Mindfulness for Worker Courses, Career Growth Training

Everyone knows that mindfulness can help supercharge your brain at work, and most people have heard of the Pomodoro method and other forms of time blocking. This webinar brings these two techniques together to help you get more done with less stress so you can finish work each day confident in what you've accomplished.

The basic principle underlying this webinar is that the mind, like our physical muscles, works hard but then needs time to rest. In this distracted, multitasking culture we often try to do several things at a time, skip breaks, and power through long days (and often nights) behind a computer. This webinar gives you the tools you need to break out of all those habits and start monotasking, leaving space in your day for your brain to recharge, and putting work down at the end of a productive day.

Let's talk about multitasking first. Lots of people believe they're more productive when they multitask, so they're often on a video call but checking email at the same time, or they'll take a phone call as they book a flight. Research has definitively shown that humans are terrible at multitasking, but we're good at fooling ourselves into believing that we do it well.

In fact, we're more likely to make mistakes when we work that way, and it can cost us up to 40% more time to multitask than to focus on one task at a time (https://www.apa.org/research/action/multitask). In short, if you want to grow professionally, you owe it to yourself to learn to mono-task.

Next let's talk about rest for the mind. Sometimes we'll get into a flow state, and we're so absorbed in our work that an hour or more could pass without our noticing. But often when we try to plow through a large block of work, our attention becomes blurrier as we go until we find ourselves watching cat videos with no idea what work to tackle next. One solution to this problem of ineffective work is to take short breaks, and when we unplug from screens during those breaks, our minds have time to rest, integrate what we've been doing, and maybe even come up with innovative solutions to the problems we've been working on.

There are two methods that target the problems of multitasking and resting the mind for peak performance: mindfulness and the Pomodoro timer. I'll integrate them for you during this webinar with a method I call the mindful Pomodoro.

Using this technique, you work for 25 minutes, then take a five-minute break during which you unplug from screens and fold in contemplative movement or mindfulness. After four of these work-rest sessions, you take a longer break of around 15 minutes, and then the cycle starts over again.

The magic of the Pomodoro method is that each 25-minute work cycle is focused on one specific goal. If you're writing during that work session, then you don't check email or get up for a cup of coffee.

You'll have break times to wander, chat, meditate, and otherwise refresh yourself. The 5- or 15-minute breaks are perfect for folding meditation and movement into your daily routine, and you'll be amazed at how much benefit a few mindful minutes can have for your workday.

Please join this webinar to supercharge your workday and add hours of productivity back into your week.

If you're a knowledge worker - someone whose job is based on your skills, expertise, creativity, and ability to make judgements - then your flourishing depends on your ability to use your mind. You probably know about some of the "best practices" in productivity, like mindfulness, time blocking, and taking small breaks, but if you're not using them, you're missing out on the productivity and value you could be bringing to your work.

This webinar focuses on two key tools for productivity superpowers, the Pomodoro timer and mindfulness, and I'll show you how to use them together for a system that's easy to use. The Pomodoro timer is a system in which you alternate between 25-minute periods of focus on a task and short (5 minute) or long (15 minute) breaks. I'll teach you how to unplug during the Pomodoro break times, we'll do short sessions of meditation and contemplative movement, and you'll make up your own action plan for implementing what you learn in the webinar.

With all the books, apps, and other resources available now on mindfulness, why should you pay for this webinar? First, there's no substitute for live interaction with an instructor as you figure out what version of these techniques will work for you in real life, and if you were going to implement these changes on your own, you would have done that already.

Finally, you'll get resources (like guided meditations and links to videos) to support your new best practices after the webinar is over. The benefits of working smarter include less fatigue and burnout, greater mental focus, and higher-quality work. Please join us to take your work routine to the next level.

Speaker ProfileClaire Villarreal, PhD, works to adapt traditional Buddhist teachings for the demands of modern life. She’s made trips to Thailand, India, and Nepal totaling over two years to study and meditate in traditional settings in those countries, with pilgrimage to Tibet. She began meditating daily in 1997 in the Theravada and Vajray?na traditions, and her teachers include Anne Klein, PhD, Harvey Aronson, PhD, Lama Tenzin Samphel, and Kamalo Bhikkhu. She’s spent two and a half months in various degrees of retreat in the Thai forest tradition, four months in group retreats in India and Nepal, and cumulatively over a year of solitary retreat since 2007.

A former Programs Director for Dawn Mountain Center for Tibetan Buddhism and former board member for Compassionate Houston, she earned her doctorate in Religious Studies from Rice University with a dissertation and publications exploring contemplative ways of knowing and how they speak to the contemporary academic study of mysticism. These days she’s a member of the GenX dharma teachers community, and she recently received a grant from the Hemera Foundation to write and podcast about what Tibetan teachings on reincarnation can teach us about living well.