You may have heard before that some people use meditation to increase their focus and to help them clear their minds. This is true, it does work well for a lot of people. However, if you’re trying to do something specific with your focus or creativity, you probably won’t benefit as much from a random generic meditation class.
Instead, you should find a method that works for you to help you boost those specific things that you need. Typically, meditation involves cutting out all distractions and completely clearing your mind.
You shouldn’t be thinking about anything whatsoever during it, allowing your mind to go entirely blank. This helps people destress and relax, because they’re not thinking about all the things they have to worry about.
However, while this is helpful for that, it might not be as conducive to helping you focus or figure out a project. You should instead try more purposeful meditation, where instead of having your mind go blank, you focus on one thing and one thing only.
By clearing your mind of all other distractions, except for the project at hand, you’re going to be able to completely focus on that and come up with much better solutions. Ideally, this would be accomplished in a space where you’re free of any noises, obnoxious sights, or people trying to get your attention.
There aren’t many places that would fit this bill perfectly, so just work with what you’ve got. The most important thing should be to not have people interrupting you, so if you can get to a space like that, even if it does have errant sounds and sights, you should still be able to focus well.
You might end up finding that different things help you more or less while you’re meditating. Try experimenting a little bit. You might not be able to focus in dead silence, so you might have some ambient nature sounds playing through some headphones.
You might want the lights up or down, and you might want to keep your eyes open or closed. It’s different for everyone, so try a little bit of everything at first to see what helps.
The goal of purposeful meditation is for you to be able to direct all of your energy and thoughts toward one single goal, which ought to make the whole process more efficient. For most people, this is worth a try, but don’t be upset if it doesn’t work for you. A handful of people don’t focus well under meditation conditions, so you might find it’s simply not right for you.
