Why I meditate at work
How 10 minutes a day helps me focus more, react less, and listen better.
After an angst-ridden, yearlong hiatus, I knew I had to start meditating again. At the time, I was a UX writer at Dropbox and had just switched to a full-time role supporting 3 core product areas. Dropbox was about 6 months out from one of the largest product launches in the company’s history: I had a lot to learn and a lot to write.
Under pressure, my mind swarmed with anxious thoughts. I ground my teeth, hunched my shoulders, went to bed later and later. Trail running, giving up sugar, therapy—all of it helped, but not enough. It was harder to focus, make effective decisions, and be present with teammates. I was so anxious about not getting work done that I couldn’t get work done, and my mental and physical health took a hit.
At a party one Saturday night, a friend suggested the Daily Calm—a 10-minute guided practice. “But I think something’s wrong with me,” I said, swigging an Irish coffee. “My mind’s too busy right now to meditate.” “Sarah,” she said, offering me water, “everyone’s mind is too busy.”
The next week, I tried the Daily Calm during my morning commute. About a month later, I started practicing at work with Jennie Tan, a UX writing lead and mentor to me. Also, my manager and some kind writing souls helped me get a handle on my workload.
Then, one day in the library at our old office, I looked up from my laptop: Outside the tall windows, there was blue sky, leaves whirling in the wind. Next to me, the soothing sound of people tap-tap-tapping their keyboards. “Wait…” I thought. “I’m not panicked. I’m. Not. Panicked.” With this calmer mind, I could focus more, react less, and listen better—in my work life and my life life.
Want to bring these qualities to your days? I’ll share how meditation can help, and how you can start a work practice too.
Find focus, again and again
When I open my laptop to write, it feels like a supervillain has set a minefield of distractions: notifications fly to the top of my screen, red badges appear like warning lights. My phone buzzes—probably my husband texting pictures of my 1-year-old covered in sweet potato, but what if…
Even when I snooze the outside world, I have to deal with the loudest notifications of all — my thoughts. I’ll start to revise onboarding screens, and the mental storm begins: “What about those error messages? Will I ever write them? Wonder when we can get the baby vaccinated. Will it be safe? Ayee! I need to work faster so I can hang with him before bedtime. I need another cup of coffee. I need to stop drinking so much coffee!”
It can feel like my mind is tuned to 11 different radio stations, the volume maxed for all.
When I started meditating, I hoped with a big “Pretty please, universe” that the distracting thoughts would disappear. But I’ve learned that “focus” isn’t the absence of all thoughts but one; it’s the commitment of attention to one thing, again and again, while a crowd of other thoughts demand: “Pay attention to me!”
How meditation helps
With practice, you notice faster when you’re distracted. At the start of meditation, I commit my attention to my breathing (you can choose a different sensation or mantra). When my attention wanders, I notice, and then I come back to my breathing. My mind’s a puppy learning to stay.
What’s key: I notice the distracting thoughts and try to not bat them away or judge myself for having them. Over time, just noticing turns the volume and frequency down. It’s like the thoughts are needy; they just want to know that I hear them.
In my morning meditation with co-workers, I warm up this focus muscle, then flex it throughout the day. A chorus of “Error messages! Baby! Coffee!” starts up, but I catch it and come back to onboarding screens—or whatever I’ve decided to concentrate on. The more I meditate, the more I make progress on my top priorities rather than flit between worries.
Respond, not react
About two weeks after I started my full-time role at Dropbox, a co-worker swung by my desk and said I needed to make a big, hard-to-reverse decision about a feature name by the end of the week. “Sure, no problem!” I said without pausing to consider the request or consult others with more context. New to the team, I was in the throes of an Enneagram 9 pleaser-palooza.
After a few frenzied days—and my colleague’s announcement that I was “actively blocking the project”—I decided on a feature name. And guess what? A month later, after seeing that name confused participants in research, I changed my mind. The change was much harder on the team (colleague included) than if I’d considered the request and responded that I’d need more time to decide.
So what’s the difference between reacting and responding?
When you react, you do what’s reflexive, move without thinking. Often your emotional instincts and entrenched patterns are driving, and you don’t consider the twists and turns on the road ahead.
When you respond, you pause, even for just a minute, to consider your next move. As Viktor Frankl taught: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
If I had paused in the scenario above, I might have realized that promising a quick decision on something big and hard to reverse wasn’t the best way forward. And even if I didn’t realize it on my own, I could’ve consulted with more experienced team members before committing to a deadline.
How meditation helps
To stay with one point of focus during practice, I have to train my mind to stop reacting to thoughts as they zoom by.
Let’s say I commit to focusing on my breathing for 10 minutes. A few seconds in, I remember that performance reviews start next week, and I need to put together a list of projects I’ve completed. I can pause, remember that I’m here to meditate, and respond to the thought: “Hey, I’m busy now. I’ll work on that after I meditate.” Or I can react and begin compiling a mental list of everything I worked on last year.
In my morning meditation, I practice not reacting to my thoughts—tell my thoughts they have to wait until I’m finished meditating. Later in the day, when I get requests or unexpected feedback, there’s a better chance I’ll pause instead of just reacting. And then I’ll give a more reasoned, healthy response.
Listen up
Suppose it’s 10:00 am and I’m in a kickoff meeting about a bunch of changes to our product: new actions in a menu, new icons, surprising behavior. To write content that prepares and reassures our customers, I need to understand the nuances. But I also have to present a project to a big group at 4:00 pm, and I can’t stop thinking: “Will I be ready in time? Will they think my work is blech?” I blink and realize that I’ve missed the last 5 minutes of the meeting. Now I’ll have to follow up with the product manager and ask questions that she probably just answered.
Just this week, as I watched customer interviews, my mind kept wandering. I wanted to hear how the participants managed their medical and financial info, their wills, but my mind was intent on worrying about another deadline, what to make for dinner, my father’s heart. Luckily, I’d meditated that morning. I quickly caught my attention as it tried to run away, then led it back to the interviews—again and again. I didn’t hear everything, but I did catch “I want someone to clean up the clutter for me. I just want one less thing to worry about.” Before I started a regular practice, I might have missed that insight into a pain point.
How meditation helps
Listening to someone is a kind of meditation. The practice is bringing your focus back—again and again — to the person who’s talking. When I recognize that I’m distracted or that I’m planning my response while someone’s speaking, I bring my attention back to what they’re saying. I remind myself that their words are more important than my pinballing thoughts.
In my morning meditation, I warm up my radar for distraction.Then, later in the day, when I’m in meetings or just having a hallway chat, I’m faster to notice my wandering mind and bring it back to listening.
How to meditate at work
I started doing the Daily Calm with Jennie (the ultimate accountabilibuddy) two years ago. After a few weeks, Jennie and I realized that the commitment to each other helped us practice consistently, and we were so excited that we invited others to join us. “I know I’m not the only one who deals with stress and anxiety at work,” Jennie explains, “so the more I can turn other people on to it, the happier I feel!”
The Daily Calm is available with subscription to the Calm app (yes, they have a free trial). The ever-wise Tamara Levitt leads a period of focus on breathing, and then ends with a brief teaching related to meditation — how to manage stress, let go of judgment, and other valuable life stuff.
We started the practice in the meditation and prayer room at Dropbox, but since the pandemic we’ve switched to hosting it on Zoom. Here’s how I host: 15 minutes before practice time I sign in to the Calm app. Next, I start the Zoom meeting, mute myself and participants, then share my screen and sound. 10 minutes before meditation, I send a reminder with the Zoom link to our #meditate Slack channel. And at 8:31am — that 1 minute somehow softens the start time— I click play on the Daily Calm. The meditation is usually finished by 8:41 am, and just like that, we’re calmer and ready to dive into our workstreams.
If the Daily Calm doesn’t do it for you, the app has a bunch of other meditations. You can also access free guided meditations on Tara Brach’s site and the Headspace app. Not up for daily practice but need a quick way to calm your tornado brain? Try Dr. Andrew Weil’s 4–7–8 Breath.
You can calm your mind — yes, you!
Is meditation for everyone? Maybe not. I still can’t convince my mom, who prefers The Sopranos and a splash of Japanese whiskey. Maybe gardening, papier-mâché, or rhythmic gymnastics is your path to a calmer mind.
If you want to start but feel hesitant, here are a few final things to keep in mind:
- Like my wise friend said, “Everyone’s mind is too busy.” And no one’s mind is too busy for meditation.
- As with a puppy, teaching your mind to stay is challenging. When meditation feels difficult, that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong—in fact, you can’t do it wrong.
- When you’re super busy, meditation is even more important. It’s tempting to skip it to “save time,” but warming up your focus muscle before work will make you more efficient.
- If you miss a day, a week, or a month, you can start again. Meditating every once in a while is waaay better than not at all.
Have any meditation tips? Share them in a comment below!
Thanks to Michelle Morrison, John Mikulenka, and Andrea Drugay for their help in putting together this article.
