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Mindfulness Meditation Impairs Task Motivation but Not Performance [pdf]

143 points by RangerScience 8y ago

cimmanom 8y ago
On a meaningless task under laboratory conditions. Maybe mindfulness just gave them some perspective on how pointless it was. I don't see how this is relevant to the real workplace where stress can be paralyzing and burnout is a greater threat to productivity and motivation than being chill is.
- rfugger 8y ago
  Fair point, but meaninglessness of one's job can be quite demotivating too if you're paying attention to the bigger picture.
  - Karrot_Kream 8y ago
    I'm not sure if I was supposed to laugh at that, but I did.
- fny 8y ago
  > Maybe mindfulness just gave them some perspective on how pointless it was. "One hundred and one Amazon Mechanical Turk workers whose location was set to the United States took part in exchange for $1.35 each."
  - cimmanom 8y ago
    Oh, better: under uncontrolled conditions where it was impossible to tell whether anyone actually meditated and there's likely to be some self-selection bias.
kazishariar 8y ago
The very meaning of mindfulness is to detach from the self, and to do each and every task no matter how mundane it is as if brand new at each and every moment. Kind of like to see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour --so to say. So though the mundaneness of everything is quite real, the absolute newness of every moment is just as apparent. It's as if nothing has changed, yet everything has -jus all at once. At least w/o sounding too new age-y about it.
- hinkley 8y ago
  Which sounds great to CEOs but there’s one problem: When you use mindfulness while the CEO is talking and realize his or her problems are their own making and why should you kill yourself to make a lie true?
  - spicymaki 8y ago
    I don't see why this is a problem. However, sometimes you can't escape your situation and sometimes you have to do things you don't like to support yourself and others. This is not incompatible with mindfulness.
- spicymaki 8y ago
  No, you don't want to detach from the self. The point of mindfulness is to see that concept of an independent, separate self, separate from everything else is an illusion and we are interconnected. You are still you, but part of a bigger system.
  - mamon 8y ago
    What if it's the other way around: what if the feeling of everything being interconnected is an illusion? When Cartesius said his famous "Cogito ergo sum" that's pretty much what it meant - you can be sure that your mind exists, but not much else beyond that. And, if you think about it, why would everything in the world be interconnected in some meaningfull way? For what we know universe is just a big bag of energy and particles interacting with each other in the random way. "It's all connected" is a cry from the human mind desperately trying to make sense out of chaos.
    - spatular 8y ago
      That's the point. It's the mind that separates objects out from the global mess, from the single process that unfolds. It's a good thing in a sense that it allows humans to function in the world and create more humans. Downside is that it leads to lots of unnesessary suffering when things change. And they always do, all the time.
kreutz 8y ago
Most engaged yet least attached.
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  As soon as one attaches themselves to the way things should be, it can be easy to lose sight of the way things are. But honestly, it takes a very creative and devoted mind to be able to do that constantly for things like coding. You can appreciate the bugs for what they are (problems to solve and validate skill), but that doesn't mean lose awareness of the problems they can cause in the future. Appreciating a broken bridge in an artsy way is one thing, letting people drive over it because 'death is a natural part of life' is entirely another story.
backpropaganda 8y ago
I'm singularly glad someone did this research. Anecdata: Mindfullness never worked for me, and I suspect even harmed me some. I noticed that I became more nihilist and depressed when I used to meditate. Meditation basically made me start realizing the pointlessness of everything, the little value of emotions, which is great if your goal is to become unemotional and destressed. However, stress and emotions are how humans do great things. It's what motivates us to overcome nihilism, and desire to do something, be someone, etc. I hope more research is done, and we prescribe Mindfullness only contextually and not as a panacea.
- sushid 8y ago
  I think this is why like most things in life, meditation is yet another thing that should be done in moderation.
- wudangmonk 8y ago
  when engaging in this sort of meditation, is it not the goal to not focus on any such thoughts or any thoughts at all and just become an observer of your mental state?. I cannot see how too much introspection can be a bad thing and lead to unhappiness when the alternative means you are just fooling yourself into being happy.
- spicymaki 8y ago
  Emotional detachment is not the goal of mindfulness practice as I understand it. The point of mindfulness practice is to become more of aware of your body, mind, feelings, and develop insight to things as they really are (see Satipatthana). Devaluing emotions is exactly the opposite of the point of practice. Instead you want to get in touch with your emotions, deeply. The trick with not going off the rails emotionally is karma. Positive actions (e.g. generosity, patience, truthfulness) produce positive emotions, negative actions (e.g. speaking ill of others, lying, stealing) produce negative emotions. Karma can also help overcome nihilistic thought. Your actions actually do mean something to yourself and others (at least subjectively) and you can see and feel the results in real life. I agree with you said about context. I think opportunists are extracting these techniques out of their original context and selling it as a panacea to all of your problems. This is wrong and can only lead to harm.
hugozap 8y ago
makes sense, mindfulness meditation changes the perceived value of rewards. Maybe someone stops ranking social status as high on their list and will not be motivated to do tasks that are only rewarded with social points. I don't think motivation decreases for tasks that are meaningful to the individual, it can be good if the workplace goals are aligned with those of the individual, or bad if they are disconnected.
m0llusk 8y ago
It will be interesting to see how reproducible this is. Meditation can contribute to clarity of thought. If the task is an experiment or work that helps people and pays or something a child needs may effectively all be different cases.
tsumnia 8y ago
As a former mindfulness case study, I'm sad to hear it was not helpful to this study. While the report does cover a number of experiments, the limitation to their research is the use of self-reports. While you can attempt to frame questions in a way to reduce priming, self-reporting is not a good metric because people can begin to respond with what they think you want to hear. Furthermore, the granularity of the timeframes for the experiments seems pretty small. In the case study I was involved in, we were tracked over months/years and showed higher "mindfulness scores" (granted, self-reported, so same limitation). A better approach (though time and cost expensive) would be to perform a longitudinal study on participants and measure their performance overtime. This removes the "answering with what you want to hear" issue while strengthening the study's validity. As an aside, I like to look towards the Tao of Pooh (or I suppose general Taoism?). The idea is to not let things get you down, but to appreciate the here and now. Mundane activities exist and sometimes you have to do them, but if you can "get over" its mundanity, you can return to enjoying other things.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
lopmotr 8y ago
I used to wonder why Buddhist monks seemed to do so little productive work despite all the productivity their meditation was supposed to bring. Why aren't they generating awesome works of science or philosophy or literature or something with all that clear-headedness? This might explain it.
- wudangmonk 8y ago
  you can only better understand yourself through meditation, its not a divine state where the secrets of the universe are revealed to you.
  - bunnymancer 8y ago
    I think he was being sarcastic...
    - alfredallan1 8y ago
      Maybe. Maybe not. >Why aren't they generating awesome works of science or philosophy or literature or something with all that clear-headedness Maybe they don’t want to? Maybe their motivation is towards intrinsic goals, while science/literature/etc. are all extrinsic. Just because they aren’t doing X doesn’t naturally and obviously mean it is because they cannot do X. e.g. I can readily be a manager, and have more of certain (in)tangible things, but choose not to, because that line of work interests me less than other kinds of work. Just as, by the same token, just because somebody wants to do X doesn’t mean they can do it. e.g. I really want to be a talented rockstar with mad guitar skills, but I cannot becuse I am largely tone deaf.
      - pdpi 8y ago
        > Maybe they don’t want to? Maybe their motivation is towards intrinsic goals, while science/literature/etc. are all extrinsic Douglas Adams comes to mind. “For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
AlexCoventry 8y ago
These are very weak results. High p-values, and no mention of correction for multiple sampling. There is no reason to trust this paper's conclusions.
kumarvvr 8y ago
Meditation, in ancient and present India, is a tool for spiritual development, contemplation on the true nature of self and an aide to allow for detachment from worldly matters. Its not meant to be a method to calm down workers so that they will produce more profit for a corporation.
- internetman55 8y ago
  I wish more people talked about this
  - saintPirelli 8y ago
    You and I should swap out filter bubble because I wish less people talked about this.
  - avtar 8y ago
    Have you checked out https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/ https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/ ? There seen to be more online and physical meetups now (compared to even five years ago) that are attended by people who view practice with awakening and spiritual development as goals.
    - internetman55 8y ago
      Not really. I think I am an SBNR investigating Christianity mostly at this point. But, for example, someone told me I should recite the Jesus prayer at work to boost my productivity, I'd probably think there was something wrong with him (even if in some sense it might be beneficial)
- ssijak 8y ago
  Those 2 things are not mutually exclusive.
  - kumarvvr 8y ago
siliconc0w 8y ago
Mindfulness is (for me) very helpful for inter-personal tasks. Someone might say or write something that might normally provoke a task-devolving-reaction where I enumerate why they're wrong or maybe go with something snide or passive aggressive - which might make me feel better but predictably isn't very constructive. After practicing mindfulness I can usually catch myself and divert energies to more constructive routes.
- zer00eyz 8y ago
  This is probably one of the few cases where mindfulness truly applies. That having been said it isn't solving the root problem. You can't fix stupid... you can fix a lack of knowledge, experience and practical understanding - but that has to come from culture not individuals.
jl2718 8y ago
“These effects explain why mindfulness does not alter performance” Isn’t it some kind of crime against statistics to offer explanations for the null hypothesis?
grwthckrmstr 8y ago
Mindfulness helped me single out most of the meaningless BS that I did in my life and work, and so I subconsciously started eliminating a lot of them. Might make me "less productive" but did make me "more satisfied".
ncmncm 8y ago
It looks to me like it worked perfectly. The subjects increased their ability to recognize that they would better do something else meaningful. If my colleagues became less interested in pointless busywork, that would improve my life as well as theirs.
passive 8y ago
As someone who grew up in a western Buddhist community (and skimmed the article), this rings true to me. I largely credit my success at work to the tools for working with my mind imparted by my upbringing and continued practice. However, mindfulness is just one of those tools. There are forms of meditation that build upon mindfulness that I would argue can be very helpful to motivation. To put it another way, once you are able to focus your mind on the present moment, there are other things you can focus it on. For instance, if I've got a meeting coming up where I need to partner with people with whom I know I usually have a combative relationship, engaging in a compassion meditation, such as Tonglen, motivates me to see their problems and want to help solve them. Mindfulness itself is wonderful, but it is among the most basic of techniques for training your mind. It is remarkably comparable to physical exercise, where a basic level of activity yields amazing results for your overall health, but must be accompanied by specific training if you want to dramatically change your physical capabilities.
- mettamage 8y ago
  Where could you learn it though? Grown up typically Dutch, I learned Tonglen by reading search inside yourself. Other than your comment, I never came across it.
  - helloindia 8y ago
    Tonglen is a popular practice in Tibetan Buddhist Schools. There are several other practices like, Eight Verses of Mind Training, Generating Bodhichitta with Equalizing self and others. One won't find such methods in general meditation books, as these are practices specific to Mahayana Buddhism.
meow_mix 8y ago
How are people still trying to drive utility out of this
benevol 8y ago
Right, why don't we all just keep eating Modafinil or whatever new stimulants, drugs or meds are en vogue, in order to be able to keep doing meaningless jobs in the most efficient manner.
nabla9 8y ago
My experience is that concentration directed meditation is more like a tool. You can use concentrative skills to advance towards direction you want in the life. You are in control. If you do awareness oriented practice long enough, it starts to work on you. You are on the ride 'to the unknown'. Motivations change and unless you make nessesary changes in your life, you lose motivation and have life chrisis. Usual solution is to quit meditation or do so little that you don't change. Many people have romantic notion of transcendence and enlightement, but when meditation starts to really work they realize that's not what they actually want. Change is scary.
- tsenkov 8y ago
  >Many people have romantic notion of transcendence and enlightement, but when meditation starts to really work they realize that's not what they actually want. Change is scary. Interesting. Would you care to share an example of this?
  - zentiggr 8y ago
    Not directly mindfulness related, but I've been doing EMDR to try to break some self destructive reactions / anxiety. The first major part of processing that got to the core of my panic reactions left me with a 'gaping hole in my brain' where my panic reactions were... I'm still working on what's refilling that void, but I'm not as weirded out as I was those first couple of days. Felt like when something triggery came up, I knew how I was going to respond and then I didn't... and haven't always been sure what else was appropriate. Relearning who I want to be is interesting / challenging / confusing.
    - notduncansmith 8y ago
      > Relearning who I want to be is interesting / challenging / confusing. One thing that adds to the challenge is figuring out how to socialize as your newest self, balancing the new internal constraints with the external ones (some of which you may not have been aware of). What have you learned in that regard?
ericnyamu123 8y ago
wow.check out this cool forum http://mawazo.byethost7.com/index.php http://mawazo.byethost7.com/index.php
amelius 8y ago
Could someone with experience in both comment about the difference between mindfulness meditation and progressive muscle relaxation? I suspect there is an overlap in mechanism of action between these two methods, but I could be wrong.
wool_gather 8y ago
Related HN discussion from two days ago, linking to a NYTimes article by the authors of this paper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17329396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17329396

143 points by RangerScience 8y ago

On a meaningless task under laboratory conditions. Maybe mindfulness just gave them some perspective on how pointless it was. I don't see how this is relevant to the real workplace where stress can be paralyzing and burnout is a greater threat to productivity and motivation than being chill is.

rfugger 8y ago
Fair point, but meaninglessness of one's job can be quite demotivating too if you're paying attention to the bigger picture.
- Karrot_Kream 8y ago
  I'm not sure if I was supposed to laugh at that, but I did.
fny 8y ago
> Maybe mindfulness just gave them some perspective on how pointless it was. "One hundred and one Amazon Mechanical Turk workers whose location was set to the United States took part in exchange for $1.35 each."
- cimmanom 8y ago
  Oh, better: under uncontrolled conditions where it was impossible to tell whether anyone actually meditated and there's likely to be some self-selection bias.

kazishariar 8y ago

The very meaning of mindfulness is to detach from the self, and to do each and every task no matter how mundane it is as if brand new at each and every moment. Kind of like to see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour --so to say. So though the mundaneness of everything is quite real, the absolute newness of every moment is just as apparent. It's as if nothing has changed, yet everything has -jus all at once. At least w/o sounding too new age-y about it.

hinkley 8y ago
Which sounds great to CEOs but there’s one problem: When you use mindfulness while the CEO is talking and realize his or her problems are their own making and why should you kill yourself to make a lie true?
- spicymaki 8y ago
  I don't see why this is a problem. However, sometimes you can't escape your situation and sometimes you have to do things you don't like to support yourself and others. This is not incompatible with mindfulness.
spicymaki 8y ago
No, you don't want to detach from the self. The point of mindfulness is to see that concept of an independent, separate self, separate from everything else is an illusion and we are interconnected. You are still you, but part of a bigger system.
- mamon 8y ago
  What if it's the other way around: what if the feeling of everything being interconnected is an illusion? When Cartesius said his famous "Cogito ergo sum" that's pretty much what it meant - you can be sure that your mind exists, but not much else beyond that. And, if you think about it, why would everything in the world be interconnected in some meaningfull way? For what we know universe is just a big bag of energy and particles interacting with each other in the random way. "It's all connected" is a cry from the human mind desperately trying to make sense out of chaos.
  - spatular 8y ago
    That's the point. It's the mind that separates objects out from the global mess, from the single process that unfolds. It's a good thing in a sense that it allows humans to function in the world and create more humans. Downside is that it leads to lots of unnesessary suffering when things change. And they always do, all the time.

kreutz 8y ago

Most engaged yet least attached.

s-shellfish 8y ago
As soon as one attaches themselves to the way things should be, it can be easy to lose sight of the way things are. But honestly, it takes a very creative and devoted mind to be able to do that constantly for things like coding. You can appreciate the bugs for what they are (problems to solve and validate skill), but that doesn't mean lose awareness of the problems they can cause in the future. Appreciating a broken bridge in an artsy way is one thing, letting people drive over it because 'death is a natural part of life' is entirely another story.

backpropaganda 8y ago

I'm singularly glad someone did this research. Anecdata: Mindfullness never worked for me, and I suspect even harmed me some. I noticed that I became more nihilist and depressed when I used to meditate. Meditation basically made me start realizing the pointlessness of everything, the little value of emotions, which is great if your goal is to become unemotional and destressed. However, stress and emotions are how humans do great things. It's what motivates us to overcome nihilism, and desire to do something, be someone, etc. I hope more research is done, and we prescribe Mindfullness only contextually and not as a panacea.

sushid 8y ago
I think this is why like most things in life, meditation is yet another thing that should be done in moderation.
wudangmonk 8y ago
when engaging in this sort of meditation, is it not the goal to not focus on any such thoughts or any thoughts at all and just become an observer of your mental state?. I cannot see how too much introspection can be a bad thing and lead to unhappiness when the alternative means you are just fooling yourself into being happy.
spicymaki 8y ago
Emotional detachment is not the goal of mindfulness practice as I understand it. The point of mindfulness practice is to become more of aware of your body, mind, feelings, and develop insight to things as they really are (see Satipatthana). Devaluing emotions is exactly the opposite of the point of practice. Instead you want to get in touch with your emotions, deeply. The trick with not going off the rails emotionally is karma. Positive actions (e.g. generosity, patience, truthfulness) produce positive emotions, negative actions (e.g. speaking ill of others, lying, stealing) produce negative emotions. Karma can also help overcome nihilistic thought. Your actions actually do mean something to yourself and others (at least subjectively) and you can see and feel the results in real life. I agree with you said about context. I think opportunists are extracting these techniques out of their original context and selling it as a panacea to all of your problems. This is wrong and can only lead to harm.

hugozap 8y ago

makes sense, mindfulness meditation changes the perceived value of rewards. Maybe someone stops ranking social status as high on their list and will not be motivated to do tasks that are only rewarded with social points. I don't think motivation decreases for tasks that are meaningful to the individual, it can be good if the workplace goals are aligned with those of the individual, or bad if they are disconnected.

m0llusk 8y ago

It will be interesting to see how reproducible this is. Meditation can contribute to clarity of thought. If the task is an experiment or work that helps people and pays or something a child needs may effectively all be different cases.

tsumnia 8y ago

As a former mindfulness case study, I'm sad to hear it was not helpful to this study. While the report does cover a number of experiments, the limitation to their research is the use of self-reports. While you can attempt to frame questions in a way to reduce priming, self-reporting is not a good metric because people can begin to respond with what they think you want to hear. Furthermore, the granularity of the timeframes for the experiments seems pretty small. In the case study I was involved in, we were tracked over months/years and showed higher "mindfulness scores" (granted, self-reported, so same limitation). A better approach (though time and cost expensive) would be to perform a longitudinal study on participants and measure their performance overtime. This removes the "answering with what you want to hear" issue while strengthening the study's validity. As an aside, I like to look towards the Tao of Pooh (or I suppose general Taoism?). The idea is to not let things get you down, but to appreciate the here and now. Mundane activities exist and sometimes you have to do them, but if you can "get over" its mundanity, you can return to enjoying other things.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

lopmotr 8y ago

I used to wonder why Buddhist monks seemed to do so little productive work despite all the productivity their meditation was supposed to bring. Why aren't they generating awesome works of science or philosophy or literature or something with all that clear-headedness? This might explain it.

wudangmonk 8y ago
you can only better understand yourself through meditation, its not a divine state where the secrets of the universe are revealed to you.
- bunnymancer 8y ago
  I think he was being sarcastic...
  - alfredallan1 8y ago
    Maybe. Maybe not. >Why aren't they generating awesome works of science or philosophy or literature or something with all that clear-headedness Maybe they don’t want to? Maybe their motivation is towards intrinsic goals, while science/literature/etc. are all extrinsic. Just because they aren’t doing X doesn’t naturally and obviously mean it is because they cannot do X. e.g. I can readily be a manager, and have more of certain (in)tangible things, but choose not to, because that line of work interests me less than other kinds of work. Just as, by the same token, just because somebody wants to do X doesn’t mean they can do it. e.g. I really want to be a talented rockstar with mad guitar skills, but I cannot becuse I am largely tone deaf.
    - pdpi 8y ago
      > Maybe they don’t want to? Maybe their motivation is towards intrinsic goals, while science/literature/etc. are all extrinsic Douglas Adams comes to mind. “For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”

AlexCoventry 8y ago

These are very weak results. High p-values, and no mention of correction for multiple sampling. There is no reason to trust this paper's conclusions.

kumarvvr 8y ago

Meditation, in ancient and present India, is a tool for spiritual development, contemplation on the true nature of self and an aide to allow for detachment from worldly matters. Its not meant to be a method to calm down workers so that they will produce more profit for a corporation.

internetman55 8y ago
I wish more people talked about this
- saintPirelli 8y ago
  You and I should swap out filter bubble because I wish less people talked about this.
- avtar 8y ago
  Have you checked out https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/ https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/ ? There seen to be more online and physical meetups now (compared to even five years ago) that are attended by people who view practice with awakening and spiritual development as goals.
  - internetman55 8y ago
    Not really. I think I am an SBNR investigating Christianity mostly at this point. But, for example, someone told me I should recite the Jesus prayer at work to boost my productivity, I'd probably think there was something wrong with him (even if in some sense it might be beneficial)
ssijak 8y ago
Those 2 things are not mutually exclusive.
- kumarvvr 8y ago

siliconc0w 8y ago

Mindfulness is (for me) very helpful for inter-personal tasks. Someone might say or write something that might normally provoke a task-devolving-reaction where I enumerate why they're wrong or maybe go with something snide or passive aggressive - which might make me feel better but predictably isn't very constructive. After practicing mindfulness I can usually catch myself and divert energies to more constructive routes.

zer00eyz 8y ago
This is probably one of the few cases where mindfulness truly applies. That having been said it isn't solving the root problem. You can't fix stupid... you can fix a lack of knowledge, experience and practical understanding - but that has to come from culture not individuals.

jl2718 8y ago

“These effects explain why mindfulness does not alter performance” Isn’t it some kind of crime against statistics to offer explanations for the null hypothesis?

grwthckrmstr 8y ago

Mindfulness helped me single out most of the meaningless BS that I did in my life and work, and so I subconsciously started eliminating a lot of them. Might make me "less productive" but did make me "more satisfied".

ncmncm 8y ago

It looks to me like it worked perfectly. The subjects increased their ability to recognize that they would better do something else meaningful. If my colleagues became less interested in pointless busywork, that would improve my life as well as theirs.

passive 8y ago

As someone who grew up in a western Buddhist community (and skimmed the article), this rings true to me. I largely credit my success at work to the tools for working with my mind imparted by my upbringing and continued practice. However, mindfulness is just one of those tools. There are forms of meditation that build upon mindfulness that I would argue can be very helpful to motivation. To put it another way, once you are able to focus your mind on the present moment, there are other things you can focus it on. For instance, if I've got a meeting coming up where I need to partner with people with whom I know I usually have a combative relationship, engaging in a compassion meditation, such as Tonglen, motivates me to see their problems and want to help solve them. Mindfulness itself is wonderful, but it is among the most basic of techniques for training your mind. It is remarkably comparable to physical exercise, where a basic level of activity yields amazing results for your overall health, but must be accompanied by specific training if you want to dramatically change your physical capabilities.

mettamage 8y ago
Where could you learn it though? Grown up typically Dutch, I learned Tonglen by reading search inside yourself. Other than your comment, I never came across it.
- helloindia 8y ago
  Tonglen is a popular practice in Tibetan Buddhist Schools. There are several other practices like, Eight Verses of Mind Training, Generating Bodhichitta with Equalizing self and others. One won't find such methods in general meditation books, as these are practices specific to Mahayana Buddhism.

meow_mix 8y ago

How are people still trying to drive utility out of this

benevol 8y ago

Right, why don't we all just keep eating Modafinil or whatever new stimulants, drugs or meds are en vogue, in order to be able to keep doing meaningless jobs in the most efficient manner.

nabla9 8y ago

My experience is that concentration directed meditation is more like a tool. You can use concentrative skills to advance towards direction you want in the life. You are in control. If you do awareness oriented practice long enough, it starts to work on you. You are on the ride 'to the unknown'. Motivations change and unless you make nessesary changes in your life, you lose motivation and have life chrisis. Usual solution is to quit meditation or do so little that you don't change. Many people have romantic notion of transcendence and enlightement, but when meditation starts to really work they realize that's not what they actually want. Change is scary.

tsenkov 8y ago
>Many people have romantic notion of transcendence and enlightement, but when meditation starts to really work they realize that's not what they actually want. Change is scary. Interesting. Would you care to share an example of this?
- zentiggr 8y ago
  Not directly mindfulness related, but I've been doing EMDR to try to break some self destructive reactions / anxiety. The first major part of processing that got to the core of my panic reactions left me with a 'gaping hole in my brain' where my panic reactions were... I'm still working on what's refilling that void, but I'm not as weirded out as I was those first couple of days. Felt like when something triggery came up, I knew how I was going to respond and then I didn't... and haven't always been sure what else was appropriate. Relearning who I want to be is interesting / challenging / confusing.
  - notduncansmith 8y ago
    > Relearning who I want to be is interesting / challenging / confusing. One thing that adds to the challenge is figuring out how to socialize as your newest self, balancing the new internal constraints with the external ones (some of which you may not have been aware of). What have you learned in that regard?

ericnyamu123 8y ago

wow.check out this cool forum http://mawazo.byethost7.com/index.php http://mawazo.byethost7.com/index.php

amelius 8y ago

Could someone with experience in both comment about the difference between mindfulness meditation and progressive muscle relaxation? I suspect there is an overlap in mechanism of action between these two methods, but I could be wrong.

wool_gather 8y ago

Related HN discussion from two days ago, linking to a NYTimes article by the authors of this paper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17329396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17329396