Take a period where you're physically occupied but not mentally, like walking or driving, and focus your attention on a professional problem. Keep bringing your attention back to the problem when your mind wanders or stalls. Be wary of looping on what you already know - push yourself to generate new ideas. When stuck, define the specific next-step question you need to answer. Two key benefits of productive meditation: (1) Strengthen your distraction-resisting muscles, (2) Leverage your mind's disdain for boredom to naturally generate new insights.

Section: 2, Chapter: 2

Author: Cal Newport

The author spends his final mornings in the Arctic savoring the profound silence and stillness found far from human-generated noise. In the modern world, it's nearly impossible to escape human-caused sound, which scientists have found increases stress hormones, reduces cognitive function, and fragments sleep.

An acoustic ecologist has calculated that there are only a dozen places left in the lower 48 states where you can go for 15 minutes without hearing human noise. But even reducing noise pollution and prioritizing natural soundscapes in parks and neighborhoods could provide a balm for overstimulated minds. Seeking out the quiet places, in nature and in ourselves, restores a forgotten form of peace.

Section: 1, Chapter: 13

Author: Michael Easter

While intensely pleasurable meditative states known as jhanas can sometimes arise with concentration meditation, mindfulness meditation aims more for a clear seeing of reality that can permeate daily life off the cushion. This may involve:

• Greater presence and sensory vividness. Colors seem brighter, sounds more vivid, food more flavorful. There is a childlike freshness to perceptions.
• Reduced attachment and aversion. With a less self-referential perspective, there is less of a feeling of "what's in it for me" or "what does this mean about me" in response to experiences. Things can be appreciated for what they are.
• More openness to both pleasant and unpleasant feeling tones without getting caught up in narrative thoughts about them. Difficult emotions pass through more fluidly.
• Insights into the constructed, dreamlike nature of experience that create a sense of spaciousness and choice in how to respond.

While peak experiences on retreat may come and go, a more continuous "quiet joy" and intimacy with life can suffuse everyday experience with disciplined practice.

Section: 1, Chapter: 4

Author: Robert Wright

Some Buddhists object to descriptions of meditative insight as revealing that "all is one," arguing this contradicts the core doctrine of emptiness (shunyata). If there are no truly existing, independent things, how can they be one?

But the author suggests this distinction may be more semantic than substantive. Emptiness points to the thorough interdependence (pratitya-samutpada) of all phenomena - how everything arises in dependence on everything else, lacking "inherent existence." And this radical interconnectedness could also be described as a deep unity or oneness.

Experientially, those who describe "becoming one with everything" in meditation seem to be pointing to the same basic insight - a falling away of the usual sense of separation between self and world, revealing a more intimate, less differentiated field of experience. The same basic realization may just be expressed through different metaphysical frameworks and vocabularies.

Section: 1, Chapter: 13

Author: Robert Wright

In our hyperconnected world, we rarely take time to deliberately disconnect and put space on the calendar to think and strategize. Essentialists create space in their schedules to escape and explore life. They use this space to discern what is truly essential, to connect with their purpose, and to determine what they want to go big on. They don't let the noise of the world drown out their inner voice. Examples of creating space include taking a walk in nature, meditating, turning off your phone for a set period each day, scheduling "blank space" on your calendar, and taking time to journal.

Section: 2, Chapter: 5

Author: Greg McKeown

The Tibetan Buddhist tradition of Dzogchen aims to point out the nature of mind to the student directly, without any complicated philosophy or practice.

Instead of striving towards awakening through meditation, the student is invited to recognize the innate wakefulness that is already present - an open, contentless awareness that is naturally free from grasping and the illusion of self. This is done through an introduction called "pointing out instructions" given by the teacher. With this glimpse of the mind's nature, one then practices "taking the goal as the path," resting in pure awareness.

Section: 1, Chapter: 4

Author: Sam Harris

Meditation has often been seen as an esoteric practice for ascetics and hermits unconcerned with the affairs of the world. However, in an age of accelerating change, volatility and anxiety, meditative practices may be more relevant than ever before for people from all walks of life. By observing sensations, thoughts and emotions with equanimity, one can find an island of calm within the storm.

More importantly, meditation can help us avoid being swept away unthinkingly by the stories we tell ourselves and develop the insight to view our own minds with more clarity. As technological disruptions make the future more unpredictable and our old certainties crumble, knowing our own minds and maintaining mental balance will become a crucial skill. While not a panacea, regular contemplative practice can help us stay grounded, present and compassionate in an age of bewildering transformations. Even a little more awareness of our inner lives can make a big difference in how we engage with the world.

Section: 5, Chapter: 21

Author: Yuval Noah Harari

From an evolutionary perspective, emotions evolved as a way to motivate animals, including humans, to approach things that helped them survive and reproduce (food, mates) and avoid things that threatened survival (predators, toxins). Good and bad feelings are nature's carrot and stick to control behavior.

However, in modern environments, these once-adaptive emotional propensities can lead us astray. For example:

• Our natural desire for sugar and fat, adaptive in ancestral environments, now leads to obesity and health issues
• Anger, useful for deterring rivals and cheaters in small hunter-gatherer bands, is counterproductive in modern anonymous societies
• Anxiety, which helped keep us alert to threats, now often arises in situations where it serves no productive purpose

Buddhism argues that mindfulness can help us step back from unhelpful, conditioned emotional patterns and see them with more clarity and choice in whether to act on them.

Section: 1, Chapter: 3

Author: Robert Wright

Vipassana meditation, also known as insight meditation, aims to give the meditator insight into the true nature of reality, defined in Buddhism as the "three marks of existence":

1. Dukkha (suffering/unsatisfactoriness)
2. Anicca (impermanence)
3. Anatta (not-self)

By observing the contents of the mind with clarity, the meditator comes to see the pervasiveness of these three marks. In particular, anatta, the realization that there is no fixed, permanent self, is considered crucial for liberation from suffering but is very difficult to grasp intellectually without meditation practice.

Section: 1, Chapter: 2

Author: Robert Wright

When Ray Dalio started practicing Transcendental Meditation in college, little did he realize the profound impact it would have on his life and success. He credits his daily meditation practice for providing him "equanimity" and the ability to think clearly even in the most chaotic situations.

As he puts it: "I'm sure Transcendental Meditation, which I have been practicing regularly for nearly half a century, helped provide me with the equanimity I needed to approach my challenges this way." For Dalio, meditation became a transformative habit that enabled him to embrace reality, reflect deeply, and respond effectively rather than emotionally to anything life threw at him.

Section: 1, Chapter: 1

Author: Ray Dalio