The 30-Day Zen Pocket Book: Five minutes a day to slow down, breathe and notice your life (even on a Monday)

Five minutes a day. That’s the whole plan.

Maybe your calendar looks like a game of Tetris you’re about to lose. Maybe you’ve eaten lunch at your desk so often that your keyboard knows what you had on Tuesday. Maybe you once tried meditation and spent the whole time writing a shopping list in your head.
If so, you’re in very good company, and this book is for you.
The 30-Day Zen Pocket Book is a warm, quietly funny guide to slowing down for people who don’t have time to slow down. No retreat, no 5 a.m. alarm, no new personality. Just five minutes a day, for thirty days.

Each day has four short pages:

A story to read slowly: a missed train, a coffee you’ve never actually tasted, an inbox that will never be empty, a cat who is a master of doing nothing.

A practice of about three minutes, plus a 30-second Pocket Version you can use anywhere: before a big meeting, after a difficult call, in a queue, or in the bathroom at work (nobody needs to know).

A reflection question with space to write, doodle or simply think.

A bonus page for when you have a little longer: mazes, sudokus, word searches, join-the-dots, spot the difference, colouring and drawing. Answers at the back, for emergencies.

Every seventh day is a Pause Day, to look back at the week and choose one small thing to keep.
The book borrows a few plain ideas from Zen, like paying attention to what’s happening while it’s happening, and it’s honest about which practices come from Zen and which are modern techniques. It won’t promise to make you permanently calm. You’ll still get irritated in traffic. You’ll just get unstuck a little faster, and go a bit easier on yourself in the meantime.

A thoughtful gift for a stressed colleague, a friend starting a new job, Secret Santa, or yourself after a long week.

Put the kettle on. Day 1 is waiting.