Anecdotally, 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).
I 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.
more 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."
" 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.
I think it may be a bit of column a and a bit of column b.
Be "mindful" of how things are, accept that they are the way they are, realize that whatever is "now" is just temporary so it doesn't make sense to excessively worry over it.
I agree with the comment about "a bit of column a, a bit of column b"
By default we are immersed purely in illusion. I'm sure you have your own mental image of a person who is entirely immersed in the illusions presented by media etc etc. Often these illusions are driven by needs/wants which are interpreted as all being needs. Full Buddhist perspective is that all but the most basic for survival are wants, not needs, but that is at odds with capitalism and the survival of the species. If we don't have some way of technological advancement, we may live happy simple lives, but eventually something cosmic will happen that the species can't handle and thats it. With technology that can change, which is where capitalism comes in. Capitalism reminds that in the bigger picture, there is a need for anything the helps survival.
Given that, at least personally what I take away is, capitalism motivates us to do things we don't "need" to do, but may be very important one day. To the extreme, it implies that everything is needed and anything short of perfect may as well be death. The other side of the coin is nice but vulnerable. Together - use mindfulness to stay rational and aware - and pay attention to capitalism to understand and situate yourself into the future. Together they are quite powerful - I feel I live a pretty happy life enjoying the benefits of both.
TL;DR stress motivates, but sucks. mindfulness is good but doesn't build the future. together in the right balance they're amazingly powerful
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 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)
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.
(1). Wong, S. Y., et al. (2018). The Safety of Mindfulness-Based Interventions: a Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials. Mindfulness, 1-14.
(3). Shonin, et al. (2014). "Are there risks associated with using mindfulness in the treatment of psychopathology?". Clinical Practice. 11 (4): 389–92.
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?
is burnout still recognized as a problem? or better yet, post-industrial revolution, humans are described in machine terms like 'productivity' and 'effectiveness' rather than classical human virtues like patience, prudence or wisdom. If humans allow themselves to be measured by some metric only, work is then a literal rat-race.
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.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 82.4 ms ] threadhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_4bp8bBNVw
> 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.
People who get a good night's sleep. Naps aren't catch-up.
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."
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.
Be "mindful" of how things are, accept that they are the way they are, realize that whatever is "now" is just temporary so it doesn't make sense to excessively worry over it.
By default we are immersed purely in illusion. I'm sure you have your own mental image of a person who is entirely immersed in the illusions presented by media etc etc. Often these illusions are driven by needs/wants which are interpreted as all being needs. Full Buddhist perspective is that all but the most basic for survival are wants, not needs, but that is at odds with capitalism and the survival of the species. If we don't have some way of technological advancement, we may live happy simple lives, but eventually something cosmic will happen that the species can't handle and thats it. With technology that can change, which is where capitalism comes in. Capitalism reminds that in the bigger picture, there is a need for anything the helps survival.
Given that, at least personally what I take away is, capitalism motivates us to do things we don't "need" to do, but may be very important one day. To the extreme, it implies that everything is needed and anything short of perfect may as well be death. The other side of the coin is nice but vulnerable. Together - use mindfulness to stay rational and aware - and pay attention to capitalism to understand and situate yourself into the future. Together they are quite powerful - I feel I live a pretty happy life enjoying the benefits of both.
TL;DR stress motivates, but sucks. mindfulness is good but doesn't build the future. together in the right balance they're amazingly powerful
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)
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.
Post them, or it will be safe to assume you are lying in reaction to the threat to your ego.
(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.
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
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?
(You can still be motivated about many things except your work)
The fact is, to __not__ give work all your energy and attention takes motivation. It's different. But it's still motivation.