specific<\/strong>\u00a0“I will pay attention to my feet when I walk to the kitchen to get coffee” is much more meaningful than “I will be more mindful at work.” Setting specific goals means you can easily determine whether you are meeting that goal, every time you wind up at your desk with a cup of coffee and can’t remember how you got it, you have just given yourself a valuable opportunity to let go, begin again and aim to do better next time.<\/li>\n
  5. Do it regularly<\/strong>\u00a0Mindfulness is a habit. The goal is to get to the point where it feels weird *not* to be mindful in the context you’ve established for yourself.<\/li>\n
  6. Create accountability for yourself<\/strong>\u00a0Let someone else know that you are intending to spend less time wrapped up in your thoughts and more time noticing what’s actually going on. It could be someone safe, like your spouse, your best friend, or your barber. Ask them to check in with you from time to time about how you’re doing. It could be someone at your workplace. With this secret shared knowledge, it won’t be hard for them to hold you accountable: when they see you in the hallway, they can just give you a quizzical look: “Mindful today?”<\/li>\n
  7. Bring it into your work<\/strong>\u00a0If you’re paying attention, you will find opportunities to introduce a more reflective and less lost-in-thought approach to your meetings and phone conversations. \u00a0“Let me think about that for a minute.” Or “Bear with me. I’m just taking a pause to reflect before I respond.” Or “Before anyone answers that question, can we take a moment to consider how we might approach this differently?” I once worked for a famously reactive and irritable manager who, in times of stress, would sometimes take a deep breath, close her eyes, hold her thumb and fingers in front of her face in a meditation-like gesture, and audibly exhale as she lowered her hand to her belly. It was done in an amusing way, mostly to point out what idiocy she had to deal with…but honestly it really did help to slow things down and create some space. Of course you have to find ways of doing this that are natural to you – but no matter what the circumstances, you are entitled to take a mindful breath. Or two. Or three. Even when everyone is watching.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    We\u2019ll dive into all of this and much more at my\u00a0Mindful Technology Delivery<\/a>\u00a0class, September 27, 2017 from 4-6pm in Pioneer Square.\u00a0Learn more and register here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Let’s say you’ve become convinced by whatever means\u00a0that 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 question needs its own post.) Start […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stable-attention"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":732,"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions\/732"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}