Mindful of deadlines? Try a little mindfulness

Last week, with a handful of deadlines to meet, my Mac decided to die on me. And so did my mobile. No nurturing, no magical combination of keys and no tech-savvy friend could nurse the laptop back to life (the iPhone was less dead and was restored but lost data). The Apple Genius Bars throughout London are so booked up these weeks leading to Christmas, they are now sending customers elsewhere  – proof that even technology suffers festive fatigue.

Having backed up most of my work – as a freelance journalist, I am mindful of the importance of this – I still had half-written drafts sitting on my desktop. I also have InDesign and Photoshop programmes installed in that portable office of mine, along with other much-used and all-essential pages, easily found with bookmarks. It throws me off my track and my reaction happens in clearcut stages:

•         Disbelief
•         Panic
•         Anger and tears
•         Desperation and more tears
•       Serenity – and a more balanced perspective on the whole affair. 

The latter is a new discovery – an emotion I have only recently mastered in times of small stresses. And, ironically, this whole computer debacle happens the day after meeting a lady called Ros Edlin, a stress management expert, who advises dentists on how best to cope with it when it rocks their working lives.

Ros and I meet at the wonderful bar, Caravan, in King’s Cross, having corresponded via email, and then with phone calls, regarding a health article in which I’d referenced her work. We hit it off immediately and find we have a lot in common – and I find she speaks a lot of common sense. We share a passion for traditional methods of communicating, both believing that face to face meetings are better than picking up a phone and that picking up a phone beats emails, hands down. Yes, new technology is a wonderful thing – I embrace it daily – but you do need to shoehorn in a little bit of old-school attitude in this big, new world. Good, solid communication – in its most basic form – is, after all, the foundation on which we build strong working relationships. Anything else is just window dressing, furniture, accessories and bunting, added to enhance and used because we are time poor and technology rich.

But last week, I was tech poor – and, suddenly, time rich. With a working life ruled by MacBook Pro, iPad and iPhone, I had to give in gracefully. And so, I deleted PANIC and edited my emotions and switched off. Like my computer, I downed tools and had a day of – what Ros told me was important for us all – mindfulness that can make us change the way we feel, think and act. 

As I walk my two hounds for two hours, taking in the world of winter in all its glory, I roll back some 17 hours to our shared pizza and recall her words about work-life balance, the stresses of our 21st-century lives and how becoming more aware of the present moment means noticing the sights, smells, sounds and tastes as well as the thoughts and feelings one is experiencing. 

Having just read Richard Flanagan’s account of the atrocities faced by PoWs in his award-winning book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, I am acutely aware of how lucky I am that it is only my laptop that’s broken and in need of nurture and repair.

Mindfulness helps us enjoy the world more and understand ourselves better and, surely, being aware of our reactions is one step to improving our mental state? 

Let’s face it, when I’m lying dead, nobody is going to recall my deadlines, are they?

• For more about Ros Edlin, visit www.stresswatch.co.uk