The last few weeks have been mostly consumed with getting my forthcoming book finished. It has been a rich and exhilarating time--an experience I won't soon forget. Along the way there have been heavenly experiences ("This book is actually going to happen! It's actually pretty good! This is a [...]
“We have too many meetings!” It’s a common enough cry, but what lies underneath it is, “We have too many boring/ineffective/time-wasting meetings!” Whether or not you can make meetings less frequent, what can you do to make the meetings you have more meaningful? The practice of stable [...]
Change is hard. Hermits sitting alone on a mountaintop for decades, attempting to perfect their souls, know this. Sports teams trying to improve their records know this (believe me, I’ve been a Seattle Mariners fan for 20 years and this is definitely true). And of course you know it too, from [...]
From the frat initiation in Animal House to the bachelorette party in Crazy Rich Asians, humans love to use rituals to highlight the seasons of life. It’s no accident that “ceremonies” have found their way into the mainstream of software development in the form of daily standup meetings and [...]
The war room in Doctor Strangelove, Mission Control in Apollo 13—places where people gather to debate and make decisions can get pretty intense. That’s why it’s especially important to find ways to bring curious and open present-moment awareness to the conversations that happen in physical and[...]
I like to do simple informal mindfulness practice--to cultivate stable attention in the present moment--in the woods not far from my house. For me, the environment of trees, rushing water and birds is an excellent complement for focusing in on an object (like a tree branch or a clump of moss) with [...]
Since we all live in the present moment, it’s a little surprising that we don’t really like to talk about it very much. When people gather around the office water cooler (or the contemporary social-media versions of the water cooler), what do they talk about? What they did last night, plans for [...]
I was climbing the stairs in my office building one day and noticed a small crumpled gum wrapper lying on a step. Should I pick it up, or leave it there? I decided on the latter and continued to climb. The next day the wrapper was still there. I started to get curious about how long it would stick [...]
For many years the philosopher Immanuel Kant gazed out his window at a church steeple during his ponderings. You don’t have to be a philosopher, or spend a lot of time, to get benefit from training your focus on a physical object. Your visual sense is a dominant part of your experience: visual [...]
You are equipped by default with two valuable mechanisms you can use to practice mindful focusing. The first is a set of highly sophisticated sensors attached to your ankles: your feet. The second is a system of air passages and musculature conveniently configured with connections to most of your [...]