When Mindfulness Doesn’t Work
When Mindfulness Doesn’t Work
By James Porter
Mindfulness, which is often defined as “present moment awareness" gets a lot of praise these days — and for good reason. Staying in the present moment helps quiet the mind, reduces anxiety, improves focus, and reduces careless mistakes that occur when our minds wander.
There’s one big exception to the advice around always staying in the present moment that most people don’t consider: planning. Planning requires you to leave the present moment on purpose. Check out the diagram above and you’ll see that planning falls into Quadrant 2 of the Time Management Matrix. One reason why people spend so little time planning, is that it isn’t urgent. Thus we spend a lot of time in quadrant one putting out fires.
But planning lowers stress. No question about it. When you take the time to anticipate what might go wrong and prepare for it, you prevent minor problems from turning into major problems.
Let me give you a simple example. About six months ago, I replaced the black ink cartridge in my Brother inkjet printer. I usually keep a couple of sets on hand and order new ones maybe twice a year. When I put in that last black cartridge, I remember thinking, I’ve got about six months before I’ll need another one. But I also imagined a scenario: What if, when I run out, I’m rushing to print something I really need right away?
That little thought — that quick mental step out of the present moment — prompted me to order an extra set of cartridges right then.
Fast forward six months. On the morning I was leaving for San Francisco, I needed to print a video script and a few checks. Sure enough, the black ink ran out. The printer shut itself down mid-job, and for a moment, my stress level spiked. I thought, Great, here we go — another last-minute disaster.
Then I opened my supply closet — and there they were: a brand-new set of ink cartridges, waiting exactly where my past self had planned for them to be.
I couldn’t help but laugh. My “prior self” had saved my “present self” from stress.
Planning is such a simple thing to do, and it doesn’t take much time. But because it’s not urgent, we tend not to do it. We tell ourselves we’ll get around to it later. And “later” is usually when the printer stops working, the car battery dies, or the airline website crashes just before check-in.
Mindfulness teaches us to stay rooted in the present, but planning asks us to step out of it — briefly — to take care of our future selves. The trick is knowing when to do which.
In truth, mindfulness and planning aren’t opposites. They’re partners. Mindfulness helps us stay calm enough to think clearly, and planning helps us prevent the chaos that makes mindfulness so hard to achieve in the first place.
So the next time someone tells you to “just stay in the moment,” remember: sometimes, the moment calls for a little foresight.
If you spend even a few minutes a week in Quadrant 2 — planning, preparing, and anticipating — you’ll spend far less time in Quadrant 1, putting out fires. Because when you take care of your future moments, your present moments get a whole lot more peaceful.
That’s when mindfulness truly works — because you’ve given it the space to.
Erica Tuminski
Author