Finding Presence in a World of “To-Do” Lists

@mendezmendezart

When I was at Vipassana in the isolated hills of Tasmania, I had a strange new state I experienced. It was presence.

All the time before that, when I read about the importance of being present or watched a clip on social media on the quality of being present, I had foolishly assumed I would internalize it.

On paper, it made perfect sense.

By description, presence is being here. NOW. In this moment. Doing whatever you are doing. Being whatever you are being. With no thought or anticipation of the future. With no replay of the past. One might think

“But there’s so much to do. There’s so much to anticipate. I’ve got groceries. I’ve got two meetings. I’ve got to take my dog out for a walk. There is so much to do. How can I not think about all that lies ahead?”

Logically, you don’t help yourself by anticipating the things you know you have to do. Knowing you still ought to do them, you have two choices — either to engage in those activities with anxiety or with calmness. The only consideration is the mental state you bring to these tasks. Tasks still remain. So yes, theoretically, presence is the sensible state to be in.

However, I had never been embraced by the laps of presence until I went to Vipassana. The practicality of this state had never struck me until I was stripped off of everything I “had to do” in life. At Vipassana, the only activities I did were to meditate & eat. With nowhere to rush and nowhere to be, I fell into the laps of presence.

I hadn’t realized this until I was working out in my room on the second day and I sighed during a tough movement & it struck me at how present I was in my body. All those workouts back at home in Melbourne with my YouTube instructor, Nicole, telling me to just breath didn’t even come close to the way I breathed here. It felt like the moments had expanded.

I keep going back to this feeling because it was like nothing I had ever felt before. I go back to it today because I’ve fallen into my old pattern of having too many things to execute and too little time to do them and squeezed in between is my mental state of agitation & scattered focus.

The symptoms of this mental state are as below:

1. Scattered focus — Not being able to fully focus on the task at hand, constantly thinking about the next thing
2. Agitation — Not being able to embrace the little wins (ie. getting 40% of the work done) but constantly thinking about what’s left (ie. 60% yet to be done)
3. Impractical to-do lists — Task lists that are long and set up for failure purely because they are long, leading you to think you haven’t accomplished enough in the day and then strengthen this belief with each passing day
4. Prioritization — Poor prioritization given the mark of good prioritization is short & crisp task lists that are realistic, narrow down the most important work & get done by the end of the day.
5. Feeling unaccomplished — Having the sense that you haven’t done enough/accomplished enough.
6. Inability to enjoy the little things — When your cat comes to rub herself on you or the sun is shining just perfectly on your face, you are unable to recognize these moments of joy because you think you’ve got bigger fish to fry.

If you feel some or all of the symptoms, join the club :)

Given, that I have been fortunate enough to have experienced the polarized ends of this state — ie. constant agitation & fully present, I want to explore the difference between the two states to help me understand how I can bring more presence to my life.

Before I begin, I want to stress why I want to invite more presence in my life. Sometimes, you hear the words, “Be Present” and the reason it doesn’t translate into action and we go back relatively quickly to our non-present patterns is because we barely stop to look into our own desires & motivations.

Why do we do what we do? Why do we spring into action? What motivates us? Why should we be present? What does it bring us, individually? Will it have a positive & MATERIAL impact on my life?

Studying ourselves and inspiring action in a way that speaks to our core selves is imperative, else, things like this usually have a way of fizzling out before you even know it. Even if things seem like general knowledge like the instruction of “Being Present”, it is, I believe, important to crack that instruction open to make sense of it for ourselves. Not just because the world says it’s the right thing to do. Or that spiritual leader says it. Or your friend says it.

It should be the right thing for you because you say so.

For myself, I want to train my mind to fully immerse in the activities we choose to engage in. I believe there is nothing else in life worth clutching onto except for the quality of being able to experience life. What else will I take to my grave except for the comfort of having fully experienced life the way it wanted me to experience it?

Secondly, I have seen the effects of not having my mind fully immersed in something. It’s a chaotic mental state which doesn’t feel good internally. However, when I’m fully immersed in something, I not only feel good internally but the quality of whatever I had engaged in is MUCH BETTER so it’s a win-win.

Thirdly, I want to be anchored to reality & not the reality my mind creates. When I’m present, I’m anchored to what I’m doing. When I’m not, I’m anchored to the bubble my mind sells me for “reality”.

Now that I have unearthed for myself why this is something that is so important for me, I want to understand what the differences were between the fully present state & the not-present/agitated state of today.

Too Many Things to Do

When I was at Vipassana, I had just two things to do. Eat at the sound of the gong & meditate. When I was stripped away of my task list and only had to focus on a couple of things for the day, I could fully embrace being in the moment because I had nowhere better to be after. When I was working out & felt so present, I only had to wait for the gong to go off which signalled my meditation time. There was nothing else to be done.

Conversely, today, I have a massive task-list for work and my own personal goals that I expect to achieve in the day. When I do one thing, I’m already thinking about how much time the next thing will take. These calculations usually lead me to become anxious about the work that’s yet to be done. I find myself doing everything with a sense of rush & scattered focus. I remind myself to be present but my mind is a few thousand kms ahead by then.

So it seems to me, cutting down the number of things you do in the day might be the trick to fall into the laps of presence. In today’s digital world, we are constantly on the pulse. It has created an alternative reality which in turn has created the illusion that we are always needed by the world. There are always things to be done. If you are not hyper-productive, what is your value… which brings me to the second difference.

Identification with Productivity

Given our era’s romanticization with productivity, one cannot help but fall into the trap of identifying oneself with being a productive member of the society. I am currently in that trap :)

Productivity in it’s purest sense is the fuel that leads humanity to evolve. In it’s true sense, it’s a powerful & extremely beneficial force for the society as a whole. However, I believe I might have misconstrued the definition in my own little microcosm of being. I have misconstrued it by focusing on the “quantity of things” and not the “quality of things” I engage in.

Productivity is almost a by-product of immersing yourself in something long enough that you become good & efficient at it. You have to do something long enough in order to become productive. If I look at the things I do in a day, I would immediately see that so many of them don’t contribute to productivity even. It’s just the notion of productivity I’m clinging to which isn’t in it’s true sense, productivity. Productivity by it’s definition should lead to efficient ways of doing things which means if you are constantly feeling like you’re doing too much, you haven’t become efficient at it, yet.

So while the identification with productivity is also worth looking further into given it reduces the essence of a human being to a mere means of production, it might be that the definition of productivity we might be clinging to is also the wrong one.

At Vipassana, I was solely identified with my sense of being. I was breathing and that’s all that mattered. I’m aware I can’t bring this to the modern world I am immersed in, however, I do believe there is a path that exists at the intersection of being a productive member of the society and your spiritual sense of being, whatever that might mean to you. Where a deeper sense of purpose in your own being co-exists with your motivation of being good at a worldly talent & both constantly feed on each other.

Digital Technology

If I was to write about this topic before, I would simply state it as a matter of fact that digital technologies lead us to become less present, more agitated and in a constant state of scattered focus. However, what matters to me now is the personal experience of facts before I can lay claim on them being the truth. For myself, I experienced it so wholly, the difference in my state of mind & body when I was stripped off of all technology. My heart was beating way more calmly (interlaced with the effects of meditation) and my mind was so clear. I could trace the origin of my thoughts that are usually hard to trace when caused by the clutter of social media. I felt this difference physiologically too when I sensed a headache as I got my phone back. I had to simply throw it away for some time due to the visible effect it had on my physical body.

When I came back home & fully integrated myself to life after a few days, my phone became an integral part of me, again. Today, I’m back to that state of constantly being lured by my phone, leading to a clutter of useless thoughts and a state of mind that’s more chaotic (with a slight improvement).

I witnessed first hand the effects of being wired to a phone. I see how the very edge of technology ie. ease of use (respect to all the engineers) is also a curse that conditions the habit of aimlessly checking your phone. It takes two clicks to enter the world of Instagram and invite all the thoughts & emotions that come with that world. The funny thing is, your mind doesn’t bloody know the difference between the real world & the digital world. So the thoughts & emotions you feel as a result of both are pretty much the same when the digital world is purely a make-believe world.

Think back to the time when you felt anxious because someone you saw on Instagram looked so successful or the time you felt so good because your friends appreciated your post on Instagram or when you felt isolated because a group of people went out to this amazing event that you weren’t a part of. All of these emotions are as real as though they’re caused by our immediate reality. So we have practically increased the frequency of all the emotions we are capable of feeling as a human being by participating in both the worlds. Viola! Now we have twice as many problems.

Given all of the above, I am in the process of devising ways to fall into the laps of presence again and stay there for longer each time.

1. Meditation — I’ve been meditating for some years now but you never really become good at meditation. It presents a constant challenge and that’s why it’s so necessary for me to sit my ass down & focus on my breath. I’ve surely increased the time steadily from 10–15 minutes to half an hour to an hour today. Bouts of meditation in between the day is something I’m working on given when my mind is super active, it helps me to ground it with focus on the breath.
2. Prioritization (Art of Doing Less) — Learn how to prioritize. Right now, I’m in the process of building out a structure on Notion that divides my workday into “Priority” and “BAU Tasks” and I’m learning how to limit my “Priority” for the day to two things at max (not there yet). I need longer spans of focus for things that actually matter & not jump from one thing to another just to tick off tasks that haven’t been thought through in their importance.
3. Efficiency — Where I find myself spending a lot of time on tasks that are tedious and don’t make to my priority list, I have to find a way to either dump them altogether or simply become more efficient at them. This could be where you explore AI, automation and all the cool things technology has given us to make life easier rather than harder.
4. Embrace your seasons — Knowing when you need rest can be one of the most essential skills to have given all of life has seasons and you’re no different. Tapping into your season can be essential in knowing when it’s time to push and time to lay back. I’m guilty of simply being ignorant to my seasons & constantly pushing myself regardless. I realize that it simply leads to burnout and the only person harmed is me. Therefore, I need to try and understand my inner pulse rather than the digital pulse.
5. Intention — With everything I do in the day, I want to be able to have a split second of setting the intention for everything that I put my energy into. Intention mobilizes energy and I’ve seen it first hand when I give my mind a clear intention, it races like a sports car however, without intention, it keeps bumping into rough corners.
6. Finding Activities That Bring a Deeper Sense of Purpose — There are activities I love doing in life that bring me back to my deeper sense of purpose like writing right now, reading, reflecting in my journal, embracing all the joys of life like spending time with my friends, Abhay, Cersei (my cat), walking in the park, having meaningful conversations with people, dancing, Kung Fu with my SiFu, brainstorming concepts of life and many many more.

All of my doing rests on my being therefore, taking care of my being is the number one thing I have to do. Maybe, I will ask you the same thing, how do you take care of your being?