Anyone else feel fine in one meeting, then completely scattered by the time the next calendar alert appears?
That was me last Tuesday in Midtown Manhattan. I walked out of a glass-walled conference room, saw three Slack messages marked urgent, and realized I had six minutes before the next call. I did not need a perfect morning routine. I needed a practical 5-minute reset between meetings.
When I am feeling overwhelmed at work, I use a simple three-part reset: step away from new inputs, give my attention one steady anchor, and choose one clear action for the next meeting. The goal is not to make the office quiet or erase a hard day. It is to create a small transition so I do not carry the last conversation straight into the next one.
A three-step reset between meetings
Step 1: Leave the input stream
I move away from my desk for five minutes. In my office, that usually means the quiet side of the pantry near the espresso machine. I put Slack on Do Not Disturb and stop checking email. The keyboard noise, conversations, and Manhattan sirens are still there; I am simply choosing not to add another screen or request to the pile.
Step 2: Choose one steady anchor
I start a five-minute practice in the SoLabs app and let the audio give my attention somewhere simple to return to. Some days it is breathing; other days it is a rain soundscape with a short prompt. When my mind jumps back to the strategy deck, I notice it and return to the next sound. Nothing has to be forced.
Step 3: Decide how to re-enter
Before I go back, I write one sentence in my notes: “In the next meeting, I only need to clarify the launch date.” One sentence is enough. It turns a vague wall of work into one manageable next move.
What this looked like for me in Midtown
That Tuesday, I leaned against the pantry counter and opened EmotionPath. I was also wearing my SoClip Pebble from S&O Labs. Because Pebble uses an open-ear design, I could still hear the coffee machine and notice someone entering the pantry. It did not block the office or create an invisible wall. Instead, the soundscape became a gentler point of focus while I stayed aware of the room around me.
During the first minute, my thoughts kept rehearsing everything I should have said in the previous meeting. By the third, I was paying more attention to the pacing of the audio than to the Slack badges waiting on my phone. When the practice ended, I still had messages to answer and another meeting to attend. The difference was smaller and more useful than a dramatic transformation: I knew what I wanted to say next.
I walked back past the glass conference rooms, joined the call, and asked the one question I had written down. That five-minute pause did not fix my workload. It stopped the workload from deciding the pace of every moment.
The takeaway
If you are searching for how to calm down at work, start smaller than “calm.” Build a repeatable transition: fewer inputs, one attention anchor, one next action. A 5-minute reset works for me because it fits between back-to-back meetings and does not require leaving the building, pretending the day is easy, or waiting until I have thirty free minutes.
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