Let’s get this out of the way first: I know LinkedIn is full of this kind of stuff, such as “What My 3-year-old Stepdaughter Taught Me About Client Management” or “How My Pet Chinchilla Made Me a More Effective CEO.” These sorts of observations can get very cheesy very quickly.

That said, I do meditate most mornings, and it’s had a very beneficial effect on working in this crazy industry. It’s given me a bit of balance, a little more focus, a solid dose of humility and some tools that help make the worst days roll off my back.

After kicking it around in my brain a little, I realized the basic tenets of meditation can be applied to a lot of Life Stuff, and our work is no exception. So, take this with a few grains of salt, but these three basic tenets help me write briefs and presos, and maybe they’ll help you too.

Let go of distractions

In meditation, it’s so easy to lose sight of focusing on your breath, and instead fixate on that shitty thing a coworker said to you, or your sore back or the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. These little details don’t matter. They don’t need your attention. Let ‘em go, as hard as that is to do.

Similarly, as we research, cogitate, chat, hem and haw, it’s soooo tempting to treat every rabbit hole we go down as Incredibly Important. But that’s impossible. Not all thoughts are equal, and following every twist and turn of your mind is just going to drive you crazy. Keep yourself focused on the bigger story and ask yourself if your current line of inquiry is adding clarity or clutter. And if you don’t know the big picture story you’re trying to tell? That’s your answer right there. Have your guiding hypothesis clear in your mind before you wander into the weeds.

Let go of perfection

There’s no right way to meditate. There’s only your way. And it’s going to be different every time. It’s both ridiculous and impossible to hold your meditation practice to some sort of gold standard. Some days it’ll feel like a slog, other days it’ll feel soothing and restorative.

Briefs are pretty much the same. There is no “right” brief or “perfect” brief. You need to be flexible, and you need to be a good listener to make it sing. That means you won’t knock it out of the park on the first draft. Let that go. And if creatives or account folks or (gasp) clients have questions and pushes? That’s ok, too. It doesn’t mean the brief is bad. It doesn’t mean the brief is incomplete. It just means you propelled their minds to a place you couldn’t get to on your own. Questions and pushes are just opportunities to make it better.

Let go of bias

This one is hard to let go of. When you meditate, it’s natural to ascribe meaning to it. Like, that was a “good” meditation because your mind felt free. Or that yesterday’s was a “bad” meditation because you were more distracted than normal. Once you start to become biased toward one experience over another, you’re defeating the whole purpose of meditation. You’re forcing your current experience to fit something that’s just an illusion.

In a similar way, we hold onto biases as we write our briefs. We make guesses and suppositions about our target to fit our argument.  We ignore research themes because they don’t fit our view of who this target is. We get mad at client briefs because they aren’t “sexy” enough, or because they feel too narrow. All this just adds unnecessary layers to the truth we need to capture.

At its heart, meditation is about leaning into the reality of your mind at any given moment, without judgment, and finding peace. And by leaning into the real truth of our target, and the reality of the brief, we can find magic.

“Kroger shoppers who need to pinch pennies” is nothing groundbreaking, but when you dig deeper and realize they just wish they had a sense of pride about their grocery shop, then things get interesting. Creating a Pure Leaf ad based on the fact that it’s brewed with real tea gets very interesting when you learn just how invigorating real tea is.

Letting go of bias and going deep on the reality of our target and our goal, creates magic from the mundane. And that magic can’t come from unnecessary pressure, such as being perfect right out of the gate, or from distractions. Committing our focus, and our intellectual heat, precisely to the task at hand and the people we need to affect can be difficult to do, but it makes a world of difference to the final product.