Press

During crisis, operational and personal resilience require innovative thinking and interpersonal cohesion. CNBC’s Sharon Epperson speaks with Harvard psychologist Luana Marques and former Google performance guru Bill Duane to break down the science and offer up solutions to mitigate anxiety.

More often than not, companies fall back on their fine-tuned “autopilot,” habitual ways of dealing with day-to-day issues. When asked for something new and creative, employees tend to tweak what has already been done.

Even before the pandemic struck, remote work was accelerating in the U.S. But the next few months will be a very strange test of our white-collar future.​

Hundreds of millions of people around the world were suffering from common mental health issues including anxiety and depression before Covid-19, and the scale of the health-care crisis has escalated as a result of the pandemic. But demand for mental health services is far outstripping the available supply of trained professionals. Machines are rising to the challenge as a first point of contact for struggling individuals, but just how far can the robot brain go in treating the mind of the human individual?​

It’s no surprise that if you want your organization to succeed, you need to have good people running it. But a challenge that most companies face is to ensure the wellbeing of the people in their companies. So, how would you ensure the wellbeing and wellness of your employees? Well, that’s what we were about to find out at the SLASSCOM People Summit 2019.

Google’s Bill Duane explained the use of technology to track and diagnose mental health issues is an area Google and other tech giants are actively exploring. The holy grail, Bill explains, would be a wearable that allows continuous monitoring of emotions in the work place, allowing us to better measure emotional patterns and understand how to prevent stress.

“Business is a machine made out of people,” says Bill Duane, an engineer in rockabilly spectacles who works in site reliability, helping to ensure that Gmail works smoothly. “If you have people, you have problems. You can have friction between them or smoothness.”

When you have the opportunity to ask some of the most interesting people in the world about their lives, sometimes the most fascinating answers come from the simplest questions. The Thrive Questionnaire is an ongoing series that gives an intimate look inside the lives of some of the world’s most successful people.

If there's any one company pioneering stress management for employees, it's Google, unsurprisingly. But the company realizes the perks that come with working there, which are plentiful, are not enough to address the stress pandemic head on.

The company also has created a both virtual and in-person community called gPause to help support and encourage meditation practice.Given its pioneering status in the world of company perks, it should be no surprise that other companies will follow suit.

Why have I written this blog, well it’s to feel accountable and I don’t think I’ve ever shared myself vulnerably in a public domain before and as I am writing it, I feel as though I am getting something off my chest.

Id love for this to inspire other people to look inwards and really get an understanding of what they’re own moral compass is and where it is pointing.

Or, how some mindfulness turned a painful experience into something beautiful.

“You can bring mindful awareness to all contexts, including being online.” — Bill Duane, a Google executive and meditation teacher who oversees the company’s well-being and performance learning programs.

Bill Duane frames Neural Self-Hacking, an introductory meditation class he designed for Google. “Out in the world, a lot of this stuff is pitched to people in yoga pants,” he says. “But I wanted to speak to my people. I wanted to speak to me. I wanted to speak to the grumpy engineer who may be an atheist, who may be a rationalist.”

How often do you impulsively reach for your phone? “It’s like a huge magnet draws your hand toward your pocket, as if spending 40 seconds with your own thoughts is impossible.” — Bill Duane, a Google executive who meditates.

If you are drawn to your phone, ask yourself:

Am I checking the phone for information I need?

To make a connection?

Out of boredom?

To escape the present moment?

If you don’t really need to check your phone, just leave it alone. Notice the urge to get online arise and eventually subside.

...here in Singapore, the organization tried its hand spreading this postmodern confluence of technology and spirituality to Asia. Duane laid out Google’s multifaceted efforts at optimizing employee well being, and as a result, productivity.

Google launched the company’s “Search Inside Yourself” class in 2007, which was joined by two other classes and now GPause, a community that offers meditation sittings, mindful eating and retreats in a number of its offices, according to Roya Soleimani, a company spokeswoman.

Encourage and support community. Create systems for communication and information sharing. Google launched gPause, an internal online community where they share books, resources, retreats, and more. A few favorites that were sited were the apps Headspace and Insight Timer, and the bookWherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn.