The Problem with Meditating to Become More Productive

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“Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there,’ or being in the present but wanting to be in the future.” ~Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

I started learning yoga and meditation when I was eighteen years old, in the late nineties, in the car garage of one of the few yoga teachers in Puerto Rico. I took to it like a duck to water.

By the time I was twenty-five, I had spent months on Buddhist silent retreats, living in ashrams in the USA, India, and Burma.

Meditative practices and retreats provided me with great moments …

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“Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there,’ or being in the present but wanting to be in the future.” ~Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

I started learning yoga and meditation when I was eighteen years old, in the late nineties, in the car garage of one of the few yoga teachers in Puerto Rico. I took to it like a duck to water.

By the time I was twenty-five, I had spent months on Buddhist silent retreats, living in ashrams in the USA, India, and Burma.

Meditative practices and retreats provided me with great moments of insight and healing and allowed me to have profound realizations about the goodness of my nature, my connectedness to others, and life itself.

They gave me access to states of wisdom, deep compassion, and loving kindness and brought me back again and again to the sacredness of the present moment. They also helped me heal from a painful eating disorder I suffered from at the time.

I fell in love with the Buddha’s teachings. I went on a pilgrimage a couple of times through India, visiting the historical sites related to the Buddha. I also went ahead and visited Myanmar and Thailand, where I meditated in temples and met truly remarkable teachers and practitioners.

Something about the connection between mind and body that I discovered through insight practices, the astounding beneficial effects of concentration practices in calming the mind and getting some detachment from painful and intrusive thoughts, and the healing effects of loving-kindness practices had me fascinated with the teachings.

I then went on to get a master’s degree in Buddhist studies so that I could learn some of the ancient languages and go more in depth into the history and principles of Buddhism.

Yet, these experiences often took place in the midst of a frenzied lifestyle. I was, at times, working as a waitress, saving money so that I could go on one more retreat, or having various jobs on the side to finance my studies and travels.

It was often the case that as soon as I stood up from my cushion or left the retreats, I would be in the “getting things done” mode, going back into an agitated routine—as if the practices were there to make me more productive and to catapult me into a high-performance state, as if the peace was there to help me accomplish even more.

I remember my university days when, for weeks on end, I decided I wanted to meditate for three hours a day. I would rush through my day, turn down social invitations, and maximize the use of my time so that I could get my precious 180 minutes of silence.

I hope not so many people can relate to this, but I remember times when I would get home, drop the keys on the table, put on my meditation alarm clock, sit for sixty minutes, and hop up just in time for my next appointment. Needless to say, there were many days when those three meditation hours were not the most peaceful hours of my day.

Granted, I was young and a bit extreme, but this was before the advent of the smartphone. Thereafter, I would sprint from meditation to check all my messages and notifications, lacking the self-discipline or awareness to give myself space and time to integrate things. This habit went on well into my adult years.

Eventually, it started to be the other way around. The productive and achieving attitude I had outside of meditation periods started to infiltrate my spiritual practice, and I became determined and hurried to “reach the ultimate spiritual goal.” (Not quite sure what that was at the time—maybe becoming enlightened, or fully healed, or at least in a permanent state of equipoise… reaching nirvana if you would have allowed me to dream big.)

This really did NOT work very well. It was like trying to go down the river by swimming against the current. Not only was this not effective, but it actually became harmful—grinding my being into a stressful, achieving state for hours on end, guided by a sort of FOMO on enlightenment. I would finish some meditations agitated on good days and very overwhelmed on bad ones.

As it turns out, there are many good reasons why many spiritual teachers emphasize the importance of letting go of spiritual agendas in one’s practice and engaging with the present moment as it is without aiming for a future moment.

It is not like I did not know this. I had undertaken graduate studies on Buddhism and had heard more spiritual talks than my brain could ever remember. But I found there are very good reasons as to why workaholism is considered a serious addiction that is rampant in industria