The Power of Pause: Practicing Mindfulness with Distraction Blockers

Ping! Your boss needs that spreadsheet finished today. Ping! Your friend is texting you for Happy Hour drinks. Ping! Netflix has just released the newest season of your favorite show. Ping! Your brother sent you a meme on Instagram. Ping! It seems like the digital distractions never end when you’re trying to get work done. 

You just need a moment of pause to gather your thoughts and energy. Inhale. You mentally name three things you see, two things you hear, and one thing you smell. Exhale. You can definitely knock out that spreadsheet before Happy Hour. 

More people are turning to mindfulness strategies to help refocus their racing minds at work and embrace presence in daily life. Technology can be a useful tool instead of an obstacle to accomplishing our personal and work goals with digital wellness apps like Freedom, which features a free mindful “Pause” that you can integrate into your digital devices and daily routines. 

The Power of a Mindful Pause 

What makes a mindful pause different from a plain old pause? While a regular pause could leave you staring into space, checking your phone, or taking a bathroom break, a mindful pause is a moment filled with the intention to recalibrate your focus and reduce stress. 

Research shows that mindfulness helps decrease ruminating thoughts, improve behavioral regulation, and reduce emotional reactivity. These things can help you maintain a positive mood, sustained motivation, and a calm mindset.

When it comes to productivity, you can interrupt negative thought loops related to your work tasks and performance, whether you keep thinking back to the time you fumbled over your presentation or are worrying about end-of-quarter reviews, and get back to the job at hand. 

Micro-mindfulness can also enhance your cognitive clarity so you stay locked into your tasks for longer periods of time, boosting your productivity. When you finish your tasks for the day quicker than usual, you’ll be able to head home able to be more present with your family, friends, and creative projects.

The Relationship Between Mindfulness and the Brain

When we practice mindfulness, it may feel like a pause, but our brains are experiencing a surge of neurological activity. Mindfulness practices are shown to thicken the prefrontal cortex, the zone in charge of sustained attention and decision-making, which improves our control and makes us less vulnerable to digital distractions. 

These intentional pauses also calms the Default Mode Network (DMN), a network of brain regions that activate when the mind is at rest and wandering. Whenever we want to focus, mindfulness practices, like concentrating on our breath, can redirect attention from wandering thoughts back to the present. 

Our amygdala is the emotional processing center of the brain and governs our fight-or-flight and stress responses. The more we fall victim to stress or anxiety, the bigger the amygdala grows. However, mindfulness practices have been shown to literally shrink the size and activity of the amygdala, which means individuals are better at managing their stress and maintaining a more tranquil emotional state. 

So how can we go about exercising our brain to build up our prefrontal cortex? Try micro-mindfulness with a few techniques. 

The Stop Technique and Micro-Mindfulness

For anyone who needs a moment, the STOP technique is accessible to anyone at any time. STOP stands for Stop, Take a Breath, Observe, Proceed.

• Stop: Take a break from whatever you’re doing. Close the laptop, put down the phone, and restart your computer. Put away anything that may distract you. Change your environment if necessary. 
• Take a Breath: Focus on taking three deep breaths, counting 5 seconds for each inhale and exhale. 
• Observe: How do you feel? Without judgment, acknowledge any thoughts, emotions, and your surrounding environment. Try naming something you can hear, see, smell, touch, and taste to ground you in your senses.
• Proceed: Choose a conscious response to continue with your day.

The STOP technique can help inject a moment of micro-mindfulness into your day that helps you know you can always start anew to make a different, intentional decision. You can choose to avoid impulsive reactions to falling for digital distractions or mindless browsing. 

Micro-mindfulness techniques can be used as often as you’d like throughout the workday. They can give your eyes a rest from prolonged screen time, give you a reason to stretch your muscles or allow you to jot down some thoughts or feelings in a journal before you carry on with the day. 

Freedom offers a free “Pause” Chrome extension that builds on the concept of micro-mindfulness. When a user opens a distracting site like Facebook, they’ll be greeted by a green screen with a 5-second pause that encourages the user to reflect on their browsing habits before seeing the option to continue to the site or go back. 

The idea is that the moment encourages more intentional browsing whether you’re at work, home, on a date, with friends, or wherever! Being mindful of our online activity can help us curate feeds that feel useful to our daily lives and keep us away from content that feels addictive and feeds our impulses. 

How Distraction Blockers Can Foster Mindfulness

If you’re looking for something a little longer than a micro-mindful “Pause,” then Freedom has got you covered. The full downloadable version of Freedom blocks all distractions for as long as you want to create an environment that is conducive to mindful productivity.

Freedom allows users to create customizable blocklists that you can choose to activate for one-time or recurring sessions. For example, you can put all your social media sites on a Social Media blocklist, and your favorite news sites on a News blocklist, and then activate both blocklists for a Work Block Session. 

Whenever you try to access these apps or sites on your phone or computer, you’ll be met with a serene green screen for as long as your session lasts. You can create a Block Session for any situation where you might otherwise be distracted. Freedom can help you knock out productive work days, advance in your creative projects, and be present with your loved ones. Anytime you want to be mindful, just turn on a Block Session and lock into the present moment. 

There’s Power in the Pause

Incorporating mindful pauses into your day can transform the way you approach you work. When you give yourself a few moments of rest, you offer your mind a chance to reset, refocus, and make a conscious decision on how you want to move forward. 

Freedom’s “Pause” feature offers a mindful pause when it comes to internet use, allowing you to create a more balanced relationship with technology. Whether you want to optimize your productivity or regain control of your digital habits, you can choose to embrace mindfulness for a lasting impact

Written by Lorena Bally