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Studies Find Evidence That Meditation Is Demotivating (nytimes.com) 163

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report written by behavioral scientists Kathleen D. Vohs and Andrew C. Hafenbrack: The practical payoff of mindfulness [meditation] is backed by dozens of studies linking it to job satisfaction, rational thinking and emotional resilience. But on the face of it, mindfulness might seem counterproductive in a workplace setting. To test this hunch, we recently conducted five studies, involving hundreds of people, to see whether there was a tension between mindfulness and motivation. As we report in a forthcoming article in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, we found strong evidence that meditation is demotivating.

Some of the participants in our studies were trained in a few of the most common mindfulness meditation techniques. They were instructed by a professional meditation coach to focus on their breathing or mentally scan their bodies for physical sensations, being gently reminded throughout that there was no right or wrong way to do the exercise. Other participants were led through a different exercise. Some were encouraged to let their thoughts wander; some were instructed to read the news or write about recent activities they had done. Then we gave everyone a task to do. Among those who had meditated, motivation levels were lower on average. Those people didn't feel as much like working on the assignments, nor did they want to spend as much time or effort to complete them. Meditation was correlated with reduced thoughts about the future and greater feelings of calm and serenity -- states seemingly not conducive to wanting to tackle a work project.
The studies also found that meditation "neither benefited nor detracted from a participant's quality of work." Furthermore, Vohs and Hafenbrack found that a financial bonus for outstanding performance did not overcome the demotivating effect of mindfulness. "While the promise of material rewards will always be a useful tool for motivating employees, it is no substitute for internal motivation," the report reads.
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Studies Find Evidence That Meditation Is Demotivating

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  • Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 17, 2018 @12:23PM (#56799216)

    they just realized that their work assignments weren't very meaningful?

    • This. Desire for jumping through meaningless hoops is not something meditation would be expected to aided by meditation.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Desire for jumping through meaningless hoops ...

        Except that the hoops are not meaningless if you want to keep your job, get paid, and feed your family.

        Serenity doesn't pay the bills.

        • Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by angel'o'sphere ( 80593 ) <angelo.schneider ... e minus math_god> on Sunday June 17, 2018 @01:10PM (#56799380) Journal

          However, the hoops in this study were meaningless hoops ...

        • Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Sunday June 17, 2018 @01:20PM (#56799404)

          Wait, what?

          Hoops can be meaningless regardless whether or not you have financial gain out of it. One could, in theory, hire you and pay you big bucks (say, a dollar for each time) to press a button that does nothing every 5 to 10 seconds, with failure to do so being grounds for dismissal. It is, by all intents and purposes, meaningless. Being paid makes it lucrative, not meaningful.

        • Re:Maybe... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday June 17, 2018 @01:21PM (#56799414)

          As trite as it sounds, I have found that taking a minute to interrupt a stressful work situation with some “mindfulness” activity seems to help me with work - when I remember to take that minute, anyway.

          Of course the stressors I’m dealing with are almost never directly related to my actual job - but we have a couple of very dysfunctional staffers currently at the top of our org right now, and they seemingly revel in creating messes.

          But, in any case, taking that minute to reset mentally does help me separate myself from the stressful stuff which was distracting me and get my focus back to the work at hand.

          • Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Sunday June 17, 2018 @03:11PM (#56799796)

            As trite as it sounds, I have found that taking a minute to interrupt a stressful work situation with some “mindfulness” activity seems to help me with work - when I remember to take that minute, anyway.

            Trite? O hell no! I have long found the need to step back and clear my mind made me more productive. I suppose the computing equivalent might be called a memory leak that needs a reboot. I have to step away, think about something else for a while, then hop right back into the work. There is a similar aspect of meditation when trying to solve problems. Instead of backing away entirely, you just put the problem on subconscious autopilot while you think about whatever calms you.

            I suppose if a person did the exact same task every day, and started being mindful, they might figure out their job was crap.

            • In a high-stress office job, I relaxed every couple of hours by grabbing any important-looking file and walking briskly round the factory, looking meaningfully at 'work in progress'. Cleared my head, reminded me what we were all really doing, and also what real WORK looked like.
              • In a high-stress office job, I relaxed every couple of hours by grabbing any important-looking file and walking briskly round the factory, looking meaningfully at 'work in progress'. Cleared my head, reminded me what we were all really doing, and also what real WORK looked like.

                Yup, that works great. The clipboard effect, and no one will question the person with the clipboard. What's more, the break in line of thought recharges the old personal batteries. Seeing all the different people who do basically what we do is making me think that the studies definition of meditation and motivation are quite different.

        • Re:Maybe... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by king neckbeard ( 1801738 ) on Sunday June 17, 2018 @01:51PM (#56799514)
          And paying the bills doesn't make you serene. I'm not saying that there is no incentive, I'm saying that an incentive doesn't provide meaning in and of itself, and that's why this is an appropriate way to test the efficacy of meditation.
        • Serenity doesn't pay the bills.

          She will if you keep her [wikipedia.org] fueled and flying ...

          • by mellon ( 7048 )

            Nah, they were always barely scraping by. That's why they kept getting into such interesting jams.

        • >Serenity doesn't pay the bills.

          Nope, but it can help you realize that a lot of your bills are the result of chasing things that don't actually improve your life satisfaction in any way. Nice car, big house, fancy clothes, expensive meals - study after study shows that none of that actually has any lasting impact on your happiness. The stress people often inflict on themselves to hold the job to pay for them though - that *does* very often inflict a long-lasting, negative impact on happiness.

          Get happy,

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Serenity doesn't pay the bills.

          It does if you're Joss Whedon.

        • Except that the hoops are not meaningless if you want to keep your job, get paid, and feed your family.

          The gospel according to Jordan B Peterson [irishtimes.com] — 21 April 2018

          There are many other memorable passages. One that particularly stands out is where Peterson describes a period of soul searching 30 years ago when looking for something in which to believe — anything of certainty. And he started to reflect on a practice at Auschwitz about which he had read.
          :
          "A guard would force an inmate to carry a 100-lb

          • But in a job environment someone would only hire and pay you to carry a bag of salt back and forth if it had any use for him.

    • they just realized that their work assignments weren't very meaningful?

      More Om-ing makes for less droning.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I had a decent job with a mainstream employer.
      There was a lot of email to wade through.
      Much of which seemed pointless.

      For a reason I don't recall (probably going on leave for a week or two) I built up a backlog of email.
      Due to the need to do actual WORK It was not practical to address the backlog.
      Most of the backlog went unanswered
      Most of the backlog went unread.

      There were no repercussions.

      I started looking at email just once a day.
      then once every few days
      then once a week.

      There were no repercussions.

      If ther

    • by Noamin ( 5050311 )
      Yes, that's exactly what the studies found. The headline and summary here are garbage. The data shows not that mindfulness is generally demotivational, but that it is demotivational if the meditator's job situation is shitty (if their work is meaningless or against their principles, if conditions are bad, etc.).
    • by mellon ( 7048 )

      Yeah, exactly. The study didn't check meaning/satisfaction, just whether they were willing to do some shitty task. The more you meditate, the less willing you are to waste time on useless garbage. But if you have to do it, you can do it just as well as you could before, with less dissatisfaction. You're just also less fooled by the bullshit reasons you're given for why you have to do the useless work.

      Where this really comes in as a big benefit is that if you want to do something, then meditation can

    • Likewise, the value in meditation may not be motivation toward a specific task, but rather overall well-being. We can (and should) find other ways to motivate people but encouraging a sese of well-being can definitely avoid those days of minimal productivity from feeling terrible, avoid likelihood of leaving from over-stress, etc. Who is out there championing meditation as a motivator that we needed to disprove it?
  • So in other words meditating daily does not motivate most people to want to do their shitty jobs any more than not meditating. Got it.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 17, 2018 @12:32PM (#56799244)

    You are now breathing manually.

  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday June 17, 2018 @12:32PM (#56799246)

    I think these people just realized the actual value of what they were doing.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Zoom out a bit, and most jobs are important.

      The job exists because people desire the outcome. People want to eat, for example, and so the whole supply-chain exists to satisfy that desire. And it is an important desire!

      Each individual link in that chain can seem like a trivially small piece. But it is part of something which, overall, matters. And this is true of most jobs.

      When people start feeling like their jobs are meaningless, really it is because the jobs are boring, and because they don't seem to s

      • ... the whole supply-chain exists to satisfy that desire.
        I have heard there are countries where the food chain only exists to make money ...

    • by Anonymous Coward

      (When actually, it’s just that the wealth generated by said automation is not owned by you and me, when it could be. ... E.g. by *us* buying the robots and us still applying for jobs, but letting the robots do them for us. Or with a robot tax. Or just with everything becoming so dirt-cheap that we barely need to work to afford it. Instead of certain leeches in suits just continuing to mooch on society. ... No communism etc needed. Just the biggest possible enemy of a modern for-profit corporation: An

    • by Bongo ( 13261 )

      Or to put it slightly differently, expanded ewareness simply allows people to relax and stop taking things too seriously, whilst also improving performance and gaining a sense of humour.

      Be lighter, and more relaxed, and more focused. But note that, “motivation” might mean “stressed” and stress tends to distract from good focus. Great focus is unstressed and relaxed and engaged ie. in the zone.

      You care less, but are involved more. So it is debatable what they count as “motivated

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Good point. If "motivated" here means "stressed all the time" (which is an utterly perverted and inhumane definition, but a factually valid one), then you are right on the mark. I personally found that it is much better taking things less seriously, because they almost always are not that serious. Also makes for better solutions in my case (and hence for the customer), because I have more and better time to think.

    • "I think these people just realized the actual value of what they were doing."

      My thought also. But you've expressed it better than I would have.

  • Indeed (Score:4, Funny)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Sunday June 17, 2018 @12:38PM (#56799272)

    We can't have people being zen about everything instead of stabbing each other in the back and ratting everybody out to Corporate.

    • Pretty sure the authors are hiding some unnamed intent behind willful ignorance as there are many styles and reasons for meditation. At least they cite efficacy as an outcome...now they should attempt to engage task/measurement appropriate meditation. Meditation has a long history of performance improvement when appropriately targeted for competitive sports, musical performance, creative endeavors, public speaking, (the list goes on...).
  • by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Sunday June 17, 2018 @12:45PM (#56799292)

    ... and other pratices of spritiuality and stoicism makes you more chill and less prone to societies rate-race bullshit.

    Next up:
    Eating healthy has you spend less money at fast-food joints!
    Learning a real skill or art has you spend less time watching TV and spending money on pointless tat!
    Regular good sex with a cute sweetheart has you spend less money on expensive brand fashion!

    News brought to you by CORI - Captain Obvious Research Institute.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Being content makes you less motivated change things.

      • The secret to happiness is to remove false expectations.

  • Clickbait (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 17, 2018 @12:56PM (#56799326)

    The title is total clickbait.
    From the article: "Then we tracked everyone’s actual performance on the tasks. Here we found that on average, having meditated neither benefited nor detracted from a participant’s quality of work."

    • Re:Clickbait (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TrekkieGod ( 627867 ) on Sunday June 17, 2018 @04:56PM (#56800210) Homepage Journal

      he title is total clickbait. From the article: "Then we tracked everyone’s actual performance on the tasks. Here we found that on average, having meditated neither benefited nor detracted from a participant’s quality of work."

      That's also in the summary, but the point is the quality of the work didn't change, but the quantity of it did, because they lacked motivation.

      Which shouldn't be surprising to anyone. There's a reason you're not in a relaxed state when you have a looming deadline: it's not beneficial to meeting the deadline. Also, there's a reason people abusing drugs to get shit done use amphetamines and other stimulants. You want to be focused and hyped, not calm and relaxed.

  • .... I do mindfulness meditation. It helps relieve stress, to learn the physical precursors of your triggers and fight off the reactions to them. I generally do it late in the day, for the specific purpose of de-compressing, relaxing, at a time when I don't necessarily need to be motivated.
  • So meditating made them less eager to participate in your study.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    it's not that I'm lazy. It's that I just don't care.

  • If you go in believing meditation will improve your life then its a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you go in open-minded or not having much faith in it then its one of those things that just wont work. It's a placebo.
  • > But on the face of it, mindfulness might seem counterproductive in a workplace setting.


    You don't say.
  • Our touchy feely dentist does weird things like having someone on staff to offer you a hand or neck massage. I replied "no thank you, I prefer to remain tense, keeps me sharp".
    • That tension will likely be what ends your life early unfortunately, if you allow (and even welcome) it like you're saying you do. And when you're dead you won't be able to go back and experience the bliss of being completely at peace with reality and your life. Hope that doesn't sound harsh at all. JMHO.

  • https://www.ped30.com/2018/06/... [ped30.com]

    Has your meditation practice influenced how you lead?

    Having a beginnerâ(TM)s mind informs my management style. Iâ(TM)m trying to listen deeply, and the beginnerâ(TM)s mind is informing me to step back, so that I can create what wants to be, not what was. I know that the future does not equal the past. I know that I have to be here in the moment.

  • by Dosgatosmuertos ( 5441722 ) on Sunday June 17, 2018 @03:11PM (#56799792)
    IMHO - Meditation viewed in a vacuum sans underlying Buddhist philosophy is incoherent, but unfortunately common. The Buddha taught that the point of meditation is to achieve awakening, which is done though the reduction of craving and aversion. By reducing ones fear of failure or desire for success one becomes more free from the suffering inexorably associated with fleeting pursuits, though they are arguably the primary drivers of our economic system. Motivation to pursue things that don't really increase your happiness (i.e. working like a dog to please your boss or to avoid feeling like a loser or to buy a Lambo) will dissipate the more one has the focus to see what really matters in life, which is what meditation will lead to if done correctly. Yet again, the NYT misses the point!
  • demotivation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gordona ( 121157 ) on Sunday June 17, 2018 @03:12PM (#56799802) Homepage
    When one spends time doing meditation, one can start to see how stupid things are in the world around us. That can be demotivating. BUT, it can also open up new paradigms. Sitting still, doing nothing (except breathing of course), there is a lot of noise in our heads. After a while (time frame indeterminant), the noise subsides and often a clear idea emerges about a path to follow. Such an activity is similar to doing software development when an difficult problem is encountered. Getting away from the problem and maybe taking a quiet walk reveals the source and the solution to the problem.
    • There is always a question of how far to go with looking at stupid. So far it looks very likely that everyone reading this will be dead in 100 years. That the sun will destroy the earth in a few billion, and that the ultimate expansion / heat death of the unverse seems inescapable. So in the long run by some standards *everything* is useless.

      So its all a matter of scale. Is working hard to afford a fancy sports car stupid? Is getting stressed and working hard to solve a difficult problem a reasonable

  • I would assume that being work-focused and driven is not the state one achieves with mindfulness, particularly if you are in the wrong job.... For some jobs I could see mindfulness being very beneficial, eg social worker, teacher perhaps?
    • I guess the main fault of the study is to focus on a strange way of meditation.
      Never heard about a mediation discipline that focuses on "mindfulness" ...

  • Better Minds (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jim Sadler ( 3430529 ) on Sunday June 17, 2018 @03:56PM (#56799970)
    Consider that behind understanding there is a certain awareness that puts one outside of the usual human beliefs and activities. There is theology as well as philosophy involved. The great religious leaders are consistent in rejection of this world. Those who strive tend to want more of this world whereas people a bit more advanced seek nothing at all. The temptations of Christ are a huge example with a shocking list of things people most value being described as worthless. Looking at the span of time that has already passed in this universe a human life span is almost zero. How can a thing have value that only exists for a very brief moment? Is advancement in society or living conditions of any value at all? Imagine if people took the instructions of Christ seriously. "Take all that you have and give it unto the poor.". That one sentence would totally destroy the entire structure of this world. Buddha and Lao Tze would teach the same lessons in different ways. Own nothing, seek nothing valued in this world and even more all are part of meditation . When Christ remarked "Pick up your cross and follow me." we are being instructed to make our lives a living crucifiction. By rejecting the desires and values of this world one is open to salvation.
  • This research is terribly short-sighted. In addition to the things already pointed out, having a mental "break" from tasks, complex things, burdensome work, etc. I would argue will probably be good for your motivation long term.

    Personally, as hard as it is to do sometimes, the best thing for my motivation and performance often times is to remove myself from something that's really bugging me or challenging me. Coming back I feel ready to try again and usually with some new ideas.
  • For this study we trained three sets of people in common coding techniques, they were instructed to think in terms of âseparation of concernsâ(TM), âabstractionâ(TM) and to âwrite unit testsâ(TM) - and the results indicated massive demotivation in the face of of an actual programming task in a team of very experienced programmers....
  • by Anonymous Coward

    first, my background: I've been practicing buddhist meditation for 15 years. I've even lived at temples and completed extensive retreats. I currently live at a temple and practice 2-3 hours 3-4 days a week (permitting) along with my full time job. I am single and not dating (I'm on slashdot...).

    Meditation is not a cure all like it hocked in the media. It wont solve your depression or make you less anxious or make you last longer in bed or....

    Done with proper guidance and care, both in terms of access to lon

    • It's great that meditation is starting to become more common, but it will never work in the way these corporate people want it to.

      It's sad for me to see something as pure as meditation be spun to be some sort of exploitable practice in the corporate world. IMHO it really goes to show how little the people who conducted this particular study understand it.

  • Pay no attention to them Buddists, sez the boffin from Catholic U.
  • I'll bet none of them said they were doing it BEFORE becoming billionaires.
  • If you're working a job you dislike, meditation will help you realize that you don't like it. You're getting in touch with your subconscious. It may have been trying to tell you that there are better, more fulfilling options that will make you happier.

    Meditation has always helped me be more creative. If your job doesn't allow for you to be creative, meditation will probably demonstrate to you what you've been missing. Coming out of a meditation session to do mundane work isn't a particularly good match. In

  • Hello, I saw your article in the New York Times about mindfulness meditation, and the lack of positive results in a test of motivation and business skills following a session. The issue is that you studied the wrong type of meditation. All the studies that indicated improved performance after meditation (or of regular practitioners of meditation) were done with Transcendental Meditation. TM is the most extensively studied meditation technique, with the most positive measurable results. But all meditatio
  • The whole point of meditation is to bring your total focus into the current moment, the here and now, and to help you understand that you are complete and whole in that moment .... that you don't NEED anything. So doesn't it make sense that something trains you to feel complete in the moment and helps you understand that you don't need to be somewhere else or to collect more things would make you feel less motivation to work harder for no reason in order to chase and acquire more things?
  • by sad_ ( 7868 )

    it means the meditation is working! this studie confirms it is not just a fad and actually does what it is supposed to do.

  • ...And the company loves misery.

    Get back to work, you!

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