Why Can I Focus on Some Days and Not on Others?

Tuesday morning I sat down at 9 and wrote for three hours without looking up. Same desk on Wednesday, same tea, same work, and by 9.20 I was reading about a football transfer I don't care about.

Nothing had changed. The task was the same. I was the same person, or so I thought.

We've spent a week on energy: what fills it and what drains it. Today is about something slightly different. Even with a full tank, the mind arrives at the desk in a particular mood, and that mood decides what kind of morning you're going to have.

The three moods

The Bhagavad Gita has a word for these moods. In chapter fourteen Krishna says everything in nature, including your mind, is made of three strands, called gunas. He names them sattva (clarity, lightness), rajas (restlessness, drive) and tamas (heaviness, dullness) (14.5).

He then describes how each one feels from the inside, and the descriptions are so ordinary that you can check them against this morning. When sattva is up, he says, light shines in through all the gates of the body (14.11). Things are obvious. You see the task and you do it. When rajas is up, there is greed, activity for its own sake, restlessness and craving (14.12). You're busy, but you can't say with what. When tamas is up, there is darkness, dullness and carelessness (14.13). You stare at the screen and nothing happens.

Three moods. Clear, restless, heavy. You've had all three this week.

They take turns

Swami Sivananda has a line about this in Practice of Karma Yoga that I find more useful than any personality test. The three qualities are inseparable, he writes, and no one is absolutely sattvic, rajasic or tamasic. Sometimes one prevails, and the other two are held down for the time being.

So Wednesday was no failure of character. It was rajas prevailing. I was full of energy, the energy had no direction, and it went looking for a football transfer.

In Mind: Its Mysteries and Control he draws the three in more detail. A sattvic mind is steady and finds delight inside itself. It can sit in one place a long time and read one book for days. A rajasic mind wants new sensations, new company and new talk, and has a habit of noticing other people's faults. A tamasic mind is lazy, careless and sleepy.

Read the rajasic one again. Wants new sensations, new company, new talk. That's a description of a phone.

The order matters

Here is the part that changed how I work. Sivananda says you can't jump straight from tamas to sattva. You first have to turn tamas into rajas, and only then can you reach sattva.

Think about what that means at the desk. If you're heavy and dull, sitting still and trying to be clear only adds more tamas. Move instead. Get up, walk, do something small and physical, and let the restlessness come. Then, once you're moving, give the movement one direction.

If you're restless, more coffee won't help. You already have the activity. What's missing is direction. One task, one window, phone in the other room.

He adds that a sattvic person is the most active of all, like an engine wheel that spins so fast it looks still. Clear means all the energy is going one way, even when it looks effortless.

Reading your own morning

Krishna gives Arjuna a simple test for which guna is up. Look at what you want right now.

Sattva binds you through attachment to understanding and happiness (14.6). You want to get it right. Rajas binds you through attachment to action (14.7). You want to do something, anything. Tamas binds you through carelessness, laziness and sleep (14.8). You want to lie down.

So the morning check is one question: what do I want right now? Be honest, whatever you're supposed to want. The answer tells you which mood is running, and the mood tells you what to do.

What to do with each one

I know the restless one well. Years ago I tried to work and ended up in my phone for hours, on Instagram, even though I had unfollowed everyone. There was nothing left to look at and I kept looking. The next morning I wrote a plan. Phone and Kindle in the other room. No music, maybe one band. Read a chapter after each job. Apply for better jobs every afternoon. Start the book tonight. Learn After Effects. Write three poems. I gave every item a time slot so I couldn't miss any of it, and I ended the page with "You are awesome. Let's do it." The piece I'd been avoiding, a list of interview phrases, should have taken an hour and had taken three, because I got bored. The plan had nine items and not one of them was "sit there while it's boring."

That was rajas with a to-do list: plenty of energy and nine directions. One task is a better plan.

So, something to try tomorrow. Before you open anything, sit for one minute and ask which of the three you're in. Then pick the matching move.

1. Heavy. Move first. Ten minutes of walking, or a few sun salutations if you know them. Don't try to think your way out of tamas. The Gita says tamas is born of ignorance and binds through sleep, so give the body something to do before you ask the mind for anything.

2. Restless. Narrow first. Write one task on paper, close every other window, and put the phone where you'd have to stand up to reach it. Rajas has the energy. It needs a channel. Five slow breaths with a longer out-breath will take the edge off the craving.

3. Clear. Protect it. This is the morning you've been waiting for, so don't spend it on email. Do the hardest thing straight away. Sivananda says to write down what comes to you in sattvic moments, because the clarity doesn't stay.

Keep a note of which mood you found for a week, next to the energy score you've been writing at 4 pm. You'll see the moods follow the food, the sleep and the scrolling from the week before. They have causes, and the causes are things you can touch.

A different way to look at it

We tend to treat a bad morning as a verdict on ourselves. The Gita treats it as weather in the mind, with three seasons, and seasons pass.

Sivananda goes further. He says all practice, every bit of it, is for one purpose: to increase sattva. Lighter food, less talk, a little study, a few minutes with the breath. Each one tips the balance towards clear. You don't have to force the clarity. You arrange the conditions and it arrives on its own, like a room that gets brighter when someone opens the curtains.

Tomorrow: why you argue with yourself, and the four parts of the mind that are doing the arguing.

Where to read more

The Sivananda-tradition books behind today's piece:

• Practice of Karma Yoga, Swami Sivananda (the chapter on the three gunas)

• Mind: Its Mysteries and Control, Swami Sivananda (chapter on the three gunas; the importance of sattva)

• Bhagavad Gita, chapter fourteen

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