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Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated

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21–29 of 29 posts

Re: Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated

#21

I think many forms of stress, if lowered, will cause productivity to go down by some metric. The issue is the metric is so hard to get right. When people get stressed they do busy work that may look productive but are not especially productive in reality.

Which raises the question: How motivated must you be to be productive? That is, does a drop in motivation cause a like drop in productivity.

Put another way, just because you're being productive doesn't mean you're doing the right thing. Perhaps mindfulness means less work but better results?

Re: Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated

#22

I 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 b…

And fwiw, Mindfulness meditation exacerbated my anhedonic depression to the point where I was no longer able to take care of myself. Before the well-meaning but condescending comments arrive: no, I was not 'doing it wrong. If my experience threatens anyone's romantic view of meditation, kindly keep it to yourself.

I did not know this could happen... thanks for sharing your experience

Re: Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated

#25
This study is a typical example of a very low-quality study on mindfulness. They have used one single meditation session (just a few minutes of it!) for participants in the experiments, and these participants were also new to meditation! With such a brief time on meditation, the chances are these people would have felt sleepy/lazy and that explains well the results they found! Hundreds of studies have shown that meditation improves many variables that contribute to motivation.

Re: Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated

#26

I 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 b…

And fwiw, Mindfulness meditation exacerbated my anhedonic depression to the point where I was no longer able to take care of myself. Before the well-meaning but condescending comments arrive: no, I was not 'doing it wrong. If my experience threatens anyone's romantic view of meditation, kindly keep it to yourself.

Studies have found that getting issues like what you experienced as a result of mindfulness meditation is extremely low – so, you cannot blame it on meditation. Also, I have been to many retreats and I am yet to see someone who had a negative episode during a retreat.

Re: Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated

#27

Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17329396 Additionally, was there a need to submit the same thing twice? Article here and the paper here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17342635

Thanks - I like that previous thread better.

Re: Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated

#28
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And fwiw, Mindfulness meditation exacerbated my anhedonic depression to the point where I was no longer able to take care of myself. Before the well-meaning but condescending comments arrive: no, I was not 'doing it wrong. If my experience threatens anyone's romantic view of meditation, kindly keep it to yourself.

Studies have found that getting issues like what you experienced as a result of mindfulness meditation is extremely low – so, you cannot blame it on meditation. Also, I have been to many retreats and I am yet to see someone who had a negative episode during a retreat.

'Studies?'

Post them, or it will be safe to assume you are lying in reaction to the threat to your ego.

Re: Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated

#29
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Studies have found that getting issues like what you experienced as a result of mindfulness meditation is extremely low – so, you cannot blame it on meditation. Also, I have been to many retreats and I am yet to see someone who had a negative episode during a retreat.

'Studies?' Post them, or it will be safe to assume you are lying in reaction to the threat to your ego.

Here are three articles:

(1). Wong, S. Y., et al. (2018). The Safety of Mindfulness-Based Interventions: a Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials. Mindfulness, 1-14.

(2). Creswell J.D. (2017). Mindfulness Interventions. Annual Review of Psychology. 68: 491–516.

(3). Shonin, et al. (2014). "Are there risks associated with using mindfulness in the treatment of psychopathology?". Clinical Practice. 11 (4): 389–92.

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