The mindfulness course that started inside Google

Chade-Meng Tan was an early engineer at Google. In 2007 he helped create an internal course called Search Inside Yourself, built with meditation teachers and psychologists, to teach mindfulness and emotional intelligence to staff. The book of the same name, published in 2012, turns the course into a guide for anyone.

It treats attention as a skill that can be trained. The course starts with simple breathing practice and moves on to understanding your own emotions, calming yourself under stress, motivation, empathy and handling difficult conversations.

The tone is playful and full of engineering jokes, which makes meditation feel less mysterious to sceptical readers. The course later spun off into a separate institute that teaches it to other organisations.

The practical core is short, regular attention training: a few minutes of noticing your breath, gently bringing your mind back when it wanders. Research suggests mindfulness practice can reduce stress and improve wellbeing for many people, and the book's exercises for pausing before reacting are easy to try.

Critics of workplace mindfulness argue that it can put the burden on staff to cope with stress while leaving overwork and poor management untouched. The research on company programmes shows modest benefits, and the bigger promises, such as better leadership or careers, have weaker support. The book is a friendly introduction, but it is not a fix for a bad workplace.

The idea behind this caseLesson: Let it interview you →

1. 1Sit for two minutes each morning and count ten breaths, starting again when your mind wanders.
2. 2Before replying to a message that annoys you, take one slow breath and name the feeling.
3. 3In your next conversation, listen without planning your reply, then sum up what you heard.