A ten-minute daily practice of stillness for busy people
This piece for Crazish collects the advice that holds up in practice.
Ten minutes of sitting still with attention on the breath is a practice found in some form in nearly every tradition, and it asks no particular belief. Sit upright, set a gentle timer, and whenever the mind wanders, which it will, notice where it went and return to the breath without comment. The returning is the practice; a wandering mind is not failure.
Attach it to something that already happens every day, such as the first coffee or the end of the commute, so the habit does not depend on remembering. After a few weeks most people notice a small gap opening between an event and their reaction to it. That gap is where patience lives, and it tends to show up first with the people closest to you.