Can meditation boost your performance and happiness? Here are my surprising conclusions after 1000+ sessions

Meditation has been around for ages and it’s now more trendy than ever in the west. I’ve always struggled to “get it” and have been critical about its real potential for performance improvement. For the past year, I’ve worked with a meditation coach and now I can confirm that the benefits are well worth the effort. I can sense as much value on time as exercise (so very high ROI), and it helps me to be more productive, improves my mental health, makes me feel calmer, increases my attention, and overall, happier. I’ve written many Linkedin posts about my experience, told dozens of executives about it, and received over a hundred follow-up questions, so I decided to publish something deeper here. I will tell you how I approached meditation and what I’ve learned so you can benefit from it too. Namaste 🙏

Meditation is about understanding your mind to reach a higher level of calm and mindfulness. Another definition I like a lot: meditation is the art of doing nothing.

Meditation is a bit of a “weird” concept, especially in the western world. I was highly dubious for several years. But once I overcame it and tried it out, I felt immense benefits. I now see meditation as fitness for my mind and put it as a higher priority than fitness for my body.

What does science say about meditation?

I have a very scientific mind so I tend to not believe in pure spirituality. I need data to convince me. Here’s a shortened summary of what I’ve found with some context.

Meditation is a technique, not a religion, that has been practiced for thousands of years. Some of the best masters can be found in Tibet, India, and Thailand, including the different Dalai Lamas. It’s commonly described as internal liberation from everyday worry, fixation, self-focus, ambivalence, and impulsiveness, transcending to being in the now with loving concern for all. This can lead to less human suffering and, in practice, can make life more flourishing.

A figure I created to explain Vipassana meditation

Most of these benefits have been transmitted from generation to generation but have never been proven in any scientific way. In the 60s, we started to be able to observe brain activity. When the first studies emerged, they made some points, but most of them were not replicable nor lacked any flaws, as most studies of human behavior do. Meditation has cognitive effects that are hard to measure with our very limited knowledge of how the brain works. It’s still better than nothing, and scientific studies have improved.

Today, the best scientific studies about meditation are:

• Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Leipzig showed that novices practicing daily breath focus experienced calming effects, which seems to confirm that meditation is useful for relaxation.
• In a study at Emory, meditating was shown to reduce amygdala activity (connected to emotions such as fear or anxiety) in response to being exposed to disturbing pictures.
• Seasoned Zen meditators were able to endure the highest pain threshold while displaying little brain activity connected to it. Their brain seems to be able to disconnect the evaluation of the pain and the reaction. This can be applied to other emotions such as stress, anxiety, or anger.
• Japanese researchers published a study that connected meditation to improved attention. They measured monks’ brain activity during meditation while hearing a series of sounds. The most experienced monks’ brains responded as strongly to the twentieth sound as to the first. Other brains would tune out.
• One study done at the University of Miami showed that meditation improves selective attention and the capacity to ignore distractions. After eight weeks, the patients who meditated showed a significantly better ability to focus on one sensation versus patients who didn’t practice.
• World-class yoga with up to 62,000 hours of practice shows remarkable effects. The state during meditation becomes an enduring characteristic. Meditation becomes effortless and their attention can stay perfectly focused.

Overall, even if the science is not perfect yet and a lot of it is subjective, there starts to be evidence that meditation has deep benefits. These include increased attention, reduced stress, adapted reactions to certain feelings, a greater sense of calm, and overall happiness. All these signs also show that meditation should be useful for performance enhancement.

How to actually get started and what to test?

In 2016, after reading about meditation on tech blogs and hearing about it from friends, I decided to give it a try.

My goal was to clear my mind for the day and to increase my energy levels for the times when I would feel down.

I tried to meditate for 5 minutes every morning for less than a month but I didn’t really sense anything. I felt like I was wasting my time and it would have been more productive if I had invested that time into actual work. So I gave up.

At the end of 2017, I bought an Apple watch and discovered the breath app. It’s a very simple app where you choose between 1 and 5 minutes of breathing, and the watch vibrates to guide your breath. It’s simple but very efficient. I started using it more and more during my day to regain focus. It worked super well.

That was my first meditation “victory”. Today, I’m still using focus meditation every day with the Calm app, which has a similar feature that can be used with a headset in case you don’t have an Apple watch.

In June 2019, I stepped down as CEO of Labiotech and started a 14-month pause. Personal development is one of my main objectives and going deeper into meditation was my first big project. It’s the project where I could see the highest potential return over the next 10 years (as I’ve already optimized many other parts of my life). Moreover, I thought it would be the perfect timing to do such a project and that I would have no excuse for not finding the time.

But I still needed to design the experiment and figure out what would work best. I had so many options to choose from:

• should I go on a retreat completely disconnected,
• how long should I plan,
• how much should I meditate per day,
• what should be my objectives,
• how would I know if it works,
• should I hire a coach,
• which app should I use,
• and many more.

I struggled to decide what to do. Thankfully, I knew much more about meditation since my first experiment, including reading the excellent book ‘Altered Traits’, listening to how Serge Faguet and Naval Ravikant approached meditation and receiving a lot of amazing feedback from top performers around me.

Here’s how I decided to structure my experiment and the reasons why:

• Goal: to figure out how much 20–60 minutes of daily/weekly meditation would boost my performance over the day, week, and month, and its long-term potential. I wanted to know if it was worth adding it into my habits and making it a priority over other things.
• Timeframe: I would meditate every day for 2 months (September and October 2019). I thought two months would be long enough to do over 50 sessions and to feel the benefits.
• Environment: I would not go to any special environment like a retreat but would meditate where I was with what I had to be more realistic and make my practice more sustainable over the long term. Also, I thought the more challenging an environment, the more I would progress.
• Techniques: I would test as many aspects as possible, ranging from the duration (from 20 to 60 minutes, twice a day), different positions (sitting, standing, walking, lying, hand posture, on a pillow), breathing techniques, sounds, with or without a headset, guided or not.
• Tracking: I would track each meditation session in a note to be able to rate more objectively the benefits. I believe the only way to gauge something is to track it. It goes for meditation too, even if it’s very subjective.
• Coach: I hired a coach with 10 years of experience for 1-on-1 so my learning curve would be steeper and he could tell me exactly what works best for me. I didn’t meditate with him physically but told him how it went. It’s an investment (usually at least 100€/hour) but I thought it would be worth it, especially in the long run.

Me meditating in Times Square

1ooo sessions later, here are the many amazing benefits

On September 2nd, I started my first meditation session in my girlfriend’s room in Paris. Then at my parent’s place. Then where I was travelling, at that time in Canada, the US and the Caribbean.

The tracking of my meditation looked like this:

It’s a very simple way to track it. Over time I added more details on how I felt or what happened. The goal is to collect data and be able to see trends and draw conclusions. Writing down each session also helped me to share more details with my coach later on. I’m still using the same document today, and as I’m writing this post, I’ve tracked 1000 sessions and not missed a single day since I started.

And as you can guess, I didn’t stop after two months. I’m not planning to stop anytime soon, even now I’m a lot busier working on my second startup.

Overall, the test was more fruitful than I expected and I’m actually amazed by how much meditation has helped me so far. I even had two biotech directors tell me out of the blue that I had “changed” during a biotech dinner.

After two months, I was sure that 20 minutes of meditation per day was totally worth it and should be very high on my list of priorities - as high as sleep and exercise. As I mentioned in the intro, I can sense many benefits from meditating, with different time horizons (daily/week to month/years).

My short and long-term benefits

These are my 5 short-term benefits (daily to weekly)

• It makes me calmer. For example, when my brain is too excited about a new idea, stressed about external factors I have no control over, or angry about something, meditation can help to alleviate it.
• It increases my attention by removing clutter and allowing me to focus on what’s most important. This leads to a significant productivity increase in my working hours, which I would guess is something around 20%. (For more information on increasing your productivity with meditation, have a look at section 7 of this post.)
• I can evaluate how I feel about a situation much better and it can even help me to find a solution.
• It improves my recovery periods such as after naps and sleeping as my brain is less cluttered.
• I can source energy and gratitude from visualizing certain situations, allowing me to be stimulated to get something done, feeling better in certain situations, or getting over an angry emotion.

These are my 5 long-term benefits (monthly to annually):

• The more you meditate the more intense each individual session becomes. So over time, each benefit listed above is amplified.
• I’m more calm and present/in the moment. For example, being fully in a meeting and not thinking about another project, being only at dinner with my girlfriend instead of thinking about the next day, or going for a run with no mental distractions.
• I can sense and express how I feel during the day better so that I can share my emotions and stay on my side of the net (a reference to the Touchy-Feely course from Stanford).
• Meditation enables more introspection and personality analysis which I’m also doing with my coach. It also helps me develop better as a person.
• I’m more grateful for what I have (both from luck and what I’ve earned). This makes me happier on average.

On top of those, I’ve figured out lots of extra details from testing many different options. Here is a list:

• Environment: I like to meditate anywhere. A calm environment allows me to go deeper into myself while a busy environment allows me to canalize my energy and thoughts. I’m not looking for the “perfect” environment, the most important thing for me is to meditate where I am.
• Duration: To begin with 20 minutes was my optimal time for meditation. It’s long enough to reach a deep level but also not too long to be prioritized more easily in a day. Now I’m more experienced I meditate 1h + 1h on business days.
• Time in the day: I like it best in the morning after exercising or reading. But when I have an early call or meeting I prioritize fitness as I cannot do it anywhere and meditate later, usually before lunch. It works well but requires a bit more discipline than doing it first thing in the morning before our brains become busy.
• Guided meditation: I don’t use it anymore as I realized that it guided me too much and made my meditation less robust. I see them as a shortcut to “help” you meditate, like wheels on a kid's bike. It’s good to get started but you need to remove them at some point.
• Coach: It was totally worth it and helped me reach a much higher level after 2 months, convincing me even more and helping me to continue every day. Meditation can be seen as a sport where a trainer brings you to the next level.
• Retreats: I’ve completed 2 Vipassana retreats where I’ve completely disconnected for 8–10 days. These were amazing but very difficult. It feels like running a mental half-marathon every day. I would recommend you do at least 1 year of daily meditation first. If you’re ready, here’s the link to talks with more details and the Dhamma centers.
• Breathing: I inhale to the maximum and then inhale 3 times more. I do the same when I exhale - so to the maximum and then exhale 3 more times. This helps me to guide my breathing and is an easy hack to keep it slow and long.
• Position: I sit on a comfortable seat (usually a chair, a bench, or a sofa), hold my back straight, and put my hands on both legs while pinching my thumb and index. I tried to sit on the floor but it’s not ideal without a meditation pillow, which I didn’t always have with me. I’m not very flexible so it would hurt my back. One hack when I have to sit on something rough, for example on a rock in the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan, is to use the soles of my sneakers under my butt. That makes it comfortable enough for 20 minutes.
• Timeframe: 2 months was good but honestly, I was convinced after 1 month. It was probably faster for me as I had a coach. I would recommend anyone to try at least one month as anything shorter will probably not be long enough.
• Tracking: Using a simple note works super well for me, but you can also use an app like productive, a spreadsheet, or a piece of paper. The important thing is to track your sessions. It doesn’t matter how. It helped to get a feeling for what works best for me and to improve my practice.
• Preparation: I stretch one minute before starting each meditation, focusing on my neck, shoulders, back, hips and ankles. It helps me to warm up those parts to sit more actively. It’s also a ritual that conditions my brain to meditate.
• Tools: If it’s too loud around me, I use my Bose headset with a meditation sound (Calm, meditation bowl on Spotify or Muji to relax), so I can reduce the distractions and be more isolated.

Those are details though, and I believe they complexify what meditation is really about. Meditation is really about sitting actively for dozens of minutes in a comfortable position, observing your thoughts and focusing your attention where you would like to. That’s it, nothing more, nothing less.

Meditation needs to be experienced. I’ve noticed that it’s where most people are blocked, often because they assume it’s not for them (“I’m too busy” “I’m not patient enough” — if so, try it even more). I would recommend you just give it a try without thinking too much.

I would have loved to have it presented like that. It would have helped me to have a much better start. But as too often, I thought it would be far more simple than it was, based on the information there was out there. I wondered, there must be something more.

The reality is that all the techniques and hacks are mostly details and optimization, which makes it more complex. Looking back, I would have liked to have spent less time thinking about the tools and techniques and spending more time on the meditation itself. Actually, I kind of did, and I’m glad my coach helped me realize this quickly. I hope you will too after reading this.

What I’m asked about the most

Meditation captivates the people I talk to. I could feel it from talking to friends or my professional network (from top biotech investors to CEOs, to a VP in a bigger organization), and also online on my Linkedin posts (the start of my test, after my 2-month test, after my first Vipassana retreat, and now my 1000’s session) and in my newsletter.

Most people are doubtful at first but still very curious, and after 10 minutes, it all starts making sense. Half of them want to go even further and ask me to help them set up their practice.

I often get the same questions, and I’m sure you might have some of them. I listed and answered the most common below:

Q. I’m so busy, how can I find the time?

A. That’s the question I get the most. If you feel so busy, the good news is that meditation will have even more benefits for you. So if you feel that way, you need to find a way to meditate even more. Wanna try now, in less than 3 minutes? Here’s a great video I recently discovered with the founder of Headspace: https://buff.ly/3basKEN

Q. Won’t I fall asleep?

A. It could happen, and if it does, it’s great as it probably means you’re sleep-deprived and your body is exhausted. What also works well is to take a 20-minute power nap before meditating. I’ve never fallen asleep in 1000 sessions.

Q. What do you do during meditation?

A. Not that much. I sit actively in a comfortable position, observing my thoughts and focusing my attention where I would like. That’s the most important. The rest is details and fine-tuning.

Q. When do you start seeing benefits?

A. I started to feel benefits after two weeks of daily meditation and was completely convinced after one month.

Q. What apps do you use?

A. I use apps only for background noise, most commonly the Calm scene “Into the Horizon” (free), the meditation bowl playlist on Spotify, and the waves scene in Muji to relax.

Q. Who is your coach?

A. Bertrand Ecscolier who is based in the French alps and who I know randomly through a friend. He is a meditation expert (over 10 years of practice) and can give a lot of context to meditation (connect it to personality and psychology) to understand how meditation can be used for performance enhancement. I’ve never met him in person and made all the sessions remotely on a video call. It works great and fits my travel plans. Big thanks to him for the great work so far.

Q. How do you make it a habit?

A. I made a habit by doing it every day for over 60 days and by being convinced by the benefits.

Q. Can you meditate when you run, cook or do something else?

A. You can but it’s not the same kind of meditation. It’s more about being in the moment or flow, but it’s not really about observing your thoughts. Meditation is about doing only that, which is the whole point.

Q. Are mindfulness and meditation the same?

A. It’s sometimes used as a synonym but it’s actually different. The best definition I found is: Mindfulness is the moment when you notice that your mind has wandered, while meditation is the practice. But it doesn’t really matter. The important thing is to meditate and reach a mindful state.

Q. I do yoga every week, do I need meditation on top?

A. Yoga and meditation are similar but also very complimentary. Yoga is more about reuniting the soul and the body, while meditation is focused on the mind. Doing yoga regularly will help you be better at meditating, and vice versa. I actually do yoga once a week on top of meditation.

Q. How did I get started?

I designed a test to meditate every day for 2 months and just got started. I figured out most of the rest on the way.

Ok, I’m convinced, but how can I get started?

As with most things in life, the most important is to get started and not find excuses (I will do it during my holidays, I will do it when X happens, I’m too busy, it will not work for me). Just design a test for yourself and get started over at least one month.

I’m 90% confident that you will feel similar benefits to what I’ve felt and that you will join the daily meditation crew. I hope, at least.

If you need help, feel free to comment below or shoot me an email (I’m reading everything and reply to as many as I can).

What’s next?

Going into meditation is one of the best decisions I made in 2019. Thanks to a 2-month test and working with a coach (big thanks for the awesome work Bertrand!), I was able to learn and improve my meditation practice very quickly.

I’m now working on improving it even further with, for example, setting up anchor points, reaching more intense flow, perfecting the feeling of my emotions, visualization techniques, connecting meditation to my personality work, and much more to come.

I’m now at over 1000 sessions and there’s no way I’m stopping. The most important thing though, is that I can sense the benefits and that I’m convinced to meditate every day for at least the next 10 years.

Did this blog post convince you to try meditation? I would be curious to hear your thoughts below.

Big thanks to Katherine, Patrick, Camille, and Yimin for the great comments and for helping me make this post more impactful 🙌