Are you hitting creative burnout? Trouble achieving your goals? Learn 5 creative productivity hacks from Zen masters to help you work more efficiently and creatively.
When it comes to being more productive and creative, there’s a lot to learn from Zen masters and philosophy. At its heart, Zen is about discovering your true nature to be a more productive being. Throughout history, Zen schools and masters have developed different productivity hacks and lessons to help practitioners not only reach their goal of enlightenment and inner peace but also overcome challenges like burnout. These Zen productivity hacks share similar elements to what science has caught up to, with a new focus on supporting one’s well-being to be more productive instead of the extremes seen in hustle culture.
Productivity is the effectiveness of a person’s productive effort. For too long, productivity in hustle culture has been about pushing the limits of hard work, but research shows this does more harm than good. If you want to be more productive, science says you need more deliberate practice or mindfulness to manage your time and energy, breaks to spark creative thinking and refuel attention and focus, self-awareness and understanding to work in your rhythms, and other practices that support well-being. Learn how to boost your productivity using Zen principles and lessons that combine wellness principles with effective work habits.
Beginner's Mind Shunryu Suzuki
Cultivate a Growth Mindset to Overcome Failure and Discover Creative Opportunities
“If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.”
– Shunryu Suzuki
The beginner’s mind, or shoshin in Japanese, means you approach the world through the eyes of a beginner to rediscover the joy of curiosity and openness to experience.
As you become more experienced in your creative field, it can be easy to fall into a fixed mindset cultivated through overconfidence and comfort. This fixed mindset can lead to less creative thinking, more mistakes, anxiety, and other challenges that affect productivity and well-being. To overcome it, Zen masters tell us to cultivate a beginner’s mind, also known as a growth mindset in the West.
The paradox of this idea is that it’s easy for the mind to become closed to new ideas if you believe you already know what there is to know. The more you know about a subject, the more likely you are to close your mind to new perspectives, further learning, and opportunities for innovation.
If you want to stay productive and support a creative life that flows and thrives, empty your cup and cultivate a beginner’s mind.
A Beginner’s Mind Is
- Open to new experiences and perspectives.
- Always curious and ready to learn.
- Being mindful and present in the moment.
- Letting go of expectations, assumptions, and judgments that block growth.
- Embracing change.
- Seeing mistakes and failures as opportunities.
- Getting outside your comfort zone.
Tips
- Befriend Failure – Embrace challenges and constraints.
- Reflect on failures to learn the keys to success.
- Normalize failure by reading how everyone fails, including famous creative minds.
- Find Gaps in Your Knowledge – Create daily habits of learning something new.
- Discover new hobbies.
- Build a regular reading habit.
- Cultivate Mindfulness – Practice meditation to foster non-judgemental observation and mindfulness.
- Use your breath to stay present.
- Clear your mind before focusing on a difficult task.
- Develop Openness – Combat a closed mindset with habits that help you open up.
- Say yes to new experiences.
- Travel and follow curiosity.
- Practice Discomfort – Build new connections and spark creative thinking by putting yourself in new experiences and environments.
- Mix up your habits and routines.
- Change your environment.
- Learn From Others – No matter your position or experience, there’s always something new to learn from other people.
- Focus on Growth – Track your progress and practice gratitude.
- Find insights from your journey of growth.
- Keep a journal to seek out perspectives and understanding.
Meditation in Action Hakuin Ekaku
Cultivate Mindfulness to Be Present in Every Moment to Achieve Flow and Fuel Creative Energy for Better Productivity
“Meditation in action is endlessly more important than meditation in stillness.”
– Hakuin Ekaku
In Zen, meditation is the beginning and the end. When one begins their training, they start with the basic elements of meditation by trying to remove all distractions to calm the mind and train it on how to let go, but eventually, the true purpose is to turn everything into meditation.
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t still practice normal sitting meditation. The lesson is to take what you learn from sitting meditation and apply mindfulness to every action.
How to Make Everything A Meditation
- Return to Your breath – Return to your center when your mind begins to wander.
- Let Go – Focus on what you can control and let go of the rest.
- Pay Attention to Your Thoughts – Stay focused on what’s productive and beneficial.
- Use Your Five Senses – Stay present through your senses of the moment.
Tips
- Slow Down – Enjoy the process and be deliberate and thoughtful in all your actions.
- Focus On One Thing At A Time – Multitasking is just another form of mind wandering. Practice staying present with one task.
- Learn more about meditation and creative ways to meditate to boost creativity and productivity.
- Set Boundaries – Manage work and rest by setting boundaries such as screen time and emails to be more present and less distracted.
- Stop and Observe – When the mind begins to race, and tasks build up and create anxiety, stop and observe your thoughts and feelings, then let them go before returning to work.
Five Gatekeepers of Speech Joan Halifax
A Zen Tool for Appropriate Communication Based on the Teachings of Buddha
“Compassion may be defined as the capacity to be attentive to the experience of others, to wish the best for others, and to sense what will truly serve others.”
– Joan Halifax
Joan Halifax is an American Zen Buddhist teacher, anthropologist, ecologist, civil rights activist, and author of several books. In her book, Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet, she shares an inspiring and powerful productivity and life lesson on effective communication.
In this hyper-connected world, it’s strange how poor communication skills have become, resulting in our treatment of others. To reclaim this vital skill and cultivate empathy and self-care, Halifax created “The Five Gatekeepers of Speech.”
This Zen method is about creating a foundation for connection and care. With how often disrespect and disparagement show up in everyday life, from the home to the workplace, the Five Gatekeepers of Speech are questions to ask yourself before you open your mouth to ensure you’re coming from a positive place of connection and care.
The Five Gatekeepers of Speech
Before speaking, ask yourself:
- Is it true?
- Is it kind?
- Is it beneficial?
- Is it necessary?
- Is it the right time?
Use these questions to consider whether what you’re about to say is necessary and if it serves in making a situation better.
Tips
- Seek Stillness – Practice meditation and mindfulness to become more aware and present when communicating with others.
- Cultivate Curiosity – Ask questions and become curious about others to not only improve communication skills but also strengthen the creative skill of curiosity.
- Embrace Openness – You never know what can inspire a good idea, so be open to all possibilities. Shunryu Suzuki famously said, “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”
- Learn more creative communication and collaboration tips from these creative books.
Embody Your Goals Dōgen
Don’t Separate Yourself From the Destination – Practice Is Itself Enlightenment
“Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.”
– Dōgen
How often have you set a goal only to lose motivation and give up?
At the beginning of every new year, countless people set goals like these, and even if they’re making progress, the destination can seem unattainable and lead to failure and other creative blocks. The more this happens, the more you can hurt self-esteem, well-being, productivity, and creativity.
This is why it’s so important to learn how to set and manage productive goal setting.
In Zen, enlightenment can seem like the highest form of an unattainable goal, especially with how the West has romanticized its meaning.
Dōgen Zenji, a Zen master and founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan, might have become aware of this problem when he created the key concept of his Zen practice 修證一如 (shushō-ittō/shushō-ichinyo) known as “oneness of practice-enlightenment.”
Anyone that has practiced meditation has experienced the hopeless thought of how hard it may seem to reach a point of inner peace and clarity of mind. For Dōgen, the challenging practice of meditation and the end goal of enlightenment is the same. Even if you’ve just started practicing Zen, you’re already practicing the end goal of enlightenment. The end and the beginning are the same.
How can you apply this to be more productive in achieving your goals?
This is the Zen explanation for the common saying, “It’s the journey, not the destination.” There is no gap between practice and enlightenment. There is no gap between starting a goal and reaching the destination. The answer is to embody the destination and sustain the continuous practice of the process.
In Zen, enlightenment (the final goal) is the realization that the truth or your Buddha nature was already there inside yourself, so the question is,
If you are already Buddha, then how do you act?
Use this mindset when approaching your biggest goals to narrow the gap between practice and destination.
Ask yourself, what does it feel like when I achieve my goal?
Embody Your Goals
- Visualize the Destination – Use meditation and visualization to envision what it feels like when you achieve your goals.
- What habits will be there?
- What knowledge do you need to know?
- What will you stop doing when you reach your goal?
- What does it feel like? How can you create that feeling?
- Cultivate Your Mindset – Turn your goal into a mindset based on your values, motivation, and continual process. Align your current self with your future self.
- Embrace the Process – Everything is a process. From beginning to end, there will be moments where you falter. These are not failures. These are steps in the process. Stay mindful in the continual process of improvement.
Tips
- Practice Gratitude – Be aware of where you are in your journey toward a goal and appreciate every step as part of the destination
- Embrace Mindfulness – Be present in your practice and work, focusing on the smaller steps and milestones
- Observe Feelings – What will it feel like when you achieve your goal? What does it feel like when you’re enjoying the process?
- Learn more creative goal-setting tips.
Kinhin "Walking Meditation" Bodhidharma
Get Ideas Flowing by Turning Everything Into a Mindful Meditation Practice Starting With Walking
“Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.”
– Bodhidharma
The origins of Zen date back to the early 5th century when an Indian monk named Bodhidharma traveled to China to share the teachings of the Buddha and establish meditation practices.
Eventually, he would reach the Shaolin Temple, where he would teach some physical exercises to help the monks maintain their health during their intensive meditation training. These lessons would later become Shaolin kung fu and productive practices like kinhin or walking meditation.
Kinhin (經行, jīngxíng) is a Chinese phrase that means “to walk straight back and forth.”
The practice differs from Zen school to Zen school, but the idea is to carry on the mindfulness from meditative work into a break where you move your body and cultivate a mind/body connection. When it comes to being productive, no matter your field, the most essential practice is to take breaks.
In the creative process, the incubation phase is considered a break from where the problem has been internalized, and the creative must step away for ideas to incubate and lead to aha moments or eureka connections that lead to exciting creative work.
In Zen schools, especially during intensive training periods, kinhin (walking meditation) is a practice to help monks take a break from the stillness practices to get the body moving and deepen our connection between mind and body.
This mindful practice is supposed to be both a break and a way to bring meditative awareness into all activities.
Kinhin Instructions
- Hold an upright, relaxed posture.
- Be aware of your body and distribute weight equally as you move forward.
- You can keep your hands in the traditional shashu position and maintain a soft and unfocused gaze on what’s in front of you.
- Maintain relaxed breathing that flows with the rhythm of your walking/running. Traditionally it’s recommended to exhale as the ball of your foot touches the ground and inhale as the body relaxes and begins to step forward.
- Walk/Run in a circle (traditionally clockwise) around a building, room, or safe space with few distractions.
- Retain and cultivate mindfulness on the harmony between breathing, your body moving, and the ground beneath your feet.
- Start with 20 minutes.
Tips
- Problem-Solving – If you’re taking a break from a problem, maintain light awareness of it but not complete focus.
- Let Your Breath Be Your Anchor – if your mind gets distracted, count your breaths, be compassionate, and return focus.
- Smiling – If you’re frustrated, cultivate a kind mindset and relaxation by smiling as you walk/run.
- Ground Yourself in The Present Moment – Walk barefoot, take in the moment, and free your mind of the past or future and be here now.
- Not Too Fast, Not Too Slow – This shouldn’t work. It’s a break, so find the right pace for you that’s relaxed and enjoyable.
- Learn more about meditation and creative ways to meditate to boost creativity and productivity.
Zach is an international writer, photographer, filmmaker, martial artist, and creator of Creative Enso, the Zen art of creative living. His goal is to empower and inspire creatives to live healthier, happier, and more creative lifestyles.
