Meditation will make
you more productive. It might sound strange that sitting still and
doing nothing for a period of time will make you more productive,
but it's true. Before diving into what to do, it's worth going over
why you should meditate in the first place.
I've combined benefits observed by neurological research with my
own personal observations over the three years I've been meditating
(which are slightly less scientific). Some benefits of
meditation include:
- Meditation has great calming effects. Research
has shown that EEG activity actually decreases during meditation.
Meditation also helps you to recharge so you have more energy
throughout the day.
- The practice increases the blood flow in your brain, and
according to one neurophysiologist, "rewires the circuitry in your brain".
- It's been proven that people who meditate need less sleep.
- Meditation makes your brain age slower and increases the amount of grey
matter in your brain. Grey matter is responsible for muscle
control, seeing, hearing, memory, emotions, and
speech.
- Meditation makes it much easier to focus and
achieve flow, that feeling of being completely
immersed and energized by something. It also allows you to
procrastinate less, and get more done in the same amount of
time.
- The practice has been even shown to boost students' test scores (by 11% in
one study)!
- Meditation helps your mind defragment your thoughts so you can make better
sense of them, and step away from them to gain perspective.
Needless to say, there are a ton of benefits to adopting a
regular meditation practice, and these are just a few of them.