Daily meditation

Microsoft co-founder · Gates Notes reading lists

Two or three sessions a week of about ten minutes, sitting in a comfortable chair, sometimes alongside Melinda. He once dismissed meditation as woo-woo and now describes it as exercise for the mind, nothing to do with faith, that helps his focus and gives him distance from his thoughts.

Actor · Limitless and Centr

Never the meditating type by his own account, he came round through Centr and Limitless and now frames it as training: lifting builds muscle, meditation builds a stronger mind. He narrates the app's Learn to Meditate series.

Host · Modern Wisdom

Unguided meditation on Insight Timer is part of the morning routine.

Footballer · Portugal captain and five-time Ballon d'Or winner

Told France Football in 2019 that he had tried 15 to 20 minutes of meditation, found it worked, and now meditates almost every day. It calms him and brings a lot of serenity, he says, and he describes being in his own bubble during it.

Actor · Wolverine and The Greatest Showman

Twice a day for decades, from age 23. A few years before the interview he dropped the sense of duty and now sits every morning without fail, adding a second session around lunchtime whenever he is on a film set or in a theater run. Restless legs make late-afternoon sitting uncomfortable, so the second one comes earlier.

Actor · Friends and The Morning Show

About 20 minutes every morning, which she calls the one wellness ritual she cannot live without: it makes the day easier to digest, and on days she skips it the static gets to her faster.

Basketball player · NBA all-time leading scorer

Deep breaths, eyes closed, centering himself and listening to his inner self: that is how he described the meditation that he said kept him sane inside the 2020 NBA bubble. Cameras have caught him doing the same thing on the bench late in games.

AI researcher · Lex Fridman Podcast

Mortality is what he says he meditates on every day, inside a fixed daily routine.

Physician · The Dr. Hyman Show · author of Young Forever

Meditates once or twice a day and adds breathwork, from simple deep breathing to longer practices. Time in wilderness and a weekly gathering with old friends are the rest of his stress plan.

Sleep scientist · author of Why We Sleep

Skeptical about meditation once, he now sits for ten minutes before bed every night, and points people whose problem is a racing mind at lights-out towards the same.

Ultra-endurance athlete · The Rich Roll Podcast

Twenty minutes of meditation, fixed into the morning routine with journaling and a gratitude list.

Author · The Tim Ferriss Show

More than 80% of the high performers he has interviewed keep some form of daily mindfulness or meditation practice, he reports, and he sits most mornings.

Biohacker · Bulletproof Coffee

Calls regular meditation essential for high performance and notes that most of the people he interviewed for Game Changers credited it as a top hack. His own angle is feedback: HRV sensors, headbands like Muse, and the five-day neurofeedback intensive he sells as 40 Years of Zen.

Bodybuilding champion, actor, former governor · Arnold's Pump Club

Took up Transcendental Meditation in the 1970s, when film, bodybuilding, a documentary shoot and a property deal were all landing at once, and did 20 minutes morning and night for about a year before deciding he had what he needed from it. He does not meditate formally now, but says the habit of taking one challenge at a time stuck, and that lifting and chess do the same job for him today.

Actor and former WWE champion · The Rock

Variety reported in 2017 that he meditates during his quiet early hours, though he did not describe a practice. On Oprah's 2020 Vision Tour he named meditation, alongside hiking, biking and yoga, as one of the anchors he suggests people find for themselves; the gym is his.

Entrepreneur · The Diary of a CEO

Trying to meditate and struggling with it, on his own account, while the show covers attention and stress with guests.