How to be more present (when your mind is always elsewhere)

If your body is in one place while your mind is somewhere else entirely, replaying a conversation or rehearsing tomorrow, you are in good company, and you are also in the exact situation that learning how to be more present is meant to address. Presence is not a mystical state. It is the ordinary, trainable skill of putting your attention on what is actually happening, and noticing when it has wandered off.

How often does your mind wander?

Forty-seven per cent of waking hours, in one large study that pinged thousands of people at random moments through the day.^[1] That is an average, and some wandering is useful, since it also feeds creativity and planning. The same study found people were less happy while their minds were wandering, even towards pleasant topics.

Can you learn to be more present?

Yes. Presence is a trainable skill, not a mystical state: you notice your attention has drifted and bring it back, again and again. Even a few minutes a day of following your breath builds that habit of noticing and returning, which you then carry into the rest of the day.

How do you stop living in your head?

3 small moves help most: notice, name and land. Notice that you are thinking rather than experiencing; name it lightly, “planning” or “replaying”; then land your attention somewhere physical, what you can see, hear or feel, or something to do with your hands. The thoughts will come back, and that is fine. The skill is not stopping thought, it is getting better at returning.

How do you stop living on autopilot?

1 ordinary task a day, done on purpose, is the place to start. Pick something you usually do without noticing, making tea, the walk to the shop, washing up, and do it with no screen alongside and your attention on the actual doing. It also helps to shake up small routines, a different route, a different chair, so they stop running themselves. Autopilot is useful for dull tasks; the aim is only to notice when it has taken over the parts of the day you care about.

How do you stop living in the past?

2 things help: notice when remembering has tipped into replaying, and give it a set place. Looking back is useful when it teaches you something; it becomes a trap when the same scene runs on a loop. When you catch the loop, come back to the senses, and if something keeps returning, give it ten minutes on paper at a set time rather than all day in your head. The same works for living in the future: planning is useful, endless rehearsing is not. If you feel stuck in painful memories or constant worry, speak to your GP; this is not medical advice.

How do you stop living for the weekend?

1 small good thing on each weekday evening is the gentlest fix. A walk, a chapter, a proper meal, a call with a friend: something you would look forward to, placed inside the week rather than saved for Saturday. It also helps to notice the pleasant moments already in an ordinary Tuesday, which is presence by another name. If the working week feels like something to escape every single week, that is worth taking seriously as a sign about the week itself.

Your mind wanders about half the time

How often is the mind elsewhere? More than most people guess. In a much-cited study, Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert used a phone app to ping thousands of people at random moments and ask what they were doing, what they were thinking about, and how they felt. People’s minds were not on their current activity for about 47 per cent of their waking hours.^[1]

Nearly half of life, spent somewhere other than where we are.

And it tends to make us less happy

The same study found something more pointed. People reported being less happy when their minds were wandering than when they were focused on the present, and this held true even when they were wandering towards pleasant topics.^[1] The act of leaving the present, in itself, was associated with lower mood. As the researchers put it, a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.

This does not mean you should never daydream; mind-wandering also feeds creativity and planning. But it suggests that the chronic, automatic drift away from our own lives carries a cost, and that being able to come back matters.

Why it is harder than ever

Presence has always taken a little effort. What is new is that we have removed all the practice. Mindfulness, in the everyday sense described by the psychologists Kirk Warren Brown and Richard Ryan, is simply receptive attention to what is happening now, and people who have more of it tend to report greater well-being.^[2] But that attention is a capacity, and capacities need use.

The phone is a permanent exit from the present. Any dull or uncomfortable moment can now be escaped instantly with a screen, so we almost never stay in one. The teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn titled his book on the subject Wherever You Go, There You Are, a reminder that you cannot actually escape your own experience, only distract yourself from it.^[3] The more we distract, the less practised we become at simply being here.

How to come back

Being present is not about forcing your mind to go blank. It is about noticing you have left, and returning, gently, again and again.

• Anchor in the senses. What can you see, hear, feel right now? The body is always in the present even when the mind is not, so the senses are a reliable way back.
• Do one ordinary thing without a screen. A walk, a meal, a coffee, fully, with nothing else running. You cannot be present to a moment you are simultaneously escaping.
• Expect to drift, and forgive it. The mind will wander within seconds. That is not failure. Noticing the drift and returning is the entire exercise, and the returning is the rep.
• Practise a little, daily. Even a few minutes of following your breath builds the muscle of noticing-and-returning that you then carry into the rest of the day.

The thread running through all of this is the same one this studio keeps pulling: the empty, ordinary, un-distracted moment is not dead time to be escaped. It is the only place your actual life is happening. Learning to stay in it is the quiet skill behind How to Be Bored Again.