A few weeks ago, I celebrated my first business birthday! 🥳

It’s been a rollercoaster year and an interesting time to start a new venture to say the least. I’ve been reflecting on what the last year has taught me and wanted to share this thought process more broadly.

In this article, I’ll aim to:

• Discuss why I quit my job at Google and the thinking behind it
• Address the money question (“Can I earn a living working for myself?”) that prevents many people from taking the leap
• Give a full operational and financial breakdown of my past year in business
• Share a few lessons I’ve learned along the way

This is a longer and more detailed post than my normal musings, so I’d invite you to skim and dive deeper into the parts you find interesting.

It’s mainly a way for me to think out loud, but I also hope it can be useful for someone considering starting their own thing.

Let’s get to it.

Preface: Build In Public

Some of you might be familiar with the “Build in Public” movement that has taken off in recent years, especially amongst online content creators. Essentially, it’s a mindset shift that encourages entrepreneurs to share their work in the public domain. To me, it’s about transparency and celebrating progress rather than perfection.

I’ve learned a ton from folks like Ali Adbaal, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, and Nat Eliason who document their progress so that others may learn from their experience. I see this post as my small contribution to this space; a chance to share openly so that together we can learn from each other.

One important caveat before we go further: I am not sharing financials to impress anybody. It’s not like I made a killing anyway! My motivation is that by sharing openly, someone reading this might learn something valuable they can use on their own journey.

Part 1: Starting a Business

For those who don’t know my work, I run a training company that helps businesses rethink productivity and build resilience for the future of work.

I primarily operate in the Learning and Development (L&D) space and am mainly seen by my clients as a “training provider.” In that sense, I’d classify the business as a B2B, service-based business, but with dreams to create more scalable products soon.

I currently trade under my own name, Connor Swenson Coaching Ltd.

Here’s a look at the origin story of how I got here.

Finding a Problem Worth Solving

I joined Google straight out of college and spent most of my seven years at the company working on an amazing team called Google for Startups (fka Google for Entrepreneurs).

Despite many years of working to support startups and startup community builders, I did not have a clear roadmap for starting a business when I left. Sure, I had picked up some useful, generic startup knowledge in those years, but actually doing the damn thing is different.

In essence, learning about something and doing that something is an entirely different animal.

It’s the ugly transformation of knowledge into wisdom through experience.

Even if I didn’t feel entirely prepared, I still did take a few valuable nuggets of wisdom away from my experience at Google for Startups. Perhaps the most important was this: creating a business is all about solving a real human problem.

I recognized, through anecdotal lessons and cold hard data that many entrepreneurs fail because they create a cool product or technology without addressing a need in the market.

As I thought about starting this business, I reflected on my own experience, what I had heard from others, and some general research to draw some important conclusions.

In short, I knew these two things were true when I started out:

1. People are struggling with focus and time management and it’s having an impact on well-being, performance, and job satisfaction.
2. Businesses are willing to invest in solutions for this problem.

Now I must confess, I didn’t conduct any in-depth user research on either of those insights. They were more instinctual and experiential observations I had made.

Coworkers at Google, startups in the communities I was working with, and most of my friends were all incredibly busy, distracted, and stressed. Knowledge work is demanding and it can take a toll. This was a problem I didn’t think was going away anytime soon.

I was thinking a lot about these problems through the lens of my own personal experience, in which I had spent years and years obsessing over how to master my own challenges balancing performance and well-being at work.

It was my own search for solutions, in which I scoured books, attended workshops, interviewed experts, experimented constantly, and consistently tried to learn and adapt for my own sake that led me to different frameworks, practices, and approaches that I found made a difference.

Once I had figured out how to stay (relatively) calm, balanced, focused, and productive in my day-to-day, it wasn’t long before I was able to share these insights and practices with others.

Testing My Approach

Luckily for me, Google gave me a training ground to test whether I could help solve these challenges for others.

For example, while working at Google:

• I became a certified internal teacher for one of the company’s most popular leadership programs, Search Inside Yourself.
• I volunteered my time to facilitate gLearn (Googlers teaching Googlers) courses on topics like time management, mindfulness, and productivity.
• I raised my hand when opportunities came up at Google for Startups to deliver workshops and trainings to entrepreneurs in our network, including to diverse audiences in markets like Dubai, Johannesburg, and Zurich.
• I collaborated with the Google Primer App to create digital lessons on energy management and sustainable productivity that could reach thousands.
• I spoke on behalf of Google at conferences like The Next Web in Amsterdam and Web Summit in Lisbon providing a glimpse into Google’s internal culture and how the company tries to prioritize employee well-being while maintaining high standards of team performance.

Basically, I tried to use the platform I had at Google to my full advantage, all the while helping others.

(Sidebar: I recognize most companies are not like Google and most jobs don’t provide this much room for experimentation. Even so, I’ve witnessed that there is usually more latitude that you realize to do things you care about in the confines of your “day job.” Often you just gotta ask!)

Find Work That Feels Like Play

The more I tested this approach, the more I started to sense I had found a sweet spot. By that, I meant I found (a) a problem I enjoyed working on and (b) work that I was naturally good at.

My quest to find this sweet spot started back in 2017 when I became obsessed with asking myself, “What am I doing when I feel most alive?”

This question was running like a radar in the back of my mind, constantly scanning through my experiences and looking for clues. It wasn’t obvious at first, but as I started teaching and facilitating, I started to notice how energized I was by the process.

There’s a nugget of wisdom from investor and entrepreneur Naval Ravikant in which he says:

“Find work that feels like play.”

I realized that sharing my learnings through teaching and facilitating workshops was just plain ol’ fun for me in a way that it wasn’t for everyone.

I loved preparing for these workshops, blending insights from different sources and domains and making them accessible and practical.

I loved facilitating, where I was able to share my own knowledge and also learn loads from participants who offered up their perspectives and insights.

I loved refining, rehearsing, and continually trying to make these workshops more engaging, interactive, and above all, impactful.

I just loved this stuff.

Slowly, I recognized this could be a competitive advantage for me. I had found work that felt like play to me. I had found that sweet spot.

With a problem to solve in my mind and work I was excited about, I set my mind on leaving Google to start my own thing.

Part 2: The Money Question

As I thought about leaving Google, one of the biggest questions that loomed in my mind was this:

“Can I earn a living working for myself?”

Like anyone with a well-paying job, I found the financial security was hard to leave behind. In the past year, I’ve had countless conversations with people who are thinking of starting their own thing and money is always a central concern.

The good news is that it’s absolutely possible to make a good living on your own. In my first year, I took home just shy of £50,000 (full breakdown below). It wasn’t Google money, but it’s early days. Plus, I had much more fun, more freedom, and more flexibility. Can’t put a price tag on that!

It’s important to call out that my perspective is unique given I started a service-based business. If you’re launching a startup or building a product, your time horizon for profitability will obviously be different.

Here’s how I approached answering this question for myself.

My Backstory

I want to start by giving some context on my background.

I grew up in an affluent, upper-middle-class setting in suburban Minnesota. This is a very privileged starting point in life. My dad ran his own business in the construction finance industry and my mom spent most of my childhood looking after her three kids.

Things changed for us big time in 2008 as the financial crisis crippled the construction industry and my dad’s business went from thriving to life support almost overnight. Eventually, it couldn’t withstand the shock and he had to close it down.*

This taught me that while money isn’t everything, not having it is.

Fast-forward to 2013 when I graduated from college and was looking at $50,000 in student loans. This pile of debt made me rethink my priorities for possible career paths.

Instead of pursuing the world of non-profits and NGOs, where many of my fellow classmates majoring in International Relations would wind up, I recognized I needed to look more broadly.

Luckily for me, I stumbled into a job at Google through a community outreach program in New Orleans they were running and that I volunteered to join. That fortuitous opportunity led me to a role after school at Google NYC.

Working in tech was a blessing in the years after college, both financially and professionally. I made enough money to pay off my loans quickly and I was also exposed to a whole new world of business, startups, and innovation.

As the years went by, and I moved from Google in NYC to SF then finally to London, I started to notice one creeping downside. The longer I stayed, the more I earned, and the more difficult it felt to leave.

This is commonly referred to as the “golden handcuffs.” This is that feeling like you can’t walk away because the money is too good. The longer I stayed, the more I was promoted, and the more I earned. The more I earned, the riskier other options outside of Google became.

I recognize the insane amount of privilege in this whole idea, but I am only speaking from my own perspective and experience.

As I thought through the financial risks, I started asking myself what really mattered to me when it came to my work.

What Are You Optimizing For?

In every moment, we are making choices and optimizing for some known or unknown inner value. I have found that the easy things to optimize for are social approval, financial security, and comfort.

Our culture places value on those who make good money, work at prestigious companies, and appear “successful.” Forsaking a financial goal for a personal goal—like working in the service of others—isn’t always easy.

As time went by, I started to notice a shift in my inner compass.

What I realized was that teaching allowed me to be in the service of others while also learning and improving myself. Service and personal growth are core to my values, and doing work in alignment with them felt incredibly rich and rewarding.

I knew I could keep doing teaching and facilitating with 10–20% of my time at Google, but when I really dug deep, I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied if I didn’t give it 100%.

With that realization, I made a choice and decided to optimize for more time, more freedom, and more flexibility to do what I loved doing.

Getting clear on what I was optimizing for at the outset of this business has been invaluable. Because I know I’m indexing for personal growth instead of financial return, it helps guide my decision-making on a day-to-day basis and keeps me grounded when things get tough.

Setting a Realistic Money Goal

When I left, I decided to set a simple goal that I could use to benchmark whether or not my idea for a business was financially feasible.

I thought that if I could make £40,000 in revenue in year one, then after taxes and expenses, I’d be left with something like £30,000 in profit.

That’s roughly a starting salary in London, and I decided to anchor my expectations on that number rather than trying to match my existing Google earnings.

The good news is that I earned just about £100,000 in revenue, so well beyond my expectations. (Full breakdown below)

People have different approaches to goal-setting. Some believe you should aim high, others believe in setting realistic targets you’ll feel good about exceeding. It seems like the majority of people I know fall into the first camp.

My view was different, shaped in part by my belief that I was entering a long-term game. I looked at year one as almost a test of Minimum Viable Product, and £40k as a basic indicator of whether I was in the realm of meeting a market need.

Again, I came back to the question of optimization. In starting this business, I wanted to optimize for personal and professional growth, freedom and autonomy, and a career where I could serve others.

While money matters as one metric, I didn't want it to be the only metric on which I judged my success, especially in the first year.

Now that we’ve covered some of my thinking that led me to leave Google, let’s have a look at my business in more detail.

Part 3: Business Breakdown

As I mentioned above, my work is focused on helping leaders and teams thrive in the busy, chaotic, and ever-changing modern workplace. I focus on topics like sustainable productivity, time management, mental resilience, and well-being.

The main offering of my business is facilitating live workshops and teaching cohort-based courses, and that is where I’ve earned the vast majority of my income.

I also delivered lots of shorter keynote talks to businesses and coached a few clients 1:1.

For year one, I bucketed my workshop offering into four parts:

• Make Time — a framework that helps you focus on what matters every day
• Search Inside Yourself — mindfulness-based emotional intelligence training born at Google
• Adaptive Resilience — mindfulness-based resilience training designed specifically to meet the challenges of the pandemic
• Rise Above — custom workshops covering a range of topics from mindful productivity to remote working

Make Time

Across the year, Make Time was definitely the most appealing to clients I worked with, which wasn’t surprising given focus and time management became crucial topics for businesses during the pandemic.

Rise Above

Behind Make Time was my own custom Rise Above workshops. This part especially fun for me, as it pushed me to be more creative in addressing specific client challenges.

Some of the custom workshops I’m most proud of designing and delivering in 2020 were:

6-Part “Self-Management” Workshop Series

• The six sessions were developed for a group of startup founders in a Google-run program and covered Mental Thriving, Physical Thriving, and Emotional Thriving.
• I co-developed this program with the help of my partner (business & life) Claire who worked almost full-time with me for 4 months last year.
• We drew on a blend of research and applied tools in the realms of productivity, well-being, personal leadership, mindfulness, resilience, and emotional intelligence to create this series.

Mastering Remote Time Management

• This 90-minute workshop drew on my personal experience of semi-remote working during my time at Google and was delivered to a variety of corporate and startup audiences.
• Being able to help people transition to the new norm at the start of the pandemic was a really rewarding challenge.

21st Century Mindfulness

• I developed a 6-week course for a client that brought a fresh, modern approach to the fundamentals of mindfulness.
• I found I particularly enjoy taking topics that people might otherwise think “it’s not for me” (i.e. meditation and mindfulness) and making them accessible and interesting.
• This is one that I might create an online course around, so watch this space.

Search Inside Yourself

The final part of my offering was the Search Inside Yourself (SIY) program, which I originally taught at Google and now am certified to teach externally.

While I did teach a number of keynotes on SIY, this program wasn’t taken up by many of my clients. I think the primary reason is that SIY was designed as an in-person, 2-day experience. It took a while to transition the format to online, and it’s still a lot of content (~12 hours) to take in virtually.

Adaptive Resilience

The good news is that the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute released a new program in 2020 called Adaptive Resilience. I’ve taught this twice in 2021 already and I believe it will be an increasingly attractive offer for businesses as the pandemic’s impact on employee well-being, stress levels, and overall satisfaction continues to be felt.

The Numbers At-a-Glance

Here’s a breakdown of various metrics covering the timespan of March 2020 through to April 2021.

Paid Workshops & Keynotes:

• I delivered over 50 paid workshops and keynotes.

Free Workshops & Keynotes:

• I delivered over 15 free workshops and keynotes.

Newsletters & Articles:

• I sent 47 editions of my weekly newsletter One Percent Wisdom and published 17 articles on my blog.
• My newsletter started with zero subscribers and currently has 565.

1:1 & Group Coaching:

• I facilitated over 60 coaching sessions.
• This included one long-term client (6+ months), two medium-term clients (1–3 months), and four text-based habit coaching clients.
• In addition, I facilitated a variety of group coaching and one-off individual coaching sessions for corporate clients.

Financial Metrics

Here’s a breakdown of my Profit and Loss:

• Total Revenue — $120,944
• Total Expenses — $55,932
• Total Profit — $64,736

If you convert the total profit into GBP, it’s roughly £46,957.

To put that into comparison, I earned £101,025 in the previous year at Google or £72,480 after taxes. Note that about 25% of that £72k came in the form of stock grants, so that figure isn’t quite accurate of my “take-home” pay.

Suffice to say, I’m pretty happy with this!

I’m confident I can grow it this year, and honestly, making less money but being so much more excited about my work has definitely been worth the trade-off.

Regarding expenses, these cover a diverse set of costs: content licensing fees, software subscriptions, contractors/consultants, website developers, lots of takeaway coffees, etc.

(Sidebar: if you’re curious about specific costs, just DM me and I’m happy to share more info.)

One caveat here is that my personal expenses were so low in 2020 due to the pandemic. This was a blessing as I didn’t draw any income from the business until 2021, so my savings went a lot further.

It’ll be interesting to see how I feel about this level of income once the world of travel, restaurants, and entertainment opens back up.

Part 4: Lessons Learned

There is a great quote from the best-selling business book “The E-Myth Revisited” that I think is accurate:

Business is like a dojo, a place you go to practice being the best you can be — Michael E. Gerber

In many ways, starting your own business is a great way to challenge yourself, learn about yourself, and grow. Your weaknesses, as well as your strengths, all come through in the way the business operates.

Here are a few lessons I’ve learned throughout the year plus some growth areas I’ve identified going forward.

✅ Lesson 1: Surround Yourself with Great People

I’m basically a “solopreneur” in that I’m the only person working full-time on this business at the moment. Even so, I have learned that you need to surround yourself with great people if you’re going to succeed.

I have so many people that helped me in the past year, it would be impossible to list them all, but here is a shortlist of the superstars: Claire, Tony, JZ, Natalia, John, Hector, Ben, Sanjiv, Dritan, David, Thomas. There are many more, so sorry if I’ve missed you!

Even if you’re working solo and aren’t asking for direct help on your business, there are a variety of ways I’ve sought inspiration and support. For example:

• I have standing meetings with fellow entrepreneurs and friends where we’d discuss our businesses, share challenges, and problem-solve together.
• I call, text, and email countless people in my network with questions on everything, from creating contracts to pricing online content.
• I have weekly “Getting Stuff Done” calls with my mate Seb.
• I have weekly “Learning Call” with my mate Ronald to think about big ideas, mental models, and other concepts we can apply to work and life.

✅ Lesson 2: Keep Adapting, Keep Changing

They say change is the only constant, and whoever “they” are is right. I had a rough idea of my plan when I left Google in February 2020, but none of my ideas accounted for a global pandemic. My initial hopes of teaching and facilitating in-person events faded fast, and I needed to adapt.

Luckily, I found that I was quick to adapt. I worked such a variety of roles at Google and things were constantly changing, so I think that prepared me well for the total upheaval the pandemic put before us.

✅ Lesson 3: You Don’t Need to Do It All

One big benefit I had in starting up was my ability to offer two well-established programs to clients: Make Time and Search Inside Yourself.

While they are very different offerings, they both have established credibility and proven impact. Not only did I feel incredibly supported by the teams behind each program, but it also helped have these “pillars” that I could build up my custom programming around.

✅ Lesson 4: Stay Connected to Your Community

People always tell you how important your network is, but I really saw it firsthand in year one. It wasn’t an easy or immediate process to start this business. People didn’t approach me off the bat.

Even so, my first few clients were all through direct personal relationships. These were people who trusted me, saw the value I could bring, and took a chance on someone starting something new. I’m super grateful for that trust.

✅ Lesson 5: Take Care of Yourself

I honestly don’t know how I could have managed 2020 without consistent exercise, yoga, meditation, and sleep. When things got bumpy, when I felt completely overwhelmed, these practices brought me back to the ground.

Often, I had to remember to put my oxygen mask on first. That often meant stopping work even when I felt I “needed” to push through, heading outside for a walk, and reenergizing with a bit of movement and nature. Basically, walks are just the best.

🏔 Growth Area 1: Respecting My Edge

I definitely found my edge for how much I can teach and facilitate in a week, and sometimes I pushed too far. Overall I think this is a good thing, but in the weeks where I felt the edge, it didn’t feel good. It felt exhausting.

I realized when I’m that drained, my default is to push through and work harder when what I actually need is rest and restoration.

Laptop-free weekends, long walks, yoga, meditation, quality time with Claire and with my close friends — these are the medicines that worked.

🏔Growth Area 2: Leaning Into Sales

This area is somewhat paradoxical because on one hand, it feels like I sold better than I thought I would, but on the other, I still don’t feel I have a process nailed.

Over the year, I’ve learned that sales is an art and a science, and there’s so much room for growth here. Importantly, I recognized that sales does not have to be a dirty word.

I’m offering something I know is valuable, and my job is to find people who could benefit from that help. Yes, that is “sales” but as this mindset shift has occurred, it has helped me approach the process in a way that feels more human, more natural, and more “me.”

🏔 Growth Area 3: Putting Myself Out There.

I’d say “putting yourself out there” is really just marketing. As someone who started their career in marketing, I would have thought this would be easier.

The main challenge was getting clear on not just what I offer, but what benefits it provides to businesses. It turns out that doing that for a brand or a project at work is much easier than for yourself, at least in my experience.

A secondary challenge was my reluctance to invest in social media. I’ve loved being distant from platforms like Instagram for the past few years, but I also see the need to put more effort into sharing what I’m up to.

I’ve recently launched a YouTube channel, slowly started wading back into Instagram, and I’m keeping active on Twitter. Let’s see where that takes me in 2021.

🏔 Growth Area 4: Balancing Saying Yes and Saying No

I consciously chose to approach my first year with an experimental and open mindset. I wanted to try things, open myself up to new opportunities, and see what feels good. Even so, I probably said yes too much to things I knew wouldn’t create that much value.

This is an area I’m looking to develop in the coming year, specifically in creating more rules and principles for myself so I can create a more thoughtful decision-making process.

One heuristic from the legendary Derek Sivers I want to keep in mind is simple: Hell Yeah or No. Life is too short and time is too limited to invest my energy into things that I’m not a Hell Yeah on.

Conclusion: Your Turn

If you’ve read this far, I’m impressed. That was a lot of words!

If you have, I’m guessing you might be considering a similar move. While I can’t say with certainty it’s the right decision, and I honestly say that if you have been thinking about it this much, it’s probably a sign you should go for it.

If I were you, I’d probably take any advice in this article with a huge pinch of salt. After all, I’m still basically a rookie and your values and circumstances are different than mine.

However, if you are looking for a few final words of advice, here’s what I can say.

💰 Save Up.

I personally saved about a year’s worth of expenses before I quit my job so I would have a financial cushion. I’m not sure if that’s exactly the amount you need, and I know it’s not possible for everyone, but consider it.

One mindset shift that helped me to spend less was thinking that each dollar saved was a time unit of freedom. Instead of feeling cheap when I skipped a meal out, I considered it an investment in my future freedom.

🏎 Test Drive.

You wouldn’t buy a new car without taking it for a spin, and I wouldn’t recommend you start a new venture blind. Whatever type of work you’re interested in, find ways to test doing it now. It’s the best way to verify the assumptions that otherwise might only live in your imagination.

📊 Find the First Client.

This is more specific advice for a service-based business like mine, but it probably applies if you have a product-based business too.

If you can land your first paying customer before quitting, you’re going to a) have some real-world data that you’re solving a need b) feel more confident in taking the leap and c) that confidence can translate into a stronger start out the gate.

Thanks for reading.

If you have any questions about my experience, send me an email at connor@connorswenson.com and I’ll try my best to answer!

👋 If you want to stay in touch, connect on Twitter or join my weekly newsletter.

*Correction: I incorrectly stated my dad’s business declared bankruptcy. In fact, he never did. His business, Alpine Company, closed down but without filing for bankruptcy.

Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself and What I Learned In My First Year was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the great lessons from mindfulness traditions is about the power of pausing. So often, we react impulsively to the world around us, rather than respond skillfully.

If there is one thing I wish I could teach my twenty-year-old self, it would be to pause and take a break before letting my temper do the talking.

I’ve found taking a pause can be helpful in so many scenarios.

About to send an angry email? Take a pause.

Distracted and endlessly scrolling through your newsfeed? Take a pause.

Stressed and opening up the snack drawer? Take a pause.

Pausing allows us to put a small buffer between our instinctual reactions and our more thoughtful, considered self.

In fact, research shows that the limbic system, often referred to as our brain’s “emotional center”, takes 350 milliseconds to respond to stimuli. Our neocortex, the “executive center” of the brain, takes 4–6 seconds.

If you’ve ever had an emotional outburst, then moments later regretted it, you know from experience what this is like. Our “feeling brain” moves much quicker than our “thinking brain.”

Now, even when we are practicing pausing and our intentions are good, it isn’t always easy. This is especially true when it’s practiced in relation to others.

That’s why Dr. Julie Gottman’s best practices for meaningful breaks can be so helpful.

Dr. Gottman, a clinical psychologist and researcher, has developed a set of rules that you can apply to disagreements in your relationships, whether that is with your partner, coworker, or family member.

These best practices were discovered in a series of experiments when researchers prompted a disagreement between couples and then told them they needed to pause the experiment to fix the recording equipment.

The subjects were sent into a waiting room to read or listen to music, and when they returned, they were almost entirely new people.

What happened? The break allowed emotions to calm down, and the resulting conversation was much more humane.

I have often tried to use breaks and pauses to keep conversations from overheating, but I didn’t realize that I often make one of the most common mistakes that Dr. Gotttman sees (#2 below). Whoops.

Going forward, I’m excited to experiment with these practices in my own life, and I hope you’ll find them useful too!

Put it into practice

When you feel a disagreement turning into a fight, consider following these simple steps to make taking a pause easier and more beneficial.

Define the time. When you find yourself emotionally flooded and needing a break, be specific about when you want to resume the conversation. Dr. Gottman suggests a minimum of 30 minutes so your physiology can calm down, but try not to break for longer than a day.

Don’t think about it. The most common mistake is using the break to rehash the argument. This keeps our bodies triggered, so we can’t process the emotions. Instead, use the time for some self-soothing, like reading a book or listening to music.

Ask for more. Once your break is over, check-in with yourself to see how you feel. Don’t rush back into the discussion if your emotions are still running high. It’s totally okay to ask for more time to process.

Remember, it’s “no big deal.” Reminding yourself that all relationships have conflict is important. It’s not a sign of anything bad, it’s just part of human life. By reflecting on this, you will develop a deeper perspective that will soften the impact of future conflicts.

Words of wisdom

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes…including you.” — Anne Lamott

Like this post?

Get one idea each week to help you bring more focus and intention into your work and life by joining my free newsletter, One Percent Wisdom.

Pausing with Purpose was originally published in Curious on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Then in 2018, I lucked out and got a last minute registration to the extremely popular Search Inside Yourself (SIY) program at Google.

Over two days, we explored the neuroscience of mindfulness, saw how attention training can lead to enhanced emotional intelligence, and experimented with dozens of practical exercises that can be applied in daily life.

I walked away from that training changed, and armed with a set of skills and practices that allowed me to fully integrate mindfulness into my job.

What happened from there?

• I experienced less stress and anxiety about work and life
• I became more comfortable navigating difficult conversations and challenging situations
• I felt more connected to my teammates
• I noticed improvements in my attention, focus, and concentration.
• I generally felt more ‘at peace’ with the world around me

Fast-forward to today, and I’m thrilled to share that I have just completed my training and I’m now officially a Search Inside Yourself Certified Teacher.

What is Search Inside Yourself?

Originally developed at Google in 2007, Search Inside Yourself teaches practical mindfulness, emotional intelligence and leadership tools to unlock your full potential at work and in life.

The program has gone global. It’s been taught at world-leading companies like SAP, LinkedIn, and Ford, and has been delivered in more than 150 cities and 150 countries!

In short, SIY combines neuroscience, attention-training, and emotional intelligence and takes an evidence-based approach to building the skills that lead to outstanding leadership.

The program is managed by the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI), a non-profit organization started in 2012 that is independent of Google. I love the vision and mission of SIYLI:

We are a global community making mindfulness and emotional intelligence practical and accessible. Together, we’re working toward a more peaceful world in which all people feel connected and act with compassion.

While SIY is the flagship program from SIYLI, there are a variety of other programs available, including a newly developed 3-part series on “Adaptive Resilience.

Here’s a quick look at the benefits of SIY, but check out the full impact and results from SIYLI’s latest research here.

Want to learn more?

The first place to start is the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute website. Here you can read about the research into the impact of SIY, learn about new programs, and sign-up for a variety online events.

Or, you can join me for a free online workshop on July 14th where you can get a hands-on introduction to the program. Register here.

If you’d like to discuss bringing SIY to your organization, then get in touch directly with me at connor@connorswenson.com and we can explore the opportunity in more detail.

A big thanks to the teachers who made this possible, namely Meg Levie, Simon Moyes, and Brandon Rennels. And a lot of appreciation to the SIYLI team for their hard work in sustaining this program, namely Judith, Abri, as well as Tricia and Ruchika from Google’s SIY team!

Multitasking is the new status quo. When we’re walking, we’re texting. When we’re on a call, we’re checking email. When we’re making dinner, we’re listening to a podcast.

While elements of this are amazing — like being able to stream any audiobook in the world while you wash dishes — there is a cost.

You’ve probably felt it when a friend pulled out their phone during dinner to text someone else (I’m guilty of it). Or when you meant to finish an important proposal, but got sidetracked doing some online shopping.

I felt it while writing this article, and getting distracted by email. Whoops.

One cost is our time: little bits of it lost while our attention jumps back and forth from one interruption to the next. Another cost is our happiness: missing important moments with those we care about due to distraction.

Ultimately, multitasking robs us of precious time and can leave us feeling distracted, busy, and unfulfilled. By understanding the stakes, and learning more about our mind, we can wrestle back control of our time and attention.

Switch-Tasking

When we think we’re “multitasking” what we’re actually doing is switching back and forth between tasks, or “switch-tasking.”

Switch-tasking (or ‘task switching’) is a term used in scientific research to describe the act of switching between two cognitive tasks. Neuroscientist and cognitive psychologist Daniel Levitin has this to say abut switch-tasking:

“What it turns out is that we think we’re multitasking, but we’re not. The brain is sequential tasking: we flit from one thought to the next very, very rapidly, giving us the illusion that what we’re doing is doing all these things at once.”

Essentially, even those amongst us who claim to be good at multitasking are really just getting very efficient at switch-tasking.

Think about it: if you’re reading this article and your phone buzzes, then you check it, you’re not able to simultaneously read a text and an email. You are switching attention back and forth.

Science Says

Now, decades of research around this topic shows us that as humans, we’re just not that good at doing more than one thing at a time.

It is true that humans can multitask. However, we are really only able to combine physical tasks with mental tasks. This has actually been shown to benefit our performance in some cases (listening to music while running), but is obviously harmful in others (texting while driving).

But we’re not good at juggling two mental tasks at the same time, and that is where the the real problem with multitasking exists.

We incur a cost each time we are interrupted. There is a small delay in getting back on track, and these delays can add up, and sometimes even result in a drop in performance.

Here are a few interesting findings that stuck out to me:

• We can lose up to 40% of our productive time when task switching (American Psychological Association)
• On average, it takes us around 23 minutes to resume focus after an interruption (Gallup)
• Constant interruption leads to feelings of higher workload, more stress, higher frustration, and more time pressure (UC Irvine)

Put simply, multitasking hurts more than it helps. We are all prone to do it more often than we realise. Luckily, with a little practice, we can all learn single-tasking and enjoy the benefits of doing just one thing at a time.

Single-Tasking

Single-tasking is exactly what it sounds like: doing just one thing at a time. While it is no revolutionary concept, it can transform the way you work.

Focusing deeply on one activity brings us closer to a flow state.

Being in flow is what many of us call being “in the zone,” and it’s characterised by feelings of effortless, enjoyment, and focus. Have you ever been so focused on something that time just flew by? You were in flow.

As Wharton professor Adam Grant says,

“To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction.”

Even if you don’t experience a magical flow state flow every time you sit down to work, by practicing single-tasking, I’ve found work becomes more calm, enjoyable, and satisfactory.

Simply put, not only will single-tasking make you more effective, you’ll also enjoy whatever it is you’re doing more.

Put It Into Practice

Even if we know that multitasking isn’t serving us, it can still be a tough habit to break. Don’t worry about perfection. Trust me, it’s overrated (and impossible).

If you just remember this advice, you’ll benefit massively: when you’re doing something that requires thinking, don’t do anything else.

Here are a few tips to help you gradually start to practice single-tasking in your daily life:

Make Time for It. Create space in your schedule to practice single-tasking. It’s hard to commit to avoiding multitasking for the entire day, so start by blocking off time on your calendar to put this practice to work.

Start Small. Our default mode is hard to change, so rather than trying to go cold turkey on multitasking, just set a realistic and achievable goal that makes sense in your life. Remember that our energy and focus peaks after 90 minutes, so use that as an upper bound.

20 Minutes of Magic. Again we turn to our trusty friend: the timer. Setting a visual goal on the timer for your focused work periods — even if it’s just 20 minutes, or 10! — can motivate you to stay honed in on the task at hand.

Silence is Golden. If you can, silence your phone notifications while you practice single-tasking. If you find yourself distracted by certain websites, block those too. It might sound extreme, but I’ve found it’s the only way I can reliably achieve uninterrupted focus.

Clean the Clutter. If you have tons of tabs open in your browser, you’re more likely to mindlessly click on one when you feel distracted. Try working in a single tab, or limiting yourself to a small number, like three.

Join my weekly newsletter, One Percent Wisdom, for more ideas, tactics and strategies that you can use to develop your mind and better your work.

Why Multitasking Hurts More Than It Helps was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For some of us, it might seem like working from home should be ideal for productivity. Without the commute or distractions of a busy office, we have so much more time to get things done. But is that the reality?

What I realised in the first couple weeks of lockdown was that after long days at the laptop, I was flat out exhausted. Examining my routine, I noticed that I was missing something critical: taking real breaks.

One of the most counterintuitive productivity lessons I’ve learned over the years is that to work harder, we need to rest harder. Many of us know the value of a good night’s sleep, or the importance of a weekend away from email, but how many of us take daily breaks seriously?

Why Breaks Matter

If you’re a knowledge economy worker, meaning you do your job with your brain, you’re probably not used to taking real breaks. In fact, you might even feel guilty about it. Instead of getting up from the desk when we feel tired, we turn to easier tasks like checking email, or seek distraction elsewhere (ahem, Instagram).

In a 2012 study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, researchers found that as our energy declines, we become more easily distracted. While there are different theories debating the specifics, the general consensus is that our ability to focus wanes after about 60–90 minutes.

It turns out that this natural energy cycle has been put to good use by the world’s top performers. Professor K. Anders Ericsson from Florida State University has studied elite performers over the past two decades and found the most productive had a similar habit of practicing with no interruptions for 90 minutes before taking a break.

“To maximise gains from long-term practice,” Dr. Ericsson concluded, “individuals must avoid exhaustion and must limit practice to an amount from which they can completely recover on a daily or weekly basis.”

In an evolutionary context, this makes sense. Our brains evolved to be great at sustaining attention in short bursts. We had to focus intensely on a hunt or avoiding a predator. But in today’s workplace, we tend to push ourselves beyond natural limits without noticing the downside.

So what can we do?

Take Real Breaks

The answer is quite simple: we need to balance work with rest.

Rather than trying to push through feeling tired or distracted, we need to recognise and work with our natural energy cycles.

Infusing real breaks into your schedule can make a huge difference in the quality of your energy. Our bodies are like batteries, and they need to be charged up before they hit empty.

On a practical level, just think about how you work out at the gym. No one is doing bicep curls for an hour straight. Taking rest between sets is crucial to performing at our best. Turns out our brains are no different.

By giving our brains and body a chance to rest, we can improve decision-making, gain greater self-control, and ultimately fuel our productivity.

Put It Into Practice

What types of breaks work best? It depends! Remember that productivity is personal and you’ll benefit from experimenting to see what works best for you.

The key principle to keep in mind is that you stop working during a real break.

Here are a few other tips to keep in mind:

Schedule Breaks. When we write down plans, we’re more likely to stick to them, so experiment by putting your breaks on your calendar. Studies have found social media activity peaks at 11:00am and 3:00pm. Try using those times as a proxy for when you’re most likely in need of a real break.

Do Something. It is easier to resist the temptation of checking email or scrolling through headlines if you actively do something during your break. It can be something physical, like walking up and down some stairs, or something to clear your head, like tidying a room or having a nap.

Be Tech Free. Let’s be honest. How many of reach for our phones when we go to the bathroom or make a cup of coffee? I’m guilty of it too. But staying connected doesn’t give our brains the chance to rest and reset. Experiment with tech-free breaks and you will feel the difference.

Reminders. I use a self-timer called Be Focused on my MacBook to serve gentle nudges to take a break, but you could use a normal timer too. If you have a lockdown pal, you might schedule breaks at the same time and use that to remind you and keep you accountable.

Join my weekly newsletter, One Percent Wisdom, for more ideas, tactics and strategies that you can use to develop your mind and better your work.

A few years ago, Khaled Halim, an incredible CEO coach from Reboot, came to a global summit run by Google for Startups to run a session on leadership. There was one idea — an easy tool for team conversations — that has stuck with me over the years and delivered extraordinary results in my work and life.

It’s called Red Yellow Green.

The idea behind it is simple — we all show up to work (and life) feeling different each day. Our moods, energy levels, and emotions are constantly changing, just like the weather. Red Yellow Green acknowledges an unspoken truth that we too often ignore in business: we’re human!

The exercise is simple too — you just ask your teammates how they’re feeling before you begin a meeting.

Pick a Colour

Like a traffic light, each colour represents a general mood. The beauty is the simplicity of the system. Here is a short explanation of each colour, but you can certainly expand beyond the feelings and descriptions I’ve given:

• Red means not good! You might be feeling distracted, distressed, overwhelmed, or exhausted.
• Green means great! You might be feeling energised, happy, confident, or inspired.
• Yellow is somewhere in between. You’re not too stressed, but not feeling great either.

Test it With Your Team

Red Yellow Green is like a team traffic light that reminds us to stop, go, or proceed with caution whenever we get into conversations with our teammates.

By asking each other where we’re at, we create an opportunity for empathy, connection, and understanding. On a practical level, we also avoid having the right conversations at the wrong time.

If you want to talk long-term strategy, but your teammate’s dog just died, is now the right time to have that conversation? Probably not, but we do it all the time anyway. By using Red Yellow Green, you can time your conversations better and wait till the right moment to pitch a new idea, or deliver some tough feedback.

Red Yellow Green gives us the opportunity to ‘check the weather’ and see how people are doing in the moment. But don’t treat it like team therapy. It’s a straightforward check-in that works best when it’s short and sweet.

If you’re skeptical, I was too until I tested it out and saw results right away.

Try it out for a week and see how it goes. You can blame me if it backfires.

I am sure you’ll see positive changes in your conversations, and it turns out there is data to back this up.

Traffic Data

As I was writing this article, I took a look around to see who else might be using Red Yellow Green, and what other perspectives or variations of the exercise were out there.

Former CEO of Etsy, Chad Dickerson, is also a fan, which doesn’t come as a surprise as he is now working with Reboot as an executive coach.

In his blog post, he shares an interesting article from Harvard Business Review that touches on a similar exercise implemented at the Rotterdam Eye Hospital:

At the start of every shift, the team members get together for a brief “team-start.” Each team member rates his or her own mood as green (I’m good), orange (I’m okay but I have a few things I’m concerned about) or red (I’m under stress). The rest of the team doesn’t need to know that you’re under stress because you’re having a dispute with your landlord or you are worried about your ill toddler. How you feel, however, is important because it affects how you should be treated.

And what have the results been?

This routine might not sound like the makings of a significant advance, but Rotterdam Eye Hospital has experienced some significant improvements in service quality since it introduced the card game in 2015. First, the hospital’s performance on its patient-safety audits has risen, and caregiver job satisfaction has improved substantially, moving from 8.0 to 9.2 on a 10-point scale after staff began playing the game. The nursing home and rehabilitation center reported similar results.

There are other intangible benefits reported, including better team bonding, deeper understanding of certain protocols, and a renewed sense of the importance of each person’s role.

It’s a fascinating read if you have a few more minutes: “How One Hospital Improved Patient Safety in 10 Minutes a Day (HBR).”

Put It Into Practice

There are many flavours to this exercise, and you can experiment with it to see how it makes sense on your team or in your life. Here are my guidelines:

Start with a question. Take a minute before you begin a meeting to check in each other. You might ask,“how are you showing up today?” Or you can say, “Are you open to using Red Yellow Green to check in?”

Leaders go first. When it comes to team culture, I believe it’s built from the top. That’s why it’s beneficial for the most senior teammate to start the exercise and demonstrate openness and vulnerability.

Choose your colour. Everyone is encouraged to share where they are at, in this very moment, with total honesty. There is no wrong answer.

Share an explanation. If time allows, it’s helpful to provide more context. This encourages connection and builds trust. Just a quick sentence or two is usually enough. Remember, it’s OK if someone doesn’t want to share, simply knowing each other’s colour is already a game changer.

Get on with your work. This exercise is most effective when it’s short and sharp. Try not to let the conversations go too far. There is a time and place for more in-depth sharing, but the beauty of Red Yellow Green is its simple and straightforward format.

If you try this and you have feedback, send me a Tweet or an email. I love hearing your stories as you are a part of this community.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you found this useful. If you have any questions, find me on Twitter and ask me anything. ~ Connor 🙏

I can’t remember a time when I felt so compelled to constantly check the news as these past two weeks. Perhaps the 2016 US election was close, but the combination of danger, uncertainty, and the speed at which the COVID-19 pandemic develops has triggered a unique urge within me to keep updated almost by the minute.

Luckily, it has spurred some introspection and caused me to reflect on my relationship to the news, and I wanted to share that exploration with you all. Most importantly, I hope to offer some simple ideas that have helped me in the past (and which I’m currently trying to put back into practice!) that I believe could help you rethink your relationship with news.

Disclaimer: to be clear, I am not advocating for anyone to stop checking the news. It is our civic duty to do so during this crisis, for the health and safety of all. However, I believe we can stay informed AND develop a healthier relationship to the news cycle.

News, News, News

Right now, it would be difficult to find anybody who isn’t concerned with the pandemic that is causing chaos around the world. Each day, death tolls rise, new social quarantining measures are announced, and questions about a vaccine hang in the air.

In these times, we turn to the news to keep us safe, informed, and up-to-date. It is important, even essential, that we stay current with the situation, especially government guidelines. However, it can be easy to consume too much news and suffer the consequences. Have you ever felt mentally or even physically exhausted after consuming too much news in a day ? If so, you’re not alone.

What you’re experiencing is something I’d call a news overdose. This happens when you’ve spent just a little too long scrolling through headlines, clicking on links, or glued to the tube. In times of particularly intense news cycles, it’s even more likely to affect us. But why does this happen?

The Information Appeal

Let’s start with some facts. The average American consumes about 70 minutes of news a day. When you add in the 144 minutes the average person spends on social media, plus the 215 minutes spent watching TV, you start to see just how much time we dedicate to consuming information.

This points to the obvious fact that the news is both informational and entertaining. As humans, our survival has always depended on access to information. Yet never before have we had access to so much information, and its impact can be overwhelming, even addicting.

One big reason we get hooked to the headlines is that news websites and apps operate much like a slot machine, giving us a new hit of dopamine each time we ‘pull to refresh.’ Every time we grab our phone to check our favorite news source, we’re filled with anticipation as we don’t know what new, exciting, or shocking information awaits.

This is a concept known from behavioral psychology called intermittent variable rewards, which says that humans respond to rewards better if they are randomized. This principle is often employed by mobile apps, especially social media, to keep us coming back. Simply put, when there is an element of surprise tied to the reward of a behavior, such as checking the news and not knowing what we’ll find, we get even more hooked.

In addition, research shows us that our brains are wired with a negativity bias that leads us to seek out more negative news stories. Long ago, it was helpful to be hardwired this way, so that we could detect and avoid threats in the natural environment. But today, it often leads us towards more negative, fear-driven headlines. As the old idiom says, “bad news travels fast.”

When you combine these trends — the total amount of information consumption, our inclination to get hooked to behaviours with surprising rewards, and a evolutionary bias towards the negative — you start to see why a poorly planned relationship to the news can be unhealthy.

The Information Diet

It can seem that evolution has dealt us a bad hand, but there is hope. I’d offer the idea that we could all benefit from getting on an information diet. Much like what we eat, the information we consume has a way of shaping our thoughts and coloring our perspective.

“You are what you eat.” ~ every parent to their kids ever.

Getting on an information diet requires us to get intentional about how we want to stay informed. At its core, it is about conscious consumption. Rather than checking the news whenever we feel like it, we set boundaries about the quantity and quality of news we want to consume.

This idea of an information diet was first coined by Clay Johnson back in 2012. Clay founded Blue State Digital, the digital agency that shaped Obama’s winning campaign strategy, so he was keenly aware of the influence that online media has on our lives.

Clay’s book, The Information Diet, explored this topic in detail, with particular attention to the quality of content we tend to consume. Just like we are evolutionary wired to crave fat, salt, and sugar, Clay argues that we’ve evolved to crave online media that fits our worldview and excites, shocks, or angers us. He recommends that we consciously filter for higher quality content:

“Like any good diet, the information diet works best if you think about it not as denying yourself information, but as consuming more of the right stuff and developing healthy habits.“

That’s the beauty of an information diet — it doesn’t ask us to avoid the news altogether, but to be mindful of how and what we choose to consume.

Put It Into Practice

If you’ve decided you want to reshape your relationship to the news, here are a few simple strategies to make it happen.

Decide on your diet and specify how much time you want to devote to the news (your ‘information diet’) in a given day or week. Are you comfortable using an hour or a day, or just 15 minutes? Then decide which outlets you want to prioritize. There’s no right or wrong, what matters is that you match your behavior to your intention.

Pick a time and place where you’ll catch up on the news. Luckily, most of us are working from home right now, so routines are easier to create. Use it to your advantage! Choosing a regular time and place will make it easier for your new habit to stick. For example, “I’ll read the news for 30 minutes on the couch after I eat lunch.”

Ditch digital and go analog. Try reading the paper or a favorite news magazine. Not only will this remove the endless scrolling available on digital, you can also support a local or national news publication with your wallet, which is needed now more than ever.

Eat your vegetables. Keep in mind that limiting the quantity of consumption is only half the challenge: quality also matters. Try reading analysis instead of breaking news. I’ve found it useful to curate my reading list ahead of time using Pocket, so that I don’t fall into the trap of clicking through endless headlines.

Set a timer to remind you of your limit. This might sound like overkill, but it really can help nudge you in the right direction. I prefer using the timer on my watch, but you can also use a tool like Freedom to block certain websites after a specific time, or do it directly in your Android or iPhone settings.

Go easy on yourself

I’ll end with a simple reminder to be easy and practice self-compassion during these difficult times. Yes, it is a great time to test new habits. But it is also a supremely difficult moment in history. You don’t need to overhaul your routine overnight. Just try for one day, and see how it goes.

Most importantly, take care of yourself and others.

Thanks for reading!

Want more goodness? Join my weekly newsletter, One Percent Wisdom, where I share simple tactics and strategies that you can use to develop your mind and better your work.

There are many ‘obvious’ life lessons that seem almost too common sense to write about. But I’m always reminded of the question a mentor once put to me, “Yes it might be common sense, but is it common practice?” It’s with that spirit in mind that I want to share one of the most valuable lessons I was reminded of in 2019 — asking for help.

Of course, we all need help throughout our lives. We need help changing our diapers when we’re babies, we need someone to transport us to school as kids, we need friends to hold the beer bong while we were in college (sorry, Mom!), and much more. It’s evident that we rely on others, and they rely on us.

Yet I found that as I’ve grown up, I’ve become hesitant about asking others for help. In reflecting on why this is, I’ve come up with three ideas that could explain this hesitation.

First, perhaps it’s due to my nature and a more independent personality type. Second, it could be a result of conditioning from a society that can make it seem that asking for help is weak, or that it’s not what smart, strong, or successful people do. Third, I think part of my hesitation arises from fear of rejection and worrying about others saying no. As social beings, our fear of rejection runs deep.

All of these questions and doubts were swirling in my head last summer when I finally made the decision to apply for a new visa that would allow me to stay in the UK on my own terms for another five years.

I knew I’d need to rely on the help of others to make a successful application, but I still felt hesitation when I thought about the process. Asking for the help I needed was simple in theory, but harder in practice.

The Tech Nation Visa describes itself as a visa for “the brightest and best tech talent from around the world to come and work in the UK’s digital technology sector.” Reading through the requirements, I wasn’t sure I was qualified.

Further, when I looked at the recommendations and supporting evidence I would need to provide, I felt a familiar pang of dread at the thought of how I’d get the letters and documentation I needed. The mixture of anxiety and unworthiness created a nice procrastination cocktail, which I happily sipped on for a few months.

Finally, I realized I needed to make a move. I took a dose of my own medicine, and reminded myself to start small and focus on one part of the bigger project first. So I sent an email to a colleague whose recommendation would make a big difference, asking him for a meeting to discuss getting his help.

Taking the First Step

You know what drove me to take that first tiny step? Remembering the power of commitment devices, which are essentially choices you make now that control your actions in the future.

By sending a simple email, I was now forced to start building my case for the visa. Sure enough, when the meeting rolled around a week later, I had set out the main accomplishments I wanted this colleague’s endorsement for, and I had picked up some momentum.

I used that initial bump of momentum to send out my next ask, which my teammate quickly agreed to. Now I was moving, and before I knew it, I had finished the full application packet. What took months to begin only took weeks to start and finish.

Asking for Help is a Strength, Not a Weakness

Now, I realize that this particular example is not going to be directly relatable to all of you. However, it is the underlying message which I believe is universal — we all need help and while asking for it can be hard, it’s an essential part of our growth.

I’m inspired by these words from former President Barack Obama on asking for help:

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new.

I believe that we are put on this earth to help and serve each other. Deep down, we all have an ingrained sense of connectedness to each other, and that comes to life when we’re able to help.

Just think about the last time you were able to help someone. Maybe it was donating spare change to someone in need, or simply grabbing a coffee for your colleague. How did it make you feel?

We are wired to help others. Yet too often, we’re afraid to ask for help ourselves. Society has championed the idea of self-sufficiency, independence, and personal achievement. But it’s easy to forget that any individual victory is not just the work of one person.

Tips for Asking for Help

Be specific with what you need. The more you can drill down into what your ask requires, the easier it will be for the person you’re asking to consider your request. If you have a deadline, be honest about it.

Be prepared and make their lives easier. If you’re asking for an introduction to someone they know, have a short bio about yourself written and ready so they can easily send the introduction. If you need a recommendation, outline the projects and achievements you’d like them to comment on.

Give praise to the person you’re asking. You’re asking that person for help likely because you respect them, look up to them, or see their knowledge or connections as valuable. So inherently, you have some admiration for them. Let them know! Being genuine with praise is not only kind, it can make them more receptive to your ask.

Listen carefully to the person you’re asking for help, and take their ideas and their response with gratitude. Imagine if someone asked you for help or advice, but then didn’t listen to what you offered. Don’t do that. Simply listen, be open, and be curious.

Ask yourself — where could I use help in my life today? Who around me could best help? How can I take that small, simple first step and ask for the help I need?

When you ask for help, you’ll be surprised at how often others will say yes.

A big thanks to Kelli, Mary, David, Carlos, Cass, Danny, Michael, Ibrahim, Claire, and Dad for helping make my application a success!

A nice glass of red with dinner. A refreshing cocktail when you reach the beach on holiday. A cold beer after work to catch up with an old friend. A shot to celebrate a friend’s birthday. A toast with bubbly for your colleague’s promotion.

I don’t know about you, but to me it feels like alcohol has become the necessary ingredient to every occasion in our lives. If you’ve ever tried not drinking on a normal night out and faced a lengthy interrogation from your friends, then you know what I mean.

Imagine if you had just given up smoking and made it past your first month, and then you ran into an old friend who insisted, nay demanded, that you share a smoke. Seems odd, doesn’t it? Yet somehow drinking has become such a part of our lives that friends, family, and coworkers feel it’s their responsibility to make sure you drink alongside them.

It wasn’t until I experimented with teetotaling (and googled what that meant) that I really started to realize how implanted alcohol had become in my routine, and all the hidden costs I was paying to keep up with this habit. Now that I’ve done the accounting and seen life from the other side, my mind has changed.

On Christmas Eve, I finished my first year sans-alcohol. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, and honestly, I don’t think I’ll go back to drinking.

Here are just a few things I’ve accomplished since I stopped:

• Designed and taught 10+ workshops on modern mindfulness and practical productivity, to audiences both here in London and in the US
• Slept more (and better)
• Completed a 4-month teacher training program for Search Inside Yourself — a mindfulness and emotional intelligence program born at Google — and became a certified facilitator
• Worried less
• Finished my 200-hour yoga teacher training and began teaching
• Started dating a woman that I absolutely love and adore
• Saved 4x what I did in the previous year and paid off another 1/3 of my student loans
• Built up the courage (and the plan) to quit my job in 2020. February is my last month at Google, more to come on this soon :)

This isn’t to say that I wouldn’t have done these things if I didn’t stop drinking, but I definitely feel that it helped in many ways, both directly and indirectly.

This post isn’t meant to persuade you to quit drinking, or to rail on alcohol, but rather to share my own experience in the hope that it might inspire others to rethink their relationship with alcohol and perhaps help to shift the conversation we have with each other around drinking.

How did this all begin?

Back in 2014, I joined the Dry January fad. It was difficult, but it didn’t change my attitude towards drinking. Honestly, cutting out booze for a month was more an exercise in willpower than a real change in mindset. I basically stayed in every weekend and suffered through the four weeks waiting to join my friends back on the wagon come February 1st.

For the next few years, I tried Dry January on and off, but with little success in terms of changing my drinking in the other 11 months of the year. Yet each year, as January approached and I began to think about goals and resolutions for the coming year, I was faced with a nagging sense that drinking was holding me back in some way, but I couldn’t put a finger on it.

Yet something surprised me after completing the yearly ritualistic cleanse in 2018: I woke up on February 1st without the feeling of excitement and anticipation of breaking the fast with a cold beer. I actually didn’t want to drink, and so I didn’t, for about four months.

That’s when something changed in me. I started to really feel different, physically, emotionally, and mentally. Put simply, I felt fucking great.

I noticed I had a lot more time on my hands, especially on the weekends where I no longer woke up late and hungover. Instead, my Saturdays and Sundays were filled with exercise, reading, cooking, and relaxing.

It suddenly felt like I was able to do so much more of what I wanted to do. Which led me to realize something important: abstaining from drinking is not really about giving something up, it’s just a choice.

Beforehand, I was choosing to drink and sometimes suffer the consequences. Now, I was simply choosing other things, like waking up early and energized on a Saturday.

For some people, drinking is a choice they want to prioritize, and there is nothing wrong with that. For me, I want to prioritize other things in my life, simple as that.

What I’ve Learned

Stopping drinking taught me a lot of lessons about myself, and also about the world around me. Here are a few of the things I’ve observed in the past year:

• I feel way better physically, and this is probably the #1 reason I don’t want to drink any more. I’ve never felt more energetic, calm, and focused. Not only is the absence of alcohol good for your body in its own right, I’ve found that I eat healthier, work out more, and sleep better without drinking.
• I’ve won back a lot of time, especially on the weekends. I feel that life is too short to waste hungover or even just slightly groggy from a poor night’s sleep after drinks. I cherish the extra time I have as a result of not drinking.
• I still have just as much fun as I used to, and none of the side effects. Sure, drinking can ease some social anxiety or make boring situations seem more fun, but I’ve learned that the need to drink to have fun is just in our heads. I still go out to bars, see live music, attend festivals, and everything else.
• I have way less regret than I did when I was drinking. I hated that feeling of waking up hungover on a Saturday and then seeing some stupid text, or having to dwell on a dumb, drunken argument with a friend from the previous night. So many of my poorest decisions were taken while under the influence, and living without this crap gives me a lot of peace of mind.
• I’ve saved a ton of money. It’s obvious to most people that stopping drinking will save you money, but I didn’t really realize how much money drinking cost me. Obviously you save money at dinners or bars, but there’s also knock-on savings from not grabbing that 2am snack or ordering delivery the next day when you’re too tired to cook.

Tips for Experimenting

• Make one decision, not a thousand. This insight changed the game for me. For awhile, I was cutting back on drinking but hadn’t stopped entirely, which meant each night I had to negotiate with myself on whether or not to drink. Once I decided to forego drinking altogether, that decision was made, and I can’t stress enough how much mental energy this saved me over time. (Pro-tip: you can decide to forego drinking for a week, a month, or whatever works for you — it doesn’t have to just be during Dry Jan!)
• Focus on today; don’t worry about tomorrow. It can be really hard to muster the willpower to stay sober for an entire month or year. Instead, forget about the future and just focus on today. Ask yourself, “Can I just not drink today?” and making that decision day-by-day will help you sustain the behavior for longer. It’s basically like breaking a big decision down into a bite-sized chunk.
• Tell your friends. I probably would have benefited from doing this earlier. For one, it takes a lot of energy to keep explaining your choice, which you can save if you get ahead of it. Additionally, friends can offer a truly valuable support network, and you’re more likely to follow through with a goal once it’s made public.
• Find your (new) signature drink. It’s easy to think that there is nothing worth drinking at a bar but booze, although this is certainly not true. I’ve found that having some type of drink not only soothes others’ anxiety about you not drinking, but non-alcoholic drinks also can be delicious. My go-to is normally a club soda with lime.

Last Call

Ultimately, the most important shift that happened for me was a change in thinking that I was “not drinking” and “abstaining” from something, to a realization that I was actually choosing better alternatives for my life. I am choosing to spend my time, money, and energy in other places.

Thinking about this always brings to mind the quote from Annie Dillard:

“How we spend our days is of course, how we spend our lives.”

This idea reminds me to remember all the other things I choose to do instead of drink:

Choosing more peaceful early mornings.

Choosing to spend my weekends at a museum or reading a book.

Choosing to spend my money on travel, or invest for my future.

Choosing to be more accountable for my actions and live life with less regret.

I don’t know if this will be a forever thing for me. Mostly I think it will be. The more of my life I live clean, the less I feel that alcohol adds anything worthwhile. But I can’t deny that I miss certain elements of drinking, whether it’s a beer after a day of skiing or having a glass of wine at a nice dinner.

The only thing I’m certain of is that change is constant. I’m happy with this change in attitude, behavior, and lifestyle. But who knows where I’ll be in a year or ten.

I hope that if you’ve ever felt like giving drinking a break, for a little or a long while, that you feel empowered to do so, and that your friends and family will support you.

Good luck!

P.S. There are a ton of interesting online communities where you can find inspiration, accountability, and support if you want to give not drinking a shot but feel some help would be, well, helpful :)

If you’ve ever wondered if I can stop talking, you’re not alone. I, too, wondered the same thing as I prepared for my first silent meditation retreat last month. But before we get into that, a quick update on where I’ve been.

For the past few months, my writing has slowed down as other activities in my life have picked up. Most notably, I completed a 3-month 200-hour yoga teacher training in June, and also went through a 4-month teacher training program for Search Inside Yourself (SIY), a leadership program born at Google that combines mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and neuroscience.

As part of the SIY program, teachers-in-training are highly encouraged to immerse themselves in a meditation retreat. Luckily for me, attending a retreat has been on my personal list for nearly 2 years. So this training provided a great nudge in that direction.

I’ve known for awhile that I wanted to attend a vipassana retreat, which is a 10-day silent meditation retreat that grew out of the Buddhist tradition. I was very fortunate to be given a long break from work, and during this time I took a trip to India where I decided to take the plunge and sit for my first retreat.

What’s unique about vipassana?

First, let’s cover the basics. The hallmark vipassana experience is a 10-day, silent, residential retreat. The program is very strict. Unlike other silent retreats, there is no reading, no writing, no exercise (save walking), no eye contact with others, and even no Instagram. Wild, I know. The reason for all of these rules is to help you go deeper into the experience and obtain the best results from your stay.

Second, the vipassana technique is unique in the world of meditation because it is primarily taught through these retreats. While vipassana is taught in different styles, the most prolific is in the tradition of S.N. Goenka, a Burmese meditation master who helped spread vipassana globally during the 20th century. It might surprise you that they consider the 10-day retreat the ‘primary school’ of vipassana, and serious practitioners move onto 30-day or event 3-month retreats.

The Goenka-style program that I took part in is taught around the world in over 100 centers, where the structure is identical and the key teachings are transmitted via audio and video recordings from Goenka himself (who passed in 2013). After 10 days of listening to Goenka, he becomes like a loving grandparent. If your grandparent was sternly encouraging you to sit for 10 hours of meditation a day.

Third, the vipassana technique taught by Goenka is non-sectarian, and is purposefully stripped of religious context in order to be accessible to anyone, regardless of faith. One of the philosophical underpinnings of this tradition is that for knowledge to become wisdom, each individual has to experience it themselves. Thus, you are encouraged to be very skeptical at the outset, and to simply experience the technique for yourself and then make your own judgement about its effectiveness.

Lastly, the retreats are free. Run by an international non-profit called Dhamma.org, the vipassana technique is taught at no cost and supported purely through donations by former students and other beneficiaries. This is quite an impressive achievement, and it really helps make this training accessible to anyone that can leave behind their work and family commitments for the time.

Why would you subject yourself to ten days of pure silence?

I know, it sounds crazy and impossible at first. I had some hilarious reactions when I told people about my plans.

On the real, many great thinkers, religions, and spiritual beliefs call us to developer greater self-awareness and understanding of who we are at a deeper level. The Ancient Greeks put it simply with their famous aphorism, “Know Thyself.” Vipassana can be seen as a masterclass in knowing yourself and for that reason alone, it might be worth your time.

Another reason, although you might balk at this at first, is that silence is golden, and enjoyable. Silence brings you a level of peace and solitude that we so rarely get to experience in the modern world. Silence allows things to settle, so that we can look more closely inside. I was very surprised to find that 10 days of silence was actually much easier and more enjoyable that I had anticipated.

Finally, this is a crash course that will teach you in great detail a very powerful meditation technique. Quite a few students on my retreat had never meditated and were there just to learn the basics. This was their way of diving in head first.

What will I take away from this?

I’ve deliberately saved this part for last, as I don’t want to spoil the surprises that are in store for you, and also because any lessons I’ve drawn from my experiences are personal. That is a key perspective of Goenka, that all knowledge must be experienced within oneself before it can be integrated as wisdom.

However, I hope that by sharing a few of my reflections, some of you reading might be encouraged or perhaps inspired to investigate this tradition more.

Impermanence: everything in life comes and goes. The best emotions, the worst emotions. The happiest times, the worst times. This is a fundamental teaching of vipassana. There were many moments in meditation where I felt that if I didn’t scratch an itch or stretch my back, that the pain would never go away. But each and every time I sat with the sensation for long enough, they passed.

Equanimity: related to the lesson on impermanence is equanimity. I like to think of equanimity as a visualization. Imagine you’re a rock in a flowing river. No matter the strength of the current, you remain steadfast. In life, we can’t avoid the ups and downs, but we can cultivate an inner strength that allows us to face it all with ease, or equanimity.

Mental Space: modern life is full. Full of engagements, full of activity, full of deliverables, full of everything. It’s so rare to have peace and quiet to just experience life without all the doing. Creating space for solitude is one more reason, and maybe the reason, you might consider a similar retreat.

Wait, where’s the secret society of stillness?

Thanks for reading this far. Unfortunately — or fortunately depending on how you look at it — there isn’t any secret society. Dhamma.org is well-known, extremely transparent, and far from secret. Check them out if this post inspired you.

Happy meditating :)

If you’re interested in a silent retreat in the UK, we’re hosting a Just Breathe weekend retreat in January. See here for more info.