Jason Stirman, Ex-Twitter, Medium Exec Turned App Entrepreneur
Jason Stirman, an early Twitter employee and founder of Lucid, shares his meditation journey, the mindful culture at Medium, and how his new app helps athletes train their minds for peak performance and life skills.
Deep Dive Analysis
12 Topic Outline
Jason Stirman's Introduction to Meditation
Developing a Regular Meditation Practice at Medium
The Evolution of Jason's Daily Meditation Routine
The Genesis and Unique Focus of the Lucid App
Scaling Mindfulness for Athletic Performance
Lucid's Business Model and Societal Impact
How the Lucid App's Mental Skills Workouts Function
The Future Landscape of Meditation Technology
Understanding Medium and the Holacracy Management System
Challenges and Evolution of Holacracy at Medium
The Human Element of Management and Processing Tensions
Lessons from Owning an Auto Repair Shop
5 Key Concepts
Mindful Culture
A company environment, like Medium's, that integrates practices such as in-house guided meditation to foster calm, trust, and a human-centric approach among employees, leading to high performance. This culture aims to reduce stress and increase awareness among staff.
Next Play Speed
An athletic concept referring to how quickly a player can mentally move on from a successful or unsuccessful play and refocus on the immediate next action in the game. Meditation helps reduce this 'reset' time to near zero, allowing athletes to stay present and effective.
MVP (Meditation, Visualization, Positive Affirmation)
The core training method used in the Lucid app, combining a few minutes of breath-focused meditation, imagining performance scenarios, and repeating empowering phrases to combat negative self-talk. This integrated approach aims to build confidence and focus in athletes.
Holacracy
A non-hierarchical organizational system that aims to distribute decision-making authority widely throughout a company, promoting autonomy and fluidity by defining roles rather than traditional managerial positions. It seeks to avoid bottlenecks in decision-making by empowering individuals at all levels.
Tension (Holacracy context)
In Holacracy, a tension is defined as the realization of a difference between 'what is' and 'what could be' within the organization, which can be either a problem or an opportunity. These tensions are processed in specific meetings to quickly identify a next step or road forward, rather than seeking an optimal solution.
8 Questions Answered
Jason Stirman started meditating after being invited to a class at Twitter, initially skeptical, but later embraced a regular practice when co-founding Medium, which integrated guided meditation sessions into its company culture.
Meditation brought Jason a sense of calm, awareness, and presence, making his days feel longer and senses sharper, and significantly reduced his stress. At Medium, it contributed to a high-functioning, human-centric culture rooted in calm and trust.
Jason created Lucid because he saw an unmet need for mental skills training among youth and collegiate athletes, leveraging the credibility of coaches like George Mumford to reach a demographic not typically engaged by general meditation apps.
The Lucid app provides daily five-minute 'mental skills workouts' that combine meditation to foster presence, visualization to practice performance scenarios, and positive affirmations to combat negative self-talk, aiming to improve focus and confidence.
'Next play speed' is an athlete's ability to quickly recover mentally from a good or bad play and refocus on the immediate next action. Meditation trains presence, helping athletes reduce this mental transition time to near zero, allowing them to stay engaged in the game.
Holacracy is a non-hierarchical system that distributes decision-making authority widely, focusing on roles rather than managers. It aims to increase autonomy and speed by allowing decisions to be made at lower levels, rather than bottlenecking at the top of a traditional hierarchy.
Medium abandoned the strict Holacracy system because its complexity (e.g., a 30-40 page constitution) created a significant 'onboarding tax' and persistent 'tax' for new employees, causing anxiety and making it difficult to scale efficiently.
Holacracy fosters a human-centric approach by providing a structured way to process 'tensions' (differences between what is and what could be), which requires a mindful awareness of one's feelings and promotes trust, transparency, and vulnerability within the company.
16 Actionable Insights
1. Manage People as Humans
Treat team members as human beings with families, stresses, and emotions, rather than just resources, as this approach measurably leads to higher performance and happiness within a team.
2. Establish Daily Meditation Practice
Commit to a consistent meditation practice, even if only for five minutes a day, five or six days a week, as this can have a significant effect on focus, performance, and overall well-being over time.
3. Integrate Mindfulness in Culture
Foster a mindful culture within an organization, for example, by offering in-house guided meditation sessions three times a week, to build a high-functioning, human-centric environment characterized by calm, trust, and high performance.
4. Cultivate “Next Play Speed”
Develop the ability to quickly move on from any outcome (good or bad) and refocus on the present moment, especially in performance-oriented situations, by training your mind to be present through meditation.
5. Practice Presence to Reduce Stress
Cultivate the ability to be present in your daily life through meditation to reduce stress, sharpen your senses, and avoid dwelling on past mistakes or worrying about future events.
6. Train Mind for Athletic Performance
Engage in mental skills training, including meditation, visualization, and positive affirmation, to gain a competitive advantage in sports by improving focus, confidence, and resilience on the court or field.
7. Process Workplace Tensions Mindfully
In a team setting, acknowledge and process “tensions” – defined as the difference between what is and what could be – by bringing them to structured meetings where a next step is quickly identified, fostering trust, respect, and transparency.
8. Optimize Meeting Structure for Output
Implement a strict meeting structure that allows everyone to be heard, moves quickly, and prioritizes resolving all identified issues (tensions) by defining a clear next step, optimizing for meeting output.
9. Utilize Meditation Apps for Guidance
Use guided meditation apps like Headspace, Calm, Insight Timer, Buda 5, or Lucid to support your practice, especially when starting or needing structured sessions, as they can help you focus on breathing and return to the present.
10. Combine MVP Mental Training
Incorporate meditation, visualization (imagining performing well or poorly to become aware of feelings), and positive affirmation (countering negative self-talk) into a daily mental skills workout to build confidence and improve performance.
11. Embrace Discomfort for Growth
Actively seek out or accept uncomfortable experiences, as these situations can provide profound learning and growth opportunities that might not be gained through traditional education or comfortable routines.
12. Focus on Breath in Meditation
During meditation, pay attention to the physical sensation of your breath coming in and going out, and when your mind wanders, gently return your focus to the breath, allowing thoughts to pass without engagement.
13. Counter Negative Self-Talk
Practice positive affirmations, repeating phrases that build self-belief (e.g., “it’s okay to fail”), to counteract negative self-talk that can inhibit performance and confidence, especially for youth athletes.
14. Try Meditation Despite Skepticism
Be open to trying meditation even if you have preconceived notions or skepticism about it, as initial experiences can reveal it to be non-religious, practical, and calming, leading to a sense of calm afterwards.
15. Seek Calm Role Models
Identify and observe individuals who exhibit a calm, warm, gentle, and authentic demeanor, using their presence as inspiration to cultivate similar qualities in yourself.
16. Avoid Unfamiliar Business Ventures
Refrain from starting or owning a business in an industry where you lack fundamental knowledge, as this significantly increases the difficulty and likelihood of negative experiences and is a “horrible idea.”
5 Key Quotes
I don't know if meditation is what made him like this, but I want to be more like this guy.
Jason Stirman
But just the ability to be here felt really powerful to me. And I felt like my days were longer. I felt like my senses were sharper. And I just really wasn't that stressed.
Jason Stirman
And for players that have experienced that, like I'm in the zone, they feel like time slows down, and I feel like the game kind of comes to them. And what we know is the real secret there is the ability to be present.
Jason Stirman
And what we found is that when kids start using Lucid and start performing better, they also start acting a little bit different. They start being okay with failure a little bit more. They start exhibiting self-compassion and empathy and all these things that are life skills that go far beyond, you know, the athletic performance.
Jason Stirman
It's a horrible idea to own a business in which you have no industry knowledge.
Jason Stirman
2 Protocols
Jason Stirman's Daily Mental Skills Workout (Lucid App)
Jason Stirman- Open the Lucid app and put on headphones.
- Hit the big play button to start the daily 5-minute workout.
- Listen to a story, anecdote, or wisdom from coaches like George Mumford or Graham Betchart.
- Engage in the 'MVP' (Meditation, Visualization, Positive Affirmation) component:
- Practice a couple minutes of sitting and breathing, returning to the breath to train presence.
- Visualize performing well or poorly, becoming aware of the feelings associated with success or failure.
- Repeat positive affirmations to combat negative self-talk, such as 'it's okay to fail.'
- Conclude with a congratulatory message for showing up and encouragement to return tomorrow.
Holacracy Tension Processing Meeting Structure
Jason Stirman- Attendees list all their 'tensions' (differences between what is and what could be) on the table.
- A facilitator guides the meeting to quickly resolve every tension before the meeting ends.
- To resolve a tension, identify a next step or a road forward as quickly as possible, not necessarily the optimal solution.
- Move on to the next tension once a next step is identified.