My Introvert’s Path to Mindful Productivity
I’m Wesley Evan Smith and I’m a Mindful Productivity Coach for Introverts. I began practicing mindfulness and mindful meditation back in 2014. This was also around the same time that I began to heavily focus on my own personal and professional productivity.
I was in my early 40’s, had just come through an extraordinarily turbulent few years in my personal life, and my professional life was becoming upended by coping with the stress and anxieties of experiencing a merger/acquisition of the company I’d worked at for the past 15 years.
There was so much uncertainty about my future which brought with it a tremendous amount of aversion and dread. I was also experiencing the beginnings of a mid-life existential crisis, fueled in part by the unexpected end of a dream project I’d spent years developing and producing, and the overwhelm of my own unrealized purpose and potential.
The stress of these anxieties and regrets in my life felt paralyzing, and my ongoing struggles with procrastination, and frustrations with my introversion haunted every corner of my life.
During my teens and twenties, I was a musician playing in bands with an amazing group of friends. I also poured every ounce of my time, energy, and focus into working as a recording engineer, aspiring toward producing struggling young artists and bands.
In my early thirties, it was over. The music and entertainment industry had fallen into a chaotic upheaval, my lifelong bandmate and songwriting partner unexpectedly died, and I had no idea where my life was heading.
Suddenly, existential awareness and anxiety had become the daily special on the menu of my life.
Fast-forward to 2020 and the entire world felt like it was nosediving into rapid decline on all fronts. After twenty years in corporate IT and surviving the pandemic lockdown, I had a fresh idea that I’d been developing and decided to make a massive leap of faith.
In July of 2021, I quit my job and once again poured every ounce of my time, energy and focus into another dream project.
And that brings us to the here and now of Mindful Productivity.
