Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated
1–10 of 29 posts
Re: Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated
#2• State mindfulness had no overall effect (good or bad) for performance on same tasks.
Re: Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated
#3Anecdotally, a couple years ago I was meditating every day, for about an hour. Sometimes a little longer. I noticed a marked decrease in my ambition in myself (since mindfulness is all about increasing the awareness of your thoughts and emotions).
Re: Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated
#4Stress is a hell of a motivator.
Re: Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated
#5Direct link to NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/opinion/sunday/meditation... . I found it a bit more informative.
Re: Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated
#6I think this is one of those results that doesn't seem too surprising once you start thinking about it, as the article notes:
> Mindfulness is perhaps akin to a mental nap. Napping, too, is associated with feeling calm, refreshed and less harried. Then again, who wakes up from a nap eager to organize some files?
I imagine the benefits of mindfulness/napping/etc. aren't about motivating employees to work harder or faster on that business memo, but rather that employees are less likely to feel miserable while editing said memo.
Re: Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated
#7I think this is one of those results that doesn't seem too surprising once you start thinking about it, as the article notes: > Mindfulness is perhaps akin to a mental nap. Napping, too, is associated with feeling calm, refreshed and less harried. Then again, who wakes up from a nap eager to organize some files? I imagine the benefits of mindfulness/napping/etc. aren't about motivating employees to work harder or fas…
> Then again, who wakes up from a nap eager to organize some files?
People who get a good night's sleep. Naps aren't catch-up.
Re: Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated
#8more context of your own existence held firmly and consistently in mind will reduce motivation for all sorts of intrinsically unrewarding tasks. this is the same reason why some people who take psychedelic drugs reorient their lives away from consumerism etc.
think about it for a second. you're a modestly self-aware animal, living on some tract of land on some planet during a blink of time. your day-to-day context and frame of mind ignores this fact -- it's too broad of a worldview to live in. but once you are in the habit of considering your own thoughts as natural and impersonal phenomena like light scattering on a mountainside, you start to live in that worldview anyway.
you observe the phenomena of your body going to work; you observe the phenomena of your mind while it is at work, and observe its stress. observation usually implies separation between observer and object, however.
in mindfulness, the two are the same. the sobriety of a wider and more naturalistic perspective as provided by mindfulness makes explaining the phenomena of anxiety trivial. anxiety at work is an emotion which drives the worker to generate revenue. task motivation is similar. you don't need to be an expert at mindfulness to detect the relationship between work and anxiety. these observations will not trigger someone to explicitly thoughtfully conclude that being motivated to perform a task at work is not worth the effort. but these observations will silently undermine the sense of urgency that comes with not being able to see very far in front of your nose.
the answer to the question "what's the point of being alive" is not forthcoming with mindfulness. in my experience, it just makes the response much easier: "not this."
Re: Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated
#9" A central technique of mindfulness meditation, after all, is to accept things as they are. "
That is a debatable point. From a Buddhist perspective, the goal is not so much to _accept_ things as they are, but to _perceive_ things as they are, which means letting go of your accretions of illusions attached to things. The fundamental mechanism of capitalism is to foster a sense of eternal dissatisfaction with your material state, but Buddhist thinking is directed toward relieving yourself of this, and encouraging the realization that more attachments means more discontent.
Re: Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated
#10I do agree with the conclusion of the article to some point. I think it (mindfulness as the result of the meditation) must really depend on each person and each character.
Anecdotally, in my case, mindfulness as a result of meditation and similar mind-calming practices (like jogging, stretching) helped me to advance my career from a dev to a team lead and eventually helped me to get a courage to pursue my dreams of being an entrepreneur.
I can conclude that in my case, it did not decrease my motivation but helped me to:
1. overcome my anxiety and become a better employee
2. see what I truly want and get rid of the mental stuff the others (meaning the corporation) imposed on me (following the said corporation's goals)