Stafford Kimber did not come to mindfulness through a trend or wellness fad. As a performance psychologist with a military background, he became interested in what stress does to attention and what actually helps people stay focused when it matters. His work now underpins Atten, the business he co-founded with Dave Langlands to help people better understand and manage attention in high-pressure and high-risk environments.
“I come from a maritime background and worked for the Royal New Zealand Navy for more than a decade. That type of environment is quite intense and deliberately they crank on the stress to get you used to working in demanding situations,” shared Staf.
“In my own training, I found that when stress ramped up my attention could derail a little and I would get more highly strung, so I really wanted to understand what actually helped dial that back down.”
Through a friend, Staf came across a specific type of mindfulness training and started practising it himself.
“I thought to myself, this is really good. I’m noticing that my attention is able to stay quite present and I wasn’t derailing as much if stress was ramped up.
“It came down to really understanding how my attention would stray away from the present moment and start to think about the future or other things. I practised it religiously for days and days. After about two weeks of regular practice, I noticed my attention changed. When I was becoming distracted, I could move my attention back to where it needed to be.
“I started moving it into my coaching practice and into my therapy and I could quickly see the change it made when people began applying it. It’s like you can see a light switch turn on.
“The most cynical and skeptical people are the best ones to see the change in. Seeing those people sit there and go, ‘actually this has been really good, I’m noticing stuff’, is what really fueled it for me.”
What grew from that was Atten – a business built around helping people understand attention, recognise when it is drifting, and use practical techniques to bring it back. Staf said the aim is to give workforces something practical, evidence-based and usable in the real world, not something vague or overly abstract.
“One of the first things we do is myth-busting,” Staf said.
“Shaving your head or sitting down in robes cross-legged on a mat, it’s nothing like that.
“The best way to describe it is simply knowing where your attention is. Often people say, ‘I can’t pay attention’, but what they really mean is they’re struggling to focus it.
“A simple example is fishing. Ask someone what it feels like when they’re fishing and they know – their attention is right there on what they’re doing. That is what we call presence of mind: focusing on what is in front of you rather than thinking about the future or the past.
“We want to stay present, and mindfulness is a way of training that. It helps people build awareness, refocus and notice when their attention is drifting. Then, when they are in a high-stress environment they are better able to apply that in real time.”
That practical framing sits at the centre of Atten’s work with teams and leaders. Rather than treating mindfulness as a personal wellness extra, the focus is on attention as a trainable skill that can support safety, decision-making, communication and day-to-day performance. Atten’s approach is built around helping people notice drift earlier, respond better under pressure and develop habits that are useful not just at work, but outside it as well. With Dave also bringing a practical perspective to the business, the focus is on making those skills accessible, relevant and useful rather than theoretical.
Dave said that once you strip it back it is simpler than people think.
“As a lay person myself, I’ve been doing it for about three months now. To me it is practising noticing things which sounds kind of simple, but that’s all you’re doing. Noticing physical feelings, noticing where your thoughts are, noticing your breath, and you’re building up strength in your ability to notice things.
“So when you are in a day-to-day environment, whether a work site or an office environment, it allows you to be fully aware at all times of where your attention is and you make a conscious decision whether to shift it or not. It is such a change to the way that your brain works.
“The number of tasks that I start and finish now, when I used to start 20 different tasks and half-finish them all, is a big change. It’s really good for getting stuff done.”
Staf said attention tends to fail in a few familiar ways.
“When stress starts to ramp on our attention starts to get quite scattered. We call that drift. You’re drifting away from what you should be paying attention to. You see it all the time when you’re trying to talk to your kids and they’re glazing over. That’s a sign of attentional drift.
“There’s another one called narrowing. Without realising we can get hyper-focused on one really small piece of information and we may completely lose sense of what else is going on around us. Which is quite common when you see people trying to solve problems in highly intense environments.
“And then when things like fatigue or high levels of emotional stress ramp up it starts to really degrade our decision-making as well. We may completely miss a critical point in decisions or rely more on previous experience and bias. So we just apply an old mental model to what we think is happening and completely miss what’s happening here and now.
“It’s a bit of a minefield to be honest, but the more we start to become aware of it, the more we realise we have control.”
That awareness is a big part of how Atten can help workforces. The aim is not to make people endlessly switched on, but to help them recognise the signs of drift, overload or fatigue sooner and have simple ways to reset before that turns into critical safety errors, poor judgement or unnecessary tension.
“Can you stay focused and attentive the entire time you’re awake throughout the day? No. Eventually the brain gets fatigued. What this does is help you notice how quickly your attention is wandering or how hard it is becoming to focus. That awareness helps you respond better, whether that means bringing your attention back, slowing down or recognising when you need a break.”
One simple strategy Staf uses is STOP.
“STOP stands for stop, take a breath, observe and proceed. Really simple. It’s getting you to stop in the moment, take a breath and slow down, reduce your sympathetic nervous response, observe what’s around you, switch your attention back into the present moment, make a decision and move forward. That simple strategy can really help.”
Dave said one of the biggest barriers for people is time, but in reality, once people have finished the initial program, the expectation is about 12 minutes of practice a day.
“Me personally, I work 12 hours a day, I’ve got little kids, I’m up early, I get to bed late, yet I still find my 12 minutes a day. It’s not that hard to do, but the effect it has on your life is quite transformative.
“If you could find one person that hasn’t got 12 minutes of wasted time on their phone, I’d be surprised. That person was definitely me. But now if I pick up my phone I notice immediately that I’ve done it and I put it down. It frees up a lot of time.”
That same awareness has changed the way he shows up outside work.
“The time that I spend with my kids now is engaged. When they’re playing, I’m watching them and I’m noticing what they’re doing and I’m enjoying it. And when they come up to me, I’m engaged with them. It’s nice. It’s really nice.”
For Staf, that carryover matters just as much as the workplace application.
“It teaches you a life skill. The ability to pivot and do it in a way that’s intentional and present. That’s the key.”
