Writing (and working) around the monkey mind

Monkey mind, or xin’yuan, is the Buddhist term for a restless and disordered mind. Often the target of directed meditation, one’s monkey mind is the force that, unbidden and without direction, drags your brain in a million places at once without giving you the space to be productive with any of those directions.

Picture yourself at work, on a day with a dozen projects and two dozen daily upkeep tasks to accomplish, all before heading home to chores and whatever you need to clean up before beginning again the next day. Thinking about all of this at once is often overwhelming, and many times our brains will cycle rapidly, almost at random, between these lists of tasks, causing our trains of thought to scatter and derail.

This instinct to try and address everything at once is powerful, but oftentimes is more of a hindrance to productivity than a help, unlike true multi-tasking. This begins to touch on what we mean when we talk about the Monkey Mind.

What is the monkey mind?

The concept of the Monkey Mind has been part of Buddhist teachings since as early as the fifth century, describing the scattered state of unregulated thought in an untrained mind. In the modern age, with technology exposing us to hundreds of stimuli our bodies and brains may not expect, society and our occupations making dozens of demands on us that are equally as difficult to anticipate, it comes as no surprise that we continue to experience this feeling of distraction and restless creativity in our daily lives.

Ally with the monkey mind

Tempting as it may seem to simply cut off contact with this distracting influence, it’s actually more productive to channel that sense of distraction, though this does take some effort. Take time out of your day, even just three minutes when you feel the urge to split your attention, to provide your brain with something to actively manage. Focus entirely on one action or aspect. Most commonly, this is done with breathing, but you can train your brain to hone in on any one thing. It’s okay, of course, if your brain wanders, especially if you’re just beginning. Allow that to happen, then bring your focus back to your original task.

The objective of training your brain in this way is to figure out a means of using your brain’s excess energy to balance itself out, and get yourself to a point where the extraneous focus points fade out, leaving you free to clear out your real daily tasks, one by one, without distraction. As you improve, you’ll be able to multitask this trained activity with your normal work, and integrate it into your routine.

Utilize, Don’t Distract

One of the perils to avoid when interacting with the Monkey Mind in this way.is the tendency for the tasks you train your mind with to overwhelm your focus on your original objectives. For this reason, it’s important to choose training tasks that you’ll eventually be able to accomplish without diverting too much of your energy away from your objectives, like regulated breathing or following the beat pattern of music, while still creating a presentation or writing a paper.

Training tasks to avoid include things that lend themselves to being multifaceted, or require additional processing power from your brain. It’s also important that you avoid things that give you too much of a rush for completing them, or a sense of failure for not accomplishing them, to stay away from the highs and lows that contribute to an addictive cycle and prevent you from returning to your real-world agenda. Instead, focus on single-item tasks that don’t require investment and won’t be hard to recover from missing a beat, like the rhythm of your breath or a piece of instrumental music. Note that it doesn’t have to be slow classical or new-age music, if that’s not your thing, so long as you can lose yourself in it temporarily, and find your way back after.

When you have successfully allied with your monkey mind, you’ll find mechanisms for working around many day-to-day distractions, In the interests of finding the technique that works for you, don’t be afraid to experiment with different types of activities to train your mind to. Finding the right technique can help you unlock a more productive side of yourself, as well as channel some of the less productive energy you have in a more constructive direction.