What do lettuces have to do with Mindfulness in the office?

Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who brought mindfulness to the West, was clear about one thing: the way you get ready for work, how you travel there, and how you behave once you arrive directly affects the quality of what you produce. But he went further. He said that everything you do in your life—absolutely everything—has an impact on your work.

Mindfulness in the office: a lesson from Thich Nhat Hanh

In his book Work, he recounts a conversation with an American academic who once told him:“Don’t waste your time growing lettuces in the garden. You should write more poems; anyone can plant lettuces.”

The monk’s reply was simple: “That’s not how I think. I know perfectly well that if I don’t grow lettuces, I can’t write poems. The two things are connected.”

“The way you prepare for work, go to work, and how you are while you’re there affects not only those you work with, but also the quality of your work. Everything we do in our lives affects our work. I, myself, am a poet, but I love working in the garden growing vegetables.” —Thich Nhat Hanh

For Thich Nhat Hanh, eating breakfast mindfully, doing daily tasks with awareness, or cultivating the garden with presence were not distractions from his work as a teacher and writer. They were an essential part of it.

“The more mindfulness and awareness we bring to all our daily actions, including our work, the better our work will be,” he wrote.

Work doesn’t start when you clock in

The idea sounds almost subversive in a world obsessed with productivity and time optimization. We’ve been sold the belief that work happens from 9 to 6, that the rest is “free time,” and that the two should stay separate. Separate compartments.

But anyone who has worked knows it doesn’t work that way. You arrive at the office with last night’s argument still in your head. Or with the high of having slept eight hours straight for the first time in weeks. Or with the anxiety of bills that don’t add up. All of that walks in the door with you.

The question isn’t whether your personal life affects your work. The question is what you do with that.

Bringing awareness to the everyday

When we talk about bringing mindfulness into companies, many people imagine formal meditation sessions with the whole team sitting in silence. That can be useful, of course. But the mindfulness Thich Nhat Hanh proposed goes further. It’s about bringing awareness to everything you do, even the most mundane tasks.

Making your morning coffee can be an automatic act while thinking about your 10 a.m. meeting. Or it can be a moment of presence: noticing the sound of the water, the aroma of the coffee, the warmth of the cup. Two minutes that change how you enter that meeting.

The same goes for your commute. You can ride the subway mentally running through your to-do list, body tense. Or you can use those fifteen minutes simply to be present: feel your breath, notice sensations without judging them.

Quality lives in invisible details

The beauty of the garden metaphor is that it dismantles the mental hierarchy we create between “important” and “minor” tasks. Thich Nhat Hanh didn’t see growing lettuces as taking time away from his true work. He saw it as what made good work possible.

In the workplace, this means that how you answer a routine email, how you organize your desk, how you talk to that colleague you dislike, or how you handle the five minutes between meetings are not irrelevant details. They are the very substance of your work.

A manager who answers emails while pretending to listen in a meeting is training his mind in fragmentation and distraction—and then wonders why it’s hard to focus when making big decisions.

An employee who takes lunch seriously, who eats slowly and talks attentively, isn’t wasting time. They’re cultivating the ability to be present—the very capacity they’ll need when they return to their desk.

Beyond mindfulness sessions in the office

Companies that integrate Mindfulness in the office seriously don’t treat it as another wellness program. They see it as a cultural shift.

This ranges from offering spaces and time for formal practice to rethinking things like meeting culture. Do all meetings really need to last an hour? Could they start with a minute of silence? Is constant multitasking necessary? Can people truly disconnect after hours?

It also means leadership must go first. If executives preach mindfulness in the office but still send emails at eleven at night and boast about sleeping five hours, the real message is different. Mindfulness cannot be a human resources initiative while the culture of chronic stress remains untouched.

Everything is connected

Thich Nhat Hanh’s insight was that there is no work isolated from the rest of life. The quality of attention you bring to small things is the same you’ll bring to designing a project, writing a report, or leading a team.

In business terms, this means that investing in employees’ mindful and balanced living isn’t altruism. It’s a direct investment in the quality of the work they’ll produce.

A company that encourages its people to take care of themselves, to take real breaks, to cultivate their own “lettuces” (whatever they may be), isn’t losing productivity. It’s creating the conditions for better work.

iNSIDE designs mindfulness programs for companies that go beyond isolated sessions. Programs that help teams transform their relationship with daily work—from the smallest detail to the most strategic decision.

Because, as the Vietnamese monk said, the more awareness you bring to everything you do, the better your work—and your life quality—will be.