In one recent study, Canadian researchers wanted to see how well anxious, stressed people completed an activity.
The researchers found that meditating for 10 minutes a day may help keep people's minds from becoming unfocused. So, mindful meditation may help people stay on task.
Mengran Xu is a clinical psychologist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. He and his colleagues studied with people who showed signs of anxiety.
「We know that anxious people in general, if you ask them to stay on task, it is hard for them. They tend to wander. They tend to worry. But those people who practiced mindfulness didn’t. They were able to stay on task."
In this study, 82 people suffering from anxiety were asked to perform a computer task that required high levels of focus. Then researchers interrupted them as they performed the work. The researchers studied their ability to stay focused.
Then the 82 individuals were divided into two groups. One group listened to an audio book. The other group did mindful meditation for about 10 minutes.
Finally, researchers asked all the subjects to go back to their computers.
Xu says that those who meditated performed much better on the task.
"The anxious people who listened to the audio books, they performed much worse over time, while the anxious people who practiced mindfulness meditation, they were able to in a way improve and maintain their performance on the task."
The researchers published their findings in the journal Consciousness and Cognition.