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.
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.
Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
they just realized that their work assignments weren't very meaningful?
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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)
However, the hoops in this study were meaningless hoops ...
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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A dollar every 10 seconds means 6 dollars per minute means 36 dollars per hour.
Or do I miscalculate?
What exactly is lucrative in that?
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How many minutes in an hour again...?
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I would like to hire you and pay you by the minute.
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Apparently that button is not on a calculator.. ;)
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I guess you never worked with governments.
Re:Maybe... (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
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.
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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.
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I actually solve some of the toughest problems when I'm away from my desk.
I concur that this is the way to solve a lot of problems. The mind can get stuck on a path that requires a break in what it is doing. Often the answer is found when the subconscious mind can work it out without the conscious mind interfereing. The answer bubbles up seemingly from nowhere.
Re:Maybe... (Score:4, Insightful)
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You don't feel a little more relaxed after paying a month's bills?
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Serenity doesn't pay the bills.
She will if you keep her [wikipedia.org] fueled and flying ...
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Nah, they were always barely scraping by. That's why they kept getting into such interesting jams.
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>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,
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Serenity doesn't pay the bills.
It does if you're Joss Whedon.
Sophist's Choice (Score:2)
The gospel according to Jordan B Peterson [irishtimes.com] — 21 April 2018
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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.
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I find it really hard to call investigations like this 'science' when they're so subjective and impossible to measure in a consistent manner. That's not to say that having numbers helps guarantee that research is 'science'. Look at so-called climate 'science'. Yes, there are numerical measurements of various kinds involved, but they've also been subjected to 'adjustments' that render them untrustworthy. Or these numerical values have been derived in questionable ways, especially for measurements relating to thousands or millions of years ago. Science requires the use of raw, unadjusted, objective numerical measurements in order to be carried out properly.
Let me get this straight - In your view Cosmology is not at all science. Astronomy is not science. Anything that does not have a har number is not science.
Cool definition bro!
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Anything that does not have a har number is not science.
I looked that up. The har number is 7,136,291,900. Had to Bing it, though.
Gee, I didn't realize that selling a house was so involved -- I guess they really DO repeat the results.
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Anything that does not have a har number is not science.
I looked that up. The har number is 7,136,291,900. Had to Bing it, though. Gee, I didn't realize that selling a house was so involved -- I guess they really DO repeat the results.
har har.
But anyhow, My astronomy friends, who are restricted to observing and reporting would be amused that that AC on Slashdot does not consider their work as science.
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What the fuck kind of kindergarten cosmology and astronomy are you doing to not be doing extensive mathematics and computation?! Those are some of the most mathematically-intense fields there are! Calculating and simulating the orbital dynamics of millions of bodies is not mathematically trivial, for example.
Despite your protestations, it is all observational, and those intense mathematics are being updated all the time.
Which by the way, means the old mathematics were quite wrong.
I consider it science, AC's might think otherwise.
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Having the planets revolve around the earth is wrong. Noting the planets orbit the sun as a circle instead of an ellipse is wrong. Noting the planets orbit in ellipses instead of noticing that due to the gravity of the other planets, they aren't ellipses either is wrong. The three statements above are wrong on so many levels. If you call them equivalent, you are ignorant.
Who are you arguing with AC? All of the above are examples of the nature of observational science. You observe, and you learn. You fit the math to the facts.
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they just realized that their work assignments weren't very meaningful?
More Om-ing makes for less droning.
Re:Maybe... ... A Meditation (Score:1)
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
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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
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Big surprise (Score:2)
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.
Think about your breathing (Score:3, Funny)
You are now breathing manually.
Think about your blinking (Score:2)
You are now blinking manually.
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It worked, you bastard!
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Hah, that didn't work.
My wife, however... she knows spitters are quitters.
Most jobs are stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
I think these people just realized the actual value of what they were doing.
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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
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... the whole supply-chain exists to satisfy that desire. ...
I have heard there are countries where the food chain only exists to make money
Re: Most jobs are stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
I apologize for my arrogant and asinine post. You are correct.
gweihir
Fuck man, have some confidence. You're exactly right -- most jobs are completely meaningless.
Bloat, redundancy, old-boys clubs -- all of this is pervasive in the work-force in general.
Let's also remind ourselves what we mean by "work-force" -- the thing we built in order to make the Industrial Revolution happen. Such a means of approaching life had never been done before, is long past its use-by date, and today it's biggest export is mentally ill people.
Our entire education system is built around the life-sapping notion that subjects that serve "industry" must be exulted above the arts. This is nonsense. Life is objectively meaningless, so all subjects are just as "important" as others. In other words, they have exactly the meaning we give them, and if you, gweihir, think that something is meaningless, you're damn well right.
Meditation is not something I do, but I can certainly see how it can lead people to realise that their jobs are shit, because they really are.
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I did not write that AC answer. Some troll with no personal honor did.
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BUT JOOOBS GOOD! AUTOMATION BAAD! (Score:1)
(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
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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
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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.
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"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)
We can't have people being zen about everything instead of stabbing each other in the back and ratting everybody out to Corporate.
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Newsflash! Mediation ... (Score:5, Funny)
... 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.
Re:Newsflash! Mediation (Score:1)
Being content makes you less motivated change things.
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The secret to happiness is to remove false expectations.
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Typical fallacy of Buddhism. Through the baby out with the bath water.
We all have basic needs -- the desire is NOT the problem.
i.e.
* Wanting to be a better person is a very noble goal.
* Wanting food and drink to quench your hunger is fine.
The suffering starts when your expectation is out of alignment with reality.
i.e.
* Defeatist / Pessimistic attitude
* I don't have "enough" food.
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What you've argued is that someone will probably never do something that they have no internal motivation to do without an external material reward.
What parent was questioning was the claim that someone will always do something they have no internal motivation to do, so long as they receive a reward for doing it.
Clickbait (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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.
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Next study: weed causes (Score:2)
munchies
So do it after work ... (Score:1)
Big deal (Score:2)
So meditating made them less eager to participate in your study.
The thing is, Bob... (Score:1)
it's not that I'm lazy. It's that I just don't care.
If You Believe Meditation Works Then It Does... (Score:1)
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Isn't that true for literally everything regarding belief though?
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Isn't that true for literally everything regarding belief though?
Yes.
Oh really? (Score:1)
You don't say.
Makes sense (Score:2)
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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.
Don't tell that to Mark Benioff (SalesForce) (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Meditation is SUPPOSED to be demotivating (Score:4, Insightful)
demotivation (Score:5, Insightful)
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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
High performers are driven (Score:2)
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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)
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Terribly Short-sighted (Score:2)
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.
Meditation is not what you think (Score:1)
I've been doing meditation for 15 years (Score:2, Insightful)
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
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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.
Catolica-Lisbon School of Business and Economics (Score:3)
Billionaires saying that they meditate (Score:2)
IMHO (Score:2)
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
You studied the wrong meditation technique; try TM (Score:1)
Duh, it trains you to feel complete NOW. (Score:1)
good (Score:2)
it means the meditation is working! this studie confirms it is not just a fad and actually does what it is supposed to do.
Misery loves company (Score:2)
...And the company loves misery.
Get back to work, you!