I Learned to Meditate From a Book

I learned mindfulness meditation from a book.

This was during a stretch when I was burned out and reading anything that looked like it might get me out. That's how I ended up with a book about rest. I picked it for the title alone — something about the best way to rest. A best way to rest? Come on. But climbing out of burnout was probably going to involve resting better, so, fine, I'll read it.

It turned out to be a book about mindfulness meditation. The book's argument went like this: the fatigue that matters isn't in the body, it's in the brain, and that's the one you have to clear first. The method it recommended was mindfulness meditation, and it walked through the practice slowly — more story than manual.

So I started copying it, badly. Sat down, closed my eyes. No idea whether I was doing it right, and I started anyway.

This isn't the meditation I know

Not long after, I got curious about meditation apps and downloaded a few.

Pretty visuals, a good voice telling me good things. They were apps for listening. Hold on — this isn't the meditation I know. That's when I decided I'd build a real one.

At the time I'd built maybe one simple app in Flutter. Everything I had in my head looked like months of work I didn't yet know how to do.

The part I was stuck on was the thing to build

Still, the core was clear to me: how do you catch yourself once your mind has already wandered off?

That was the hardest part of meditation for me — the exact place I got stuck. It's just breathing and noticing, really, and if an app can't help with the noticing, what is it even for?

Then the idea showed up. If the app counts your breaths and reads the rhythm, it can flag the moment you've drifted. I filed a patent, built that core feature, and shipped.

Now

These days I meditate with my own app. Sometimes I post clips of my sessions on Reels and TikTok.

An app that has you actually doing mindfulness meditation, and helps you while you do it. I built it. And yes — this post is part brag, part ad. It's called True Meditation: Mindfulness, it's on the App Store and Google Play, and it's free to start. Have a look if you're curious. Thanks for reading.

In short

I learned mindfulness meditation from a book. I picked it up while trying to climb out of burnout, it turned out to be a book about mindfulness meditation, and I started copying the practice without knowing whether I was doing it right.

The meditation apps I downloaded soon after were things to listen to — pretty visuals and a good voice telling me good things. None of them touched the part I was actually stuck on: catching the moment my mind had already wandered off.

The hardest part of meditation turned out to be the thing worth building. If an app counts your breaths and reads the rhythm, it can flag the moment you drift. I filed a patent, built that feature, and shipped it.

True Meditation: Mindfulness is not an app you listen to. It's an app for doing mindfulness meditation yourself — the training of noticing your own thoughts, built into an app. It's free on the App Store and Google Play.

Related reading

• I Quit Meditation Three Times — at the Exact Same Point — what actually happens at the point I kept getting stuck
• When Your Mind Won't Stop Racing, Emptying It Is the Wrong Move — what noticing is, and why it isn't clearing your head