How To Make Time for the Things You Actually Care About | Vinny Ferraro

Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: 10% Happier with Dan Harris
Episode Title: How To Make Time for the Things You Actually Care About | Vinny Ferraro
Date: September 21, 2025
Guests: Vinny Ferraro (Dharma teacher) & DJ Kashmir (Executive Producer, interviewer)

This episode explores one of the most persistent modern dilemmas: how to make time for meditation and mindfulness amidst our busy lives. Vinny Ferraro, celebrated Dharma teacher, candidly tackles the excuse of "not having enough time" for meditation, reframing practice as both immediately accessible and deeply necessary for being truly present. Practical advice, memorable metaphors, and intimate personal stories weave throughout the dialogue, making it both a compassionate pep talk and a practical guide.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Core Excuse: "I Don't Have Time to Meditate"

• Ferraro's Take:

  • Critiques the mindset behind this excuse, likening it to a grown-up version of “the dog ate my homework.”
    • "I don't have time to meditate is basically the adult version of the dog ate my homework. It's like an excuse." (Vinny Ferraro, 02:52)
  • Emphasizes that presence, not perfection or productivity, is where satisfaction is felt.

• Reframing Meditation:

  • Meditation isn't just another task to check off your to-do list—it's about not leaving yourself behind amidst the chaos of modern life.

2. The Practice of Presence

• Everyday Mindfulness:

  • Encourages integrating mindfulness into daily routines rather than seeing it as an inaccessible, time-consuming ritual.
  • “You need a way to connect to something deeper than the hamster wheel of thought.” (Vinny Ferraro, 03:13)
  • Examples include feeling the bristles during teeth brushing, savoring coffee without multitasking, letting the fork hit the plate before moving mentally to the next agenda item.

• All-Terrain Practice:

  • "These are not throwaway moments. These are pattern breakers, interruptions in the mind's usual playlist." (Vinny Ferraro, 05:17)
  • Mindfulness is portable and can be practiced in brief pauses: waiting in line, taking a breath before speaking, feeling your feet on the floor.

3. Life Doesn’t Calm Down—You Do

• Letting Go of ‘Later’:

  • The world teaches us to postpone arrival, waiting for the perfect moment, but Ferraro insists, "Presence isn't some kind of reward for getting it all done." (06:30)
  • The real practice is arriving here and now, whatever your life looks like.

• Personal Anchoring Practices:

  • Taking a breath, slowing down, allowing oneself to arrive into the present.
  • Practice can be as simple as feeling feet on the floor, taking a pause for the heart to catch up.

4. Real-life Applications and Stories

• DJ Kashmir’s Story:

  • Shares an anecdote about almost missing meaningful moments with his daughter on a trip because of mental distractions, then consciously making a shift to be more present (07:43).
  • The act of kneeling in the water to meet his daughter at eye level became a powerful, grounding gesture.

• Ferraro’s Advice for Interrupting Autopilot:

  • “Life is better because I’m here for it. So it's not about not leaving. It's about really beginning again, beginning again, beginning again.” (Vinny Ferraro, 09:50)
  • "You don't have enough time not to [meditate]." (Vinny Ferraro, 10:32)
  • Treat your attention as the precious, front-row seat to your own life.

5. Formal vs. Informal Practice

• Two Threads of Practice:

  • Informal: Mindful pauses ingrained throughout the day.
  • Formal: Setting aside even 10 minutes daily for intentional meditation is beneficial and "trains the heart to open" (Vinny Ferraro, 04:38).

• Building a Habit:

  • Ferraro shares his transition from an inconsistent practice to making it not-optional, like brushing teeth. The transformation came from shifting mindset: "I don't have to do that. I get to do that." (Vinny Ferraro, 11:54)
  • Occasional reluctance is normal, but once sitting down, the body remembers and the resistance fades.

• Tactical Approaches:

  • Between meetings or activities, closing eyes, placing a hand on the chest or belly, and feeling grounded are Ferraro’s go-to resets (13:13).
  • It doesn’t need to look any special way; the key is reconnecting with your body and presence.

6. The Role of Teachers and Community

• Encouragement until Practice Becomes Natural:

  • Echoing fellow teacher Matthew Brensilver, DJ Kashmir notes that teachers act as supportive cheerleaders "until sitting is the same as brushing your teeth" (15:27).
  • Having hand-holding from a teacher or community increases the chance that meditation becomes a steady part of life.

• The Deeper Point:

  • “Practice is not what we think it is. It’s basically taking our life back and saying...there’s a way I can be present and actually be with what is. There’s something deeply satisfying about that.” (Vinny Ferraro, 16:28)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the Excuse of Busyness:

  • “I don't have time to meditate is basically the adult version of the dog ate my homework.” (Vinny Ferraro, 02:52)

• On the Real Value:

  • “Your life deserves more than half your attention.” (Vinny Ferraro, 05:55)

• On Multitasking:

  • “Brushing your teeth and actually feeling the bristles. You know, drinking the coffee without gulping down three emails on the side. You know, taste the damn food, let the fork hit the plate before the mind bolts to the next meeting, you know?” (Vinny Ferraro, 05:15)

• On Returning to Presence:

  • “It’s not about not leaving. It’s about really beginning again, beginning again, beginning again.” (Vinny Ferraro, 09:50)

• On the Importance of Attention:

  • “Your attention is the most valuable thing you got. You know, we got to treat it like we got front row seats to our own life.” (Vinny Ferraro, 10:36)

• On Making Practice Non-Optional:

  • “Maybe 12 years ago when I realized, wow, I’m teaching meditation. But…there wasn’t enough consistency for me, so I was like, all right, how about if I switch this and made it not optional, like brushing my teeth or eating or taking a shower…” (Vinny Ferraro, 14:09)

• On Practice as Reclamation:

  • “It's basically taking our life back and saying, okay, there's a way I can be here for it, a way I can be present and actually be with what is. There's something deeply satisfying about that.” (Vinny Ferraro, 16:28)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:04 — Dan Harris introduces the episode’s focus: making time for meditation.
• 01:35 — DJ Kashmir asks Vinny Ferraro how to address “not enough time to meditate.”
• 01:59–03:26 — Ferraro introduces his main thesis about the true importance of presence and critiques the “not enough time” excuse.
• 04:28–06:15 — Ferraro explains practical, everyday mindfulness and the necessity of bringing attention to ordinary moments.
• 07:43–09:04 — DJ Kashmir’s story about being present with his daughter; Ferraro’s response about learning to “arrive” throughout the day.
• 10:53–11:46 — DJ Kashmir summarizes Ferraro’s two-pronged approach—formal sitting and informal mindfulness; Ferraro agrees and expands.
• 13:00–13:44 — Ferraro shares tactical ways he grounds himself during short breaks.
• 14:09–15:23 — Ferraro’s journey to making meditation non-optional, and how he sustains daily practice.
• 15:23–16:27 — Discussion of the teacher’s role as supportive cheerleader.
• 16:27–16:56 — Ferraro’s closing note on practice as reclaiming one’s life.

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Conclusion

This episode presents a compassionate, realistic approach to meditation for busy people. Vinny Ferraro dispels the myth that mindfulness requires significant time or perfect circumstances and urges listeners to see practice as a way to reclaim their lives—moment by meaningful moment. Whether through brief pauses or a daily formal meditation, the heart of the practice is showing up for the life you’re living, right now.

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Listen if you want:

• Permission to let go of perfectionism about practice
• Practical, lived wisdom on bringing mindfulness into messy, real life
• A reminder that presence—more than productivity—is what truly matters

Transcript

[Vinny Ferraro]

Foreign.

[Dan Harris]

This is the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Happy Sunday. Hope you're having a good weekend. One of the most common questions I get is how do you find the time to meditate and what do you do if you can't find the time? I know my answer to this question. I've answered this question a million times and I'm always happy to answer it. But I also love hearing how other people, especially other smarter people than I am, how they answer the question. So today you're going to hear the great Dharma teacher Vinny Ferraro take a crack at it. Vinny is our teacher of the month [e-mail], which means he's been creating custom meditations to go along with all of our Monday Wednesday episodes here on the podcast. Those meditations are only available to paid subscribers or over on danharris.com paid subscribers also now get weekly live guided meditation and Q and A sessions every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. I'll be doing the next live session on Tuesday, September 23rd. And if you want to meditate with me in person, I've got a weekend long event coming up at the Omega Institute in upstate New York. It's the weekend of October 24th. It's another installment of our ongoing meditation party events. I'll put a link in the show notes if you want to sign up. We'll get started with Vinnie Ferraro in conversation with our executive producer, DJ Kashmir right after this.

[DJ Kashmir]

Vinnie Ferraro, welcome back.

[Vinny Ferraro]

Thanks dj. It's a pleasure to be here.

[DJ Kashmir]

I'm so glad you're here. I really look forward to these and really excited to hear what you have to say for this particular question today. It's one of the most common questions we get from our community and the question is what do I do if I really want to meditate but I just don't have the time?

[Vinny Ferraro]

I get that one from head to toe, bro. I guess my question is like, what's more important than actually arriving in our life? You know, I used to walk around and I always had this sneaking suspicion that something was missing. Like I was late to some appointment I couldn't quite name, you know? Turns out what was missing was my presence, my attention, because that's where satisfaction is felt. Yeah. Not in perfection, not in productivity, but in not missing the damn thing while it's happening. You know, the whole life. I don't have time to meditate is basically the adult version of the dog ate my homework. It's like an excuse, you Know, you don't need an hour in front of an altar with your life in perfect order to practice. You need a way to connect to something deeper than the hamster wheel of thought. So it's not about checking off another should. It's really about not leaving ourselves behind. Does that make sense?

[DJ Kashmir]

Well, let's see. I think so. You know, when I. When I went on my first meditation retreat ever, I was a few days in and I had this moment where I was like, oh, I have been spending my whole life rehearsing for the real thing. And just this moment of realizing, like, the curtain's never gonna go up, the audience isn't coming. There is no 8 o' clock PM show. There is no script. Like, whatever I'm waiting for is passing me by. And I was maybe 28 or something, wanting to not have that happen for another 28 years. So that's what comes to mind for me when I'm hearing you talk is just this feeling of like, oh, shit, like my life, it's happening now, it's happening today. Can I be here?

[Vinny Ferraro]

Yes, we can, right? The real practice is how mindfulness walks with us throughout the day, right? It could be the breath before we speak or a pause while we're waiting in line, right? A hand on my heart when the day feels like too much, right? And we could say that even 10 minutes a day builds the habit of being here. It actually trains the heart to open, it allows the mind to settle a bit. And so that's what I like about the practice, is that it's all terrain. These are not throwaway moments. These are pattern breakers, interruptions in the mind's usual playlist. So a lot of people think, how am I going to squeeze meditation in, right? Like it's an add on, but it's actually a different way of showing up for the life you're already living, right? Brushing your teeth and actually feeling the bristles. You know, drinking the coffee without gulping down three emails on the side. You know, taste the damn food, let the fork hit the plate before the mind bolts to the next meeting, you know? So, yeah, I'm actually recommending that you stop multitasking. Like your life deserves more than half your attention. So the trick is dropping the fantasy that real practice happens later when things calm down. But life doesn't calm down. You do. No.

[DJ Kashmir]

Yeah. It has not been my experience that life calms down.

[Vinny Ferraro]

But the world really trains us to postpone arrival, to wait for the inbox to clear, for the kids to grow up, for the Perfect moment to finally show up. But presence isn't some kind of reward for getting it all done. Real practice says stop running. It's okay to arrive, to meet the moment as it is and simply do what you're doing while you're doing it. Yeah, that's how we stop missing what matters. That's how we arrive. And you know, there's days DJ that or moments of day where I realize that I'm moving faster than I want to. The good news is I'm close by, so I just slow down and allow myself to arrive. You know, a breath to come back to the body, a step that doesn't rush ahead. Know a little pause that lets the heart catch up. Sometimes my practice is simply feeling my feet on the floor. Grounded, present, and somehow still okay. Even when my mind says otherwise. Yeah.

[DJ Kashmir]

I was with my daughter on a trip, just the two of us, over this past weekend. And this was a trip that we'd been planning for over a year. And there were a lot of moments during the trip where I caught myself being somewhere else. And I had this realization that there was a chance that I could go through the whole four day trip and get back and have missed it entirely. And when I caught that, I would do things like just really look at her and take a deep breath. Or there was this moment where we were like playing in the ocean and I was standing up and she's five and a half, so she's a lot shorter than me. And I would kind of pick her up and fling her around and you know, we were playing in the waves, but I. I just knew I wasn't there fully. And so at a certain point, instead of standing above her, I just kneeled down in the water so that our faces were on the same level, you know? Yeah. And it just felt like things slowed down a little bit. I was still having to bring myself back from like, what's for lunch? How long can she play this game for before she gets bored? You know, like it was still happening, but just trying to do what I could to interrupt it, to show up.

[Vinny Ferraro]

Yeah. Yeah. The mind has a mind of its own, you know, and it's easy to, once we begin to practice, to see how busy the mind is and how often we go on autopilot. The mind is always in the past and in the future. That's why we have to actually train to be present. It's kind of strange, but when we start to develop a little discernment, we see that often the mind isn't offering up anything. Helpful. So we redirect our attention. You know, usually I like to land in the body because not every thought is worthy of my undivided attention. And life is better because I'm here for it. So it's not about not leaving. It's about really beginning again, beginning again, beginning again. So you don't think you have time to meditate? Flip it. You don't have enough time not to. You know, your attention is the most valuable thing you got. You know, we got to treat it like we got front row seats to our own life, that this is it. You're not in the nosebleeds. We're center stage. And don't miss it because you're stuck in yesterday's script. Over and over. I have to remember that how I meet this moment matters. We practice how we show up and how we come home to ourselves, even if it's just for a few breaths, that this is our life. Not later, not when it's perfect, like right now. It's not one more thing to do. It's how you actually remember you're alive.

[DJ Kashmir]

So I have felt this feeling that I don't have time to meditate. Plenty of times. Kids, work, laundry, whatever, sleep, maybe. And I just want to see if I'm understanding. I feel like I'm hearing maybe two distinct threads in what you're saying, but please correct me. One is we don't have to think of our meditation practice as something that is going to wait until we have the time or until we can sit formally for an hour in front of an altar. We can feel our feet on the ground. We can feel the bristles when we're brushing our teeth. We can turn off the phone while we sip our coffee and just sip our coffee. And that's practice. That's kind of one thread. And then the other thread I think I'm hearing, too, is. And it really would behoove you to find 10 minutes, if you can. How far off am I with those two?

[Vinny Ferraro]

No, I like it. I mean, each of these practices bears a different fruit. Yeah, I mean, formal practice of sitting down in the morning. For me, I don't have to do that. I get to do that because I know that the world is going to have its way with me. It's going to, like, pull me in a thousand directions. But can I just start the day staying close and saying, all right, we're going to do this together. Right? So I do that every morning because I can and I want to, because it's a refuge from all the Doing. Can I start with being? And then throughout the day, I. I have to touch back in many times, feel my feet on the floor, really just be with my lunch, whatever I'm doing. So I start with not being far from myself with my formal practice. And then throughout the day, as I feel myself speeding up into the momentum of culture and modernity and all my roles and responsibilities, it's like, hold on. Even if it's two minutes between students, two minutes between tasks, it's like, oh, that's right, I'm still here. All right. Let myself catch up. Yeah.

[DJ Kashmir]

In those moments, you find two minutes between one zoom and the next, let yourself catch up. What are you tactically doing? If I was watching you from the outside or if I was watching you from the inside, what is that? Two minutes for you?

[Vinny Ferraro]

Usually I close my eyes because the world of light and form is pretty distracting for me. I'm a very aesthetic person. So I need to kind of just take a breath and turn my attention in inward, and I usually put my hand on my belly, on my chest, and just feel that embodied feeling. You might see me move my feet a little bit so I can feel the grounded support of the floor. It doesn't have to look a certain way, but for me, I land back in the body, and I remind myself that I'm here.

[DJ Kashmir]

And for that morning practice, you said you do it every day, not because you should, but because you can. You get to. You want to. How long did it take for it to go from a should to a get to? And do you ever. Do you ever feel that should even still?

[Vinny Ferraro]

Well, I don't know. Maybe it was like 15 years ago when I realized. Yeah, maybe 12 years ago when I realized, wow, I'm teaching meditation. But I don't. I get to it at least a few times a week and, you know, some weeks worse and some weeks a little better. But there wasn't enough consistency for me, so I was like, all right, how about if I switch this and made it not optional, like brushing my teeth or eating or taking a shower, could I really just wake up a little bit earlier and have that time and space? And what does that. That actually do for my practice? And so that's how I started doing it every day to make it not optional. But still, sometimes I don't want to wake up early. I don't want to go sit. And I have to remember, okay, this is not optional. And usually the moment I actually make the effort and go sit down, I remember right? So the mind that doesn't want to get out of bed, doesn't remember. But the body, once I sit down and put my hand on my chest, I'm like, ah, okay, I got this coming, man.

[DJ Kashmir]

Sometimes in these conversations, I think maybe this happened in our last conversation, actually, Matthew Brensilver comes to mind, and he's coming to mind here because he says something along these lines where he's like, the whole point of a teacher is to just be a supportive cheerleader until practice becomes not optional. It's like, keep you coming back, keep rallying, keep being in your corner, keep saying, rah, rah, go. You got this. Until sitting is the same as brushing your teeth. And I think that actually is part of our sort of operating theory behind this whole teacher of the month offering is we got all these people spread across the country and across the world who might not have direct access to a teacher. And so to have you take their hand through the whole month, give them something to keep coming back to, it's just like, ever so slightly increasing the likelihood that people can get to that point where it just becomes obvious that you got to find a way to make it fit.

[Vinny Ferraro]

Thank you. The last thing I'll say. DJ yeah. Is that practice is not what we think it is. You know, this is why we can't depend on the mind for everything. It's basically taking our life back and saying, okay, there's a way I can be here for it, a way I can be present and actually be with what is. There's something deeply satisfying about that.

[DJ Kashmir]

Taking our lives back.

[Vinny Ferraro]

That's right.

[DJ Kashmir]

All right. Thank you. As always. I really appreciate it.

[Vinny Ferraro]

Yeah. Thank you and the gang for making this happen, y'. All. I'm honored to be here.

[Dan Harris]

Thank you, Vinnie and DJ don't forget to become a paid subscriber over at danharris.com so you can get all of the guided meditations that Vinnie is producing to go along with our Monday Wednesday episodes on pod. And also, if you sign up, you'll be able to sit in on our weekly, now weekly live guided meditation and Q and A sessions. The next one is me solo. I'll be doing it on September 23rd again at 4 Eastern. And if you want to meditate with me in person, I'm leading the now annual, or apparently annual meditation party retreat with 7A Selassie, Jeff Warren and Ovosu Jones Corte. Coming up on the weekend of October 24th at the Omega Institute. I'll put a link for that in the show notes. And finally, as always, big thank you to everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

[Vinny Ferraro]

Sam.