Conscious And Unconscious Living: Making A Path Forward

So I have established that, for myself, unconscious living is something I have been doing and conscious living is something I need to be doing.  The question is, how do I get from here to there?

Five steps, I think:

1)  Focus:  Focus on one activity at a time, preferably the activity currently being engaged in - if not, either stop and do the other activity or make a note of what the thought is and continue on with the first.

2)  Stop Multi-tasking:  There is not a great deal to say here, other than it does not lead to more actual accomplishment.  And for me, I am very bad at it.  Simply admit that you will get less done, but it will be of a better quality.

3)  Do No Activity That Also Allows You To Do An Unconscious Activity:  Simply put, this means that if I am doing something, it should not be something that allows me to do two things.  For example, watching TV tends to lead me to eat excessively - so I should not do that. Whereas, for example, mowing the lawn is all about mowing and nothing else.

4)  Train The Mind:  The mind can be trained to be brought back to task when it starts to wander.  This is related to Point 1 above, but is different in the fact that it not an activity as much as it training.  Let one thought rest at a time in the mind, then move on to the next.

5)  Do It The Hard Way:  There is a correlation between effort and consciousness.  The harder a thing is, the more engaged the mind and body is in the activity.  For example, it takes me almost no time and effort to just put up a social media post, whereas to express the same thing in a blog post is more intensive because I have to write out an entire article - so I am more in the moment.  Let us not be silly, of course: I may not build my own house when I can have someone else do it - but I can be more wise and engaged in how I choose to do the activities that I do.

Socrates is credited with saying "The unexamined life is not worth living".  If we extend that to "The unconscious life is not worth living", it might change how we view every activity that we are doing.