Take A Pause

I was never really one for New Year’s resolutions. I always thought of them as arbitrary, and a failure to keep up with a resolution just resulted in no longer striving for improvement at all. I still like to take the New Year as an opportunity to reflect on my life – what I like and what I might want to try to improve. After recently reading Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday, I got thinking about how my life might be better with more pause.

Sometimes, I switch between tasks and activities so quickly and without deliberation that I find myself doing something that is not even the best use of my time, or the day just zips by virtually unnoticed. I think many people have this feeling. To help slow down the day and possibly even become more intentional about what I spend my time on, I want to try to implement strategic pauses into my day.

My vision of taking a pause is something like a very, very short meditation session. It is just a few seconds where I stop what I am doing or take a moment after finishing a task or activity to just reflect on my current state and what I want my next action to be. This gives me time to think about what I did, how I am feeling, why I am feeling something, and what the best next thing to do is.

Using these pauses to separate activities or tasks should hopefully allow my mind to switch and reset my attention to that new task. Being more conscious of switching to a new task might help reduce the frequency of attention switching that is so detrimental to focus. Sometimes a longer pause between tasks can improve the quality in which I complete that task, kind of like when you are suddenly able to solve a problem after a short walk outside.

Alongside hopefully improving focus and the intentionality with which I spend my time, I also hope to use these pauses to enjoy how I spend my time. On days with lots of things going on, whether relatively monotonous or super adventurous, days can go by very fast. Consciously reflecting on what I am actually doing and experiencing and how that makes me feel might slow things down a little and help me appreciate the little (and big) things in life more.

I see the implementation of these pauses as kind of a habit that I want to grow. It may be difficult at first to mentally and physically stop what you are doing and just reflect, but over time I hope it becomes natural. If the Stoics are to be believed, this habit could unlock better decisions, more focus, and a happier life. There appears to be plenty of benefits such a simple habit can have and something I am willing to try to foster this year.