If you’ve ever thought, I’d like to try mindfulness, but I just don’t have the time, you’re not alone.
People often imagine mindfulness as sitting on a cushion for thirty minutes, eyes closed, somehow trying not to think. That misunderstanding can make it feel like one more thing to fit into an already busy day.
Mindfulness at work isn’t about emptying your mind or achieving a state of blissful calm. It is about paying attention to what is happening, inside and around you, so you have a little more choice in how you respond.
Longer practices can help you develop that skill. Shorter practices give you opportunities to use it during the day. Sometimes, that can begin with just three minutes.
Formal and informal mindfulness: two ways to practise
Mindfulness can be practised formally and informally.
Formal mindfulness means setting aside dedicated time for a structured practice, such as a body scan, sitting meditation or three-minute breathing space. It gives you an opportunity to practise noticing where your attention has gone and gently bringing it back.
Informal mindfulness involves bringing that same quality of attention to something you are already doing: drinking your morning coffee, walking to a meeting or noticing what is happening before you answer a difficult call. You are not adding another activity to your day. You are paying more attention to the one already happening.
Both forms of practice have a place. Formal practice helps build the skill over time, while informal practice helps you bring it into everyday life.
The three-minute breathing space
The three-minute breathing space was developed as part of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). It offers a brief way to pause, notice what is happening and step out of autopilot before carrying on with your day.
It has three stages:
1. Awareness
Begin by noticing what is happening right now. What thoughts are present? What feelings or sensations can you notice? There is no need to change anything or decide whether a thought or feeling should be there. You are simply recognising your experience as it is.
2. Gathering
Bring your attention to the physical sensations of breathing. Notice the movement of the breath in the abdomen or wherever you feel it most clearly. When your mind wanders, gently bring your attention back.
3. Expanding
Widen your attention from the breath to include the whole body. Notice your posture, facial expression and any areas of tension or ease. Then allow your awareness to include the space around you before continuing with your day.
The practice takes around three minutes, although a short practice to consciously notice a few breaths or extended when you have more time.
The point is not to produce a particular feeling by the end. You may feel calmer or clearer, but you may not. The purpose is to notice what is happening and create a small pause before whatever comes next.
You might use the breathing space before opening your laptop, between meetings or at the end of the working day. Practised regularly, it can become a familiar way to interrupt the momentum of a busy day and check in with yourself.
Bringing mindfulness into everyday moments
Once you begin noticing how much of the working day runs on autopilot, opportunities for informal practice appear everywhere.
Your morning drink is one simple place to begin. Instead of scrolling while you wait for the kettle, notice the whole experience as if you were making your cuppa for the time, feel warmth of the cup, the smell and the first taste. Even a brief pause can interrupt the morning rush and bring your attention back to the present moment.
A walk to work or a short walk at lunchtime offers another opportunity. Feel your feet meeting the ground. Notice the temperature, sounds and movement around you. Your mind may continue planning the afternoon or replaying the morning. When you notice that, bring your attention back to the walk.
At your desk, you could pause for thirty seconds to notice how your body feels, where you are holding tension and what your breathing is doing. You do not need to fix anything. The practice is simply noticing what is already there.
Lunch counts too. Eating without simultaneously working or scrolling gives you a chance to taste your food and take an actual break from what you were doing. Even just noticing the first few bites, really experiencing the taste and texture and savouring the experience can give you another opportunity to practise.
None of these moments needs to feel profound. Mindfulness is often much more ordinary than that.
What can a short practice actually do?
Regular mindfulness practice can help you recognise stress earlier, manage your attention and respond more deliberately to what is happening. Over time, this can affect not only how you feel at work, but how you move between tasks, handle pressure and relate to other people.
Hülsheger and colleagues explored this across two workplace studies, including a diary study involving 219 employees and a ten-day mindfulness programme with a further 64. Their findings linked mindfulness with less emotional exhaustion and greater job satisfaction, suggesting that regular practice can make a meaningful difference to how people experience their working day.
The value of pausing between tasks was also explored by Microsoft’s Human Factors Lab. Fourteen people attended four half-hour video meetings, first back-to-back and then with a ten-minute meditation break between each one. EEG readings suggested that stress continued to build during the back-to-back meetings, while the meditation breaks helped participants reset and remain more engaged.
Mindfulness has also been linked to longer-term changes. Hölzel and colleagues used MRI scans before and after an eight-week mindfulness programme and found changes in areas of the brain associated with learning, memory, emotional regulation and perspective-taking.
A three-minute breathing space is one simple way to begin bringing this into your own working day. It may feel small, but practised regularly, these pauses can help you notice the state you are in, return your attention to what you are doing and choose how you want to approach what comes next.
Building a practice that fits your life
A common mistake is trying to do too much too soon, then stopping entirely when life gets busy. My advice is to just start with one thing.
It might be a three-minute breathing space before you open your laptop, a mindful walk at lunchtime twice a week or noticing the first few sips of your morning drink before your attention goes elsewhere.
Choose something small enough to repeat. It is the repeated practice of noticing and returning that develops the skill, not completing one perfect meditation.
Over time, you’ll become more able to notice when you are working on autopilot, carrying tension into the next meeting or reacting before you have had time to think.
That is where the value of mindfulness at work lies, not in feeling calm all day, but in recognising what is happening and having more choice over what you do next.
If you would like to develop a regular mindfulness practice, my mindfulness courses give you time to learn the foundations, explore different practices and find helpful ways to use them in everyday life.
Bringing mindfulness into your workplace
I also work with organisations to bring practical, evidence-based mindfulness and psychological skills into the workplace as part of wider wellbeing support.
If you’re exploring workshops, training or a workplace wellbeing programme for your team, get in touch to discuss what would be most useful.
References
Bohan, M., & Microsoft Human Factors Lab (2021). Research proves your brain needs breaks. Microsoft WorkLab Work Trend Index. view
Good, D. J., Lyddy, C. J., Glomb, T. M., Bono, J. E., Brown, K. W., Duffy, M. K., Baer, R. A., Brewer, J. A., & Lazar, S. W. (2016). Contemplating mindfulness at work: An integrative review. Journal of Management, 42(1), 114–142. view
Hölzel, B. K., Carmody, J., Vangel, M., Congleton, C., Yerramsetti, S. M., Gard, T., & Lazar, S. W. (2011). Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 191(1), 36–43. view
Hülsheger, U. R., Alberts, H. J. E. M., Feinholdt, A., & Lang, J. W. B. (2013). Benefits of mindfulness at work: The role of mindfulness in emotion regulation, emotional exhaustion, and job satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98(2), 310–325. view
Pascoe, M. C., Thompson, D. R., Jenkins, Z. M., & Ski, C. F. (2017). Mindfulness mediates the physiological markers of stress: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 95, 156–178. view
Segal, Z. V., Williams, J. M. G., & Teasdale, J. D. (2013). Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
