If a colleague told you they had a fail-proof practice that would not only help you be a more innovative leader, but also enable you to be more composed and to enjoy your workday more, would you want to know about it?

(I’m guessing you answered “Yes.”)

It’s your lucky day. Through our Workplace Experience (WX) series, Citrix has been working with Quartz to bust down the doors of superficial “productivity hacks” and explore ways to make the workplace actually work .

So far, we’ve discussed office design and work/life balance. This month, we’ve debuted WX103: Mindfulness. It’s a practice that helps you strengthen your brain’s ability to focus and helps you to avoid getting sidetracked by stress.

Mindfulness has finally gone mainstream. In my personal leadership journey, mindfulness has helped me to navigate conflict (both productive and unproductive types), as well as strengthen my resilience in a world where change and transformation are the new normal.

And, guess what? When we can focus our energy on the task at hand rather than drama, we can deliver more great work.

It’s also given me the opportunity to bring the benefits to fellow Citrites through a workplace mindfulness initiative (more on that at the end of this post).

So, what is mindfulness? Why does it work? And how do you practice it?

Mindfulness and Productivity

Mindfulness is a technique in which you focus your full attention only on the present — experiencing thoughts, feelings, and sensations, but not judging them. Our WX103 expert, Dr. Tara Swart, a neurologist and MIT Sloan lecturer, studies what our brains do when we get distracted. And what does her work show?

Humans are bad at multitasking. Dr. Swart’s research explains that distractions (like, ahem, phone notifications) divert blood flow from the brain pathway focused on the task at hand to something else. Mindfulness builds mental resilience, helping workers reduce the urge to multitask and enabling us to bounce back faster from office distractions.

Mindfulness and Employee Engagement

One way to practice mindfulness is through meditation. This practice has been touted as the secret sauce by high-profile business executives. A single mindfulness meditation session has been shown to reduce cortisol levels by almost 50 percent. With greater clarity, your thoughts can roam freely. With enhanced awareness, you direct your attention selectively.

We can train our brain like we train our muscles, and at Citrix we have implemented a workplace mindfulness program — called Thrive — to do just that! Every Monday, employees gather at 12:30 p.m. Together, we practice mindfulness meditation and discover how this tool unlocks composure, clarity, and innovation, often cited as competencies for greater professional success and achievement of business outcomes. (Not to mention happiness, anxiety reduction, and gratitude).

Our session includes a 20-minute mindfulness meditation session, giving employees 20 minutes of screen-free time. These 20 minutes are a signal that, at Citrix, employees have permission to leverage this research-backed tool, not only on Mondays, but throughout the week. Encouraging employees to take a moment for themselves enables us to show up as the best version of ourselves, equipped for whatever challenges come our way, because we’ve conditioned our brains to choose, with intention, how to respond.

Check out our other Workplace Experience blog posts and all the courses in our Quartz Workplace Experience Series to learn more.