Project: Dabble

What if your daily walk could double as a workout for your attention? Productive meditation pairs simple movement with focused thinking to help you work through problems, sharpen your concentration and make progress on your goals.

Meditation conjures images of stillness, quiet and doing nothing. But what if it could help you get more done?

I’ve recently discovered a technique called productive meditation. It’s not only helping improve my focus and attention, but it’s also giving me dedicated time to work through ideas and make progress toward my goals.

What Is Productive Meditation?

Productive meditation is a technique popularized by Cal Newport, a computer science professor and author who writes about productivity, focus and deep work.

Unlike traditional meditation, productive meditation pairs focused concentration on a specific problem or goal with a simple physical activity that keeps your body occupied without demanding much mental effort. The movement helps you stay alert and engaged while leaving your attention free for sustained thinking. You might prepare a talk while taking a walk, outline a presentation during your morning jog or work through the structure of an article while taking a shower. The key is to choose an activity familiar enough that you can do it almost automatically.

In his book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Newport describes developing the technique while working as a postdoctoral associate at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He lived in Boston and regularly walked to his job in Cambridge, Mass. Newport decided that rather than use his commute to zone out, he would use it to supercharge his ability to think deeply. 

Productive meditation works somewhat like mindfulness meditation. However, instead of repeatedly returning your attention to your breath or physical sensations, you return it to the problem you’ve chosen to solve. When your thoughts start to wander, say to an email you need to send or an errand you need to run, you notice the distraction and redirect your focus.

The Benefits of Productive Meditation

The immediate payoff of productive meditation is that it allows you to make progress on a challenging problem without adding another session at your desk. I’ve found that spending part of my daily walks outlining blog posts or mentally composing article pitches helps me work more quickly and effectively when I sit down at my computer to write.

But Newport argues that the more important benefit is training your mind to concentrate deeply for longer periods. Each time your attention wanders and you bring it back to the problem at hand, you are practicing directing your focus rather than allowing the next thought, notification or impulse to take over. Think of productive meditation as like a workout for your attention.

“By forcing you to resist distraction and return your attention repeatedly to a well-defined problem, it helps strengthen your distraction-resisting muscles,” Newport writes, “and by forcing you to push your focus deeper and deeper on a single problem, it sharpens your concentration.”

Strengthening your ability to focus is especially valuable in today’s workplace, where our attention is constantly pulled away by emails, notifications, meetings and unexpected interruptions from colleagues. Psychologist Gloria Mark has found that the average amount of time people spend focused on a single screen before shifting their attention has fallen to about 47 seconds. And once that focus is broken, research suggests it can take more than 20 minutes to fully return to the original task. Productive meditation helps rebuild your capacity for sustained attention.

Getting Started With Productive Meditation

If you’re ready to give productive meditation a try, here are some tips for getting started. Best of all, you don’t need special equipment, apps or a meditation cushion.

1. Choose one problem before you start.

Productive meditation works best when you have a specific, constructive question to think through. This isn’t the time to ruminate on a frustrating situation, replay an argument or run through your to-do list. Instead, focus on something that can move you forward in a personal or professional goal.

For example:

• How should I organize an upcoming presentation?
• What should the next section of an article cover?
• What is the next step I need to take on a project?

The more specific the question, the better. “Think about my presentation” is too broad. “What are the three main ideas I want my audience to remember?” gives your mind a clear target. 

2. Pick an activity that doesn’t require much thought.

Walking is probably the simplest choice. Jogging may work if it’s an easy, familiar route. You might also experiment with productive meditation while doing repetitive household tasks such as folding laundry or washing dishes.

It’s also important to keep in mind that you don’t need to turn every walk or shower into a productivity session. The brain also benefits from having periods of rest and mind wandering. Newport recommends practicing productive meditation two or three times a week. I’ve found that even 10 to 15 minutes a few times a week is enough to benefit from the practice.

3. Bring your attention back when it wanders.

One of the hardest parts of productive meditation is keeping your attention on a single problem. You might begin by thinking about the opening of your presentation and, several minutes later, realize you’re mentally composing an email or wondering what you’re going to make for dinner.

That’s completely normal. Notice where your mind went, then gently return to your original question. You don’t have to criticize yourself for getting distracted. The return to focus is the exercise.

4. Give your thinking some structure.

Rather than simply turning a problem over in your mind, Newport recommends working through it in stages. Start by reviewing the key information you need to keep in mind, then focus on one specific question.

If you’re planning a presentation, for example, you might remind yourself of your main message and the points you want your audience to remember, then ask, How should I open? Once you arrive at an answer, briefly review what you figured out before moving to the next question.

Think of it as a simple cycle: review what you know, tackle one question, summarize your progress and decide what to think about next. This helps keep your meditation focused and moves your thinking forward.

5. Watch out for “looping.”

A common challenge Newport identifies is looping. This happens when you repeatedly think about the parts you already figured out rather than diving deeper. I caught myself doing this while thinking through an upcoming blog post. I had already worked out the introduction in my head, but instead of moving on, I kept mentally rewriting and replaying it. It felt productive because I was still thinking about the article. But in reality, I was stuck.

When you notice this happening, Newport recommends acknowledging it: I must be in a loop. Then deliberately move to the next unresolved question. In my case, that meant stopping myself from polishing the introduction and asking, What should the next section accomplish? That helped me get out of the loop and push my thinking forward again.

Productive meditation won’t eliminate distraction from your life. But over time, those small stretches of focused thinking can help strengthen something increasingly rare and valuable: your ability to think deeply.