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Introduction

SATURDAY, JUNE 6, 1981.

It is a steamy summer day in Boston. At the Park Plaza, a grand hotel just off the Common, a nerdy crowd packs a high-ceilinged ballroom, stirring under the chandeliers, waiting for a man it reveres as a visionary. The thronging masses – almost all young men – are super-fans of the personal computer, techies at the vanguard of a revolution that would soon upend the way we live and work. Their guest of honor is Steve Jobs.

Just twenty-six years old, Jobs has rocketed to international stardom in recent months. Apple, the company he cofounded and runs, has just gone public. His flagship product, the Apple III, is revolutionizing how people use technology. He is already worth $250 million.

Jobs is in Boston to address Applefest, an event for devotees of his products organized by an eighteen-year-old computer whiz named Jonathan Rotenberg. Applefest was put together without Jobs’s knowledge, and he agreed to come only at the last minute, perhaps sensing some kinship with the young, ambitious organizer. Lean and lanky, Jobs sports a full beard and bushy black hair that falls over his ears and past his collar. He could be a folk singer were it not for the dark suit, blue dress shirt, and black tie. Wide-framed eyeglasses cover nearly half his angular face. In the heat, he has removed his jacket, slinging it over his left shoulder.

After lunch, Jobs and Rotenberg walk back to the Park Plaza. All day, hundreds of fans have been tinkering with the newest Apple machines, swapping notes, and dreaming about how computers might change their lives, and the world, in the years to come. Now they’re assembled in the ballroom, waiting to hear from the man who has made their futuristic dreams come true.

Despite his youth, Jobs looks cool and collected. A contented grin graces his face, perhaps understandable for a multimillionaire. Yet with nearly one thousand of his most loyal customers in the audience, even Jobs must feel some nerves. These are his early adopters, the hard-core users he’s counting on to sustain his company over the coming years. Backstage, ten minutes before the keynote speech is set to begin, the teenage Rotenberg is also a ball of nerves. He and Jobs make some small talk, but both are anxious for the keynote to begin. Then Jobs says, “Jonathan, would you excuse me for a minute?”

Rotenberg turns around, and Jobs is gone. Is it stage fright? Has he just gone to the bathroom? Or is Jobs, already known for his enigmatic behavior, playing one of his mind games? Long minutes drag out. The crowd beyond the stage stirs, restless in the heat. It is now four minutes before the speech is to start and Rotenberg begins to panic. If Jobs gets cold feet and bails, Applefest will be a disaster. Rotenberg will be humiliated. The host paces backstage, searching for his speaker just moments before the main event. A few more minutes tick by. Jobs is nowhere to be found. Then, finally, in a corner of the jumbled backstage area, Rotenberg spots him.

Jobs is sitting on the floor. His legs are crossed. His posture erect, he faces the wall, unmoving. At the precipice of one of the biggest moments of his career, Jobs has paused to meditate.

As Rotenberg looks on, Jobs enjoys another few moments of stillness amid the backstage tumult. Finally, slowly, Jobs gets up, smiles at Rotenberg, and makes his way to the stage. He emerges from behind the curtain and into the spotlight. The crowd roars.

Steve Jobs’s ability to be calm and concentrated in the midst of chaos was one of the things that made him such a great leader. Though he was far from perfect, Jobs’s focus, insight, and creativity set him – and Apple – apart from the competition. And in that moment backstage, Jobs wasn’t praying to any divinity, visualizing any mandala, or reciting some mantra. He was, in all likelihood, doing what he had been trained to do by his meditation instructors – simply paying close attention to the sensations of his own breath, the physicality of his body, and observing the thoughts in his mind nonjudgmentally. He was taking a few moments to be mindful.

Jobs was America’s first mainstream meditating CEO, a disciple of the Zen Buddhist tradition, and a keen student of Eastern philosophies. But he mostly practiced in isolation, studying intensely with his Japanese teacher, sharing his interest with a few close friends, but rarely bringing his meditation into the office. Today, however, mindfulness is everywhere, almost as ubiquitous and transformative as Apple products themselves.

What was a fringe movement when Jobs addressed Applefest in 1981 is now an increasingly prominent part of the cultural landscape, turning up in businesses, governments, and educational institutions around the world. Senior executives at Ford, Google, and other blue-chip companies are practicing meditation and incorporating contemplative practices into the workplace. Members of Congress are meditating on Capitol Hill. Some corporate campuses have a meditation room in every building, and insurance plans are covering meditation classes. Silicon Valley is swarming with tech-savvy meditators, continuing Jobs’s legacy. Even hedge fund managers are using meditation to gain an edge in their trading.

Across industries, there is an elite subculture of accomplished professionals who are discovering the power of mindfulness. They are becoming more effective and more focused and in the process getting better at their jobs. Mindfulness is also allowing workers who practice it to make less-emotional decisions, and to feel happier, too, providing a competitive advantage in the office, and in all realms of life.

Mindfulness, put simply, is the ability to see what’s going on in our heads, without getting carried away with it. It is the capacity to feel sensations – even painful ones – without letting them control us. Mindfulness means being aware of our experiences, observing them without judgment, and responding from a place of clarity and compassion, rather than fear, insecurity, or greed.

Scientific research is making the benefits clear. Studies show that mindfulness strengthens our immune systems, bolsters our concentrative powers, and rewires our brains. Just as lifting weights at the gym makes our muscles stronger, so too does practicing mindfulness make our minds stronger. And the most tried-and-true method of cultivating mindfulness is through meditation.

Meditation doesn’t require us to wear robes, chant in a foreign language, or sit with our legs folded. Instead, mindfulness meditation simply asks that we take a comfortable position – sitting, lying down, or even standing – and observe our thoughts, emotions, and sensations. Pick a sensation, such as the breath moving in and out of the nostrils, and focus on it. Feel the subtleties of air passing in and out; notice the whole body rising and falling with each inhalation and exhalation. When the mind wanders, as it inevitably will, notice the thought – without getting caught up in it – and return the attention to the breath. When the mind wanders again, sometimes just a few seconds later, bring the attention back to the breath, and begin again.

As a practice, that’s it to start with. There are other, more complicated techniques, but basic mindfulness meditation couldn’t be simpler. Yet this elementary mental exercise is incredibly transformative. As Steve Jobs knew, and many accomplished workers are discovering these days, mindfulness makes us more focused, more effective, and happier, to name just a few benefits. So it’s little wonder why today, in multinational corporations and small businesses alike, more and more people are meditating on the job.

Eager to explore this fascinating intermingling of cultures, I set out on a journey into the contemplative heart of corporate America. For more than a year, I crisscrossed the country, interviewing those who are committed to being more mindful at work. My research took me to small industrial towns in northern Vermont, and into the heart of the world’s biggest tech companies in Silicon Valley. I meditated with workers in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Madison, Wisconsin; and Manhattan. I met CEOs who have made mindfulness an integral part of their leadership strategies, spiritual teachers who are grappling with the sudden surge of mainstream interest in the techniques they’ve been practicing for decades, and everyday workers from various industries who use meditation to become less stressed and more effective at their jobs. Along the way, I also rekindled my own relationship with mindfulness, something that began as an intellectual curiosity when I was a teenager but has profoundly transformed every aspect of my life.

On New Year’s Eve, 1998, I was at home in Sausalito, California, after my first semester in college, unsure of which party to attend that night. Buddies from high school were gathering at a big house in Oakland. New friends from college were having a bonfire on the beach. Before I made a decision, however, I picked a slim volume about Buddhism off my mother’s bookshelf. I knew that my Intro to Humanities course would be covering the topic in less than a month, so I read the first few pages. Immediately, the elegance of the teachings spoke to me.

I had pored over philosophy and religion books before, trying to find answers to life’s big questions after some teenage experiments with mind-altering substances. But the clear messages in that volume were refreshingly practical and even seemed attainable – that we’re never satisfied, even when we have it all; that we drive ourselves crazy by wanting things to be other than the way they are, rather than simply observing the world as it is; and that we can get off the hamster wheel of our minds and learn to be at peace. At once simple and profound, the basic tenets of Buddhism resonated with me like nothing else. I kept reading, finishing the book well after midnight. I never made it to any of the parties.

The next morning, I checked in with my friends. One still had her head in the toilet. Another had been punched in the face. A third saw his sister relapse with cocaine. And on the most simplistic level, the equation I had read about the night before – that desire leads to unhappiness – made that much more sense. I went for a walk on the beach, thought about what I had read, and that afternoon opened up the Yellow Pages in search of a meditation center. The next day, I walked into the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, a utopian compound north of San Francisco, and meditated for the first time.

For the next year and a half, I practiced Zen Buddhism, the same austere tradition that appealed to Steve Jobs. Then, during my junior year of college, I traveled to India as part of a Buddhist studies program. For six months, I lived in monasteries and traveled the subcontinent, learning from meditation masters and sitting for weeks in total silence. It was during this time that I deepened my meditation routine, beginning to understand, through experience, how mindfulness can be so transformative.

Back home for a final two semesters at Boston University, I sought out opportunities to practice. On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was at a secluded cabin in western Massachusetts on a meditation retreat, cutting classes on the first day of my senior year of college. I had been there for four days with Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche, a Tibetan teacher with whom I had studied in India, and a dozen of his students, including the actor Richard Gere, and the meditation luminaries Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein. There was no TV in the cabin, so when word of the attacks reached us through a few panicked cell phone calls, we huddled around an old Volvo in the driveway, listening to the car radio as the second plane hit. We were shaken and eager to get home, so Chökyi Nyima called the retreat off early–but not before he led us through several hours of compassion meditation, pushing us to feel profound love in conjunction with raging anger, making us mindful of the arising and passing of our complex emotions.

My meditation practice has ebbed and flowed since then. There are stretches when I have a regular sitting routine, starting each morning with an hour on the meditation cushion. From time to time I attend silent retreats, delightful but challenging periods of intensive practice when I refrain from speaking for days at a time. Then there are months when I can’t seem to find the time to sit. A demanding job, a busy social life, and a newborn daughter make it all the more challenging. Yet even so, I do my best to practice mindfulness in everyday life.

Despite my time in monasteries, and my devotion to a meditation practice that has its roots in Buddhism, I don’t consider myself religious in the slightest. When it comes to questions about the origins of the universe, or the afterlife, I’m a contented agnostic: I have no idea where we came from or where we are going, and I’m OK with that.

What I do know is that many of the techniques I learned from my Buddhist teachers, which are now being taught across the country in purely secular fashion, are effective methods that can help us become happier right now, in this lifetime. What is more, mindfulness meditation as it is being taught today does not require any particular belief system at all. It complements other belief systems, instead of clashing with them. There are Catholics, Jews, and atheists in this book, all of whom find that mindfulness supplements, not rivals, their faith. And meditation, of course, is not uniquely Buddhist.

Every great religious tradition includes elements of meditative practice. St. Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth-century nun, practiced contemplative prayer for an hour at a time, twice a day, and taught meditation as a way to grow closer to God. Many other Christian traditions – from the Trappist monks to the Quakers – have meditative practices at their core. Judaism, too, has a deep contemplative streak, spanning certain Hassidic practices and the meditative branch of Kabbalah. And other Eastern religions, too, from Hinduism, to Jainism, to Sufism, all incorporate forms of meditation. Not all of these practices are the same, of course. Some are intended to bring us closer to a divine spirit, and some are designed to empty our minds. Mindfulness meditation, as practiced today, is designed to make us more aware of our thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations.

I’m far from an expert meditator, and I’m certainly not a meditation teacher. Instead, I’ve spent most of the past decade as a business reporter for the Financial Times and the New York Times. Yet over the years I’ve grown familiar enough with the practice that, when I began to hear about mindfulness being practiced in corporations, I knew it was something I had to investigate. Because mindfulness is not just a simple self-help technique. When practiced diligently, it can help reduce stress, make us more productive, and boost happiness. It can transform not only the way we do our work, but the very work we do. And while it is a practice that can improve our lives, it is also a way of being–attentive, courteous, curious, conscientious, and compassionate.

This is a book about the factory workers, fashion designers, lawyers, and CEOs who have used meditation to change their lives for the better. It’s also about how organizations are becoming more mindful – taking better care of their employees, reducing their negative impact on the planet, and finding ways to improve people’s lives. And it’s about what a more mindful society might look like. As I met workers around the country, I was inspired, humbled, and sometimes skeptical. Accordingly, in these pages I’m sometimes a neutral observer, sometimes a critic, and often an advocate. I try to make the case that mindfulness has become part of the cultural firmament for good reason; that practicing meditation changes our brains, bodies, and dispositions largely for the better; and that when mindfulness imbues individuals and organizations, it can transform the way we work.

In Chapter 1, we’ll get familiar with the basic principles of mind-fulness and see what meditation practice looks like within one big company. It is inside multinational organizations that many people are discovering mindfulness for the first time, and here, too, where some of the ethical foundations of the practice are being challenged. That makes big companies a veritable laboratory for mainstream mindfulness today, and an ideal place to begin our journey.

But to understand where we’re going, it’s necessary to know how we got here. In Chapter 2, we’ll explore the history of mindfulness. What began as a spiritual practice in ancient India migrated across millennia and continents, eventually arriving on American shores not long after the founding of the country. First embraced by the Transcendentalists, temporarily ignored, and revived by the Beats and hippies, mindfulness in the West has piggybacked on various social movements over the years. And in recent decades, a number of important developments in medicine, science, and technology have allowed the practice to break into the mainstream.

One of the most important such developments has been the emergence of contemplative neuroscience – the study of how meditation affects the brain. In Chapter 3, we’ll go inside the laboratory, seeking to understand how mindfulness is impacting not only our behavior, but our very neurological structures as well. We’ll meet the scientists who are leading the charge in this emerging discipline and hear from skeptics who believe some of the results are being oversold. And I’ll share my own experience of going under the microscope, where I learned what my brain looks like on meditation.

Whether or not every scientific study is bulletproof, however, is not the most pertinent question. What’s more important is whether or not mindfulness works. Does it help people become happier? Can it make us less stressed? The answer, as we’ll see in Chapter 4, seems to be yes. I experienced as much myself, taking a class in the most popular form of mindfulness training today – Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction – and meeting a swath of workers from various disciplines who have all used meditation to reduce stress, increase their happiness, and improve their health.

Mindfulness engenders a number of benefits beyond stress reduction. One of the most readily attainable is enhanced focus. In Chapter 5, we’ll meet workers from disparate fields who have discovered this firsthand. The repeated practice of bringing our attention back to the breath each time the mind wanders, over and over again, cultivates concentration, a useful quality no matter what our vocation.

Being more mindful also cultivates compassion. This may sound surprising at first. How can paying attention to my breath make me care about others more? And talking about loving-kindness can seem out of place in buttoned-up professional settings. But as we’ll see in Chapter 6, compassion spawned by mindfulness is being embraced by politicians, businesspeople, and entrepreneurs alike. They are discovering that compassion, though not normally something associated with corporate life, can be deeply advantageous to all sorts of businesses.

The good news is, many mindful workers are not only practicing compassion with themselves and others, but also extending their efforts to do good in the world well beyond their interpersonal relationships. In Chapter 7, mindful companies that are embracing social responsibility will take center stage. From improving conditions for factory workers, to reducing environmental degradation, to finding ways to bring health care to thousands of new people, the results of mindfulness in action are wonderfully varied.

In Chapter 8, we’ll examine what has become one of the most popular applications of meditation in the workplace today: developing mindful leaders. Though perhaps less easily quantifiable than stress reduction, mindful leadership is no less important. Executives hold sway in the workplace, and when they become less reactive, more focused, and kinder, they can create more compassionate workplaces and run more socially responsible businesses.

But not everyone is happy with mindfulness going mainstream. Chapter 9 will take us to the frontlines of the attack on what is being dubbed “McMindfulness.” Dissenters say that mindfulness is being subverted and unethically used in the service of big company profits. Purists say it should not be divorced from the traditions from which it came. And some, wary of meditation altogether, just want it to go away.

For better or worse – mostly for the better, I contend – that is unlikely to happen. Mindfulness has been around forever and in this new incarnation is likely to stick around. In Chapter 10, to get a glimpse of what this new, more mindful working world might look like, we go to the epicenter of this nascent movement: Silicon Valley. From confabs celebrating mindfulness and technology to a raft of workplace programs teaching meditation in the office, the San Francisco Bay Area is home to the largest concentration of mindful workers in the world. Together, they are hacking corporate cultures to embrace concentration, retooling their algorithms with loving-kindness in mind, and trying to make compassion as commonplace as coding. And since California is, as ever, a cultural bellwether, the mindful workers of Silicon Valley are setting a precedent that is likely to be followed by much of the rest of the world.

As I met this new generation of mindful workers, I was impressed not only with their diligent practice and intuitive wisdom, but also with their bravery in swimming against the tide in today’s ultra-competitive workplace culture. As I reported, I learned. And as I learned, I was moved to become more mindful myself. My hope is that by presenting a range of these stories, and a few of my own, this book can inspire still more workers – from those on the factory floor to those in the C-suite – to become more mindful. Whether you are merely curious as to what all the fuss is about, or eager to begin a robust practice, this is an invitation to embark on a personal journey of mindfulness. And whether you are already meditating in the workplace, or are contemplating how it might be scaled within your own organization, you’ll find examples here of those who have done it successfully, in a whole range of professions. However it is done, my hope is that with these stories as inspiration, we can all experience the myriad benefits of mindful work.