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Does workplace meditation actually work?
While the trend towards mindfulness is a pleasant idea, it might not actually be solving anything.

- Roughly 22% of companies offer mindfulness training programs to their employees... but it doesn't appear to be paying off.
- Meditation itself can truly improve overall health and wellbeing. Yet that that doesn't translate to increased performance.
- Financial desire and the stresses of the regular office may be more of a motivator than achieving mindfulness.
It makes sense that the idea of harnessing one's mental potential, developing a monk-like focus, and dealing with the stresses of the day with calm equanimity would appeal to business owners and workers. The CEOs of Salesforce, Tupperware, and other corporations claim to meditate daily. Roughly 22% of companies offer mindfulness training programs to their employees. One would expect a burst of Zen-powered productivity from such training, but mindfulness in the workplace may not be quite as desirable is it seems.
Mindfulness, the key feature of most, if not all, meditation practices, is a non-judgmental awareness of the present moment, a specific and self-regulated method of paying attention. This sounds like it would be fantastic for a business—who wouldn't want a worker focused squarely on the task at hand? In contrast, a recent study demonstrated that mindfulness practices may impair workers' motivation to complete a given task.
The study carried out a series of five experiments, each designed to replicate the kind of work one would be doing in an office. One experiment had participants editing the cover letters of a potential job-seeker. Another had them copy the terms and conditions of a software program, while another had participants brainstorm as many creative uses for a brick as possible. Unless you work for a brick factory, these aren't exactly the kind of tasks you would be performing at work. However, they flex the same mental muscles as many tasks in the business world require: creativity, accuracy, and attention to detail.
Prior to performing these tasks, some participants listened to an audio clip guiding them through a mindfulness exercise, while others listened to a clip designed to encourage inattentive mind-wandering. Consistently, the mindful participants reported feeling less motivated to perform the task than the distracted participants, even when they had been offered a financial reward. So, what is it about a non-judgmental awareness of the present moment that kills motivation?
Pxhere.com
One explanation is that mindfulness, by definition, shifts one's perspective from the future to the present. A future-oriented perspective is associated with arousal—used here to refer to the state of being physiologically and emotionally alert and at attention. Essentially, people become energized when considering the future. Psychologists have found that anticipating the performance of tasks like an upcoming negotiation, singing, or public speaking increased arousal in subjects.
This is to be expected. Most people would feel a nervous energy if they were asked to sing or speak in public. Beyond nervous anticipation, there's also evidence that practical, future-oriented thoughts are associated with higher levels of arousal in general. When there is a greater focus placed on the present, this additional energy is absent, impairing motivation.
There's also the well-known association between the ideas of meditation and moderation. Monks aren't really known for their expensive taste, and empirical evidence suggests that mindfulness practices decrease financial desire. The participants in this study may have been less motivated to perform the given tasks because they didn't desire the financial compensation.
This paints a somewhat grim picture of the workplace. Should employers stoke their workers' fears about the future and encourage greed in order to run a company efficiently? A prior report indicated that being in a bad mood can boost performance; maybe bosses should begin belittling their employees more.
While the results of this study may be generalizable to the workplace, it's important to remember that the participants were working on tedious tasks that didn't have any significance for them. If that describes your job to a tee, then maybe your boss won't want you meditating before the workday. The fact of the matter, though, is that many workers find their jobs to be satisfying to some degree. In a large organization, even tedious work may be more tolerable when placed in the context of the company's success. What's more, mindfulness has been tied to a number of positive outcomes, like higher job satisfaction and sleep quality. Unless you feel overly concerned for your employer's bottom line, setting some time aside each day to practice mindfulness will undoubtedly improve your quality of life.
- 6 Apps That Combat Depression and Anxiety ›
- Don't Buy into the Backlash -- the Science on Meditation Is Clear ... ›
- Meditation Is the New Yoga: Bringing Mindfulness Into the Workplace ›
How New York's largest hospital system is predicting COVID-19 spikes
Northwell Health is using insights from website traffic to forecast COVID-19 hospitalizations two weeks in the future.
- The machine-learning algorithm works by analyzing the online behavior of visitors to the Northwell Health website and comparing that data to future COVID-19 hospitalizations.
- The tool, which uses anonymized data, has so far predicted hospitalizations with an accuracy rate of 80 percent.
- Machine-learning tools are helping health-care professionals worldwide better constrain and treat COVID-19.
The value of forecasting
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Credit: Northwell Health
<p>One unique benefit of forecasting COVID-19 hospitalizations is that it allows health systems to better prepare, manage and allocate resources. For example, if the tool forecasted a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations in two weeks, Northwell Health could begin:</p><ul><li>Making space for an influx of patients</li><li>Moving personal protective equipment to where it's most needed</li><li>Strategically allocating staff during the predicted surge</li><li>Increasing the number of tests offered to asymptomatic patients</li></ul><p>The health-care field is increasingly using machine learning. It's already helping doctors develop <a href="https://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2020/06/09/dc19-1870" target="_blank">personalized care plans for diabetes patients</a>, improving cancer screening techniques, and enabling mental health professionals to better predict which patients are at <a href="https://healthitanalytics.com/news/ehr-data-fuels-accurate-predictive-analytics-for-suicide-risk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">elevated risk of suicide</a>, to name a few applications.</p><p>Health systems around the world have already begun exploring how <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7315944/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">machine learning can help battle the pandemic</a>, including better COVID-19 screening, diagnosis, contact tracing, and drug and vaccine development.</p><p>Cruzen said these kinds of tools represent a shift in how health systems can tackle a wide variety of problems.</p><p>"Health care has always used the past to predict the future, but not in this mathematical way," Cruzen said. "I think [Northwell Health's new predictive tool] really is a great first example of how we should be attacking a lot of things as we go forward."</p>Making machine-learning tools openly accessible
<p>Northwell Health has made its predictive tool <a href="https://github.com/northwell-health/covid-web-data-predictor" target="_blank">available for free</a> to any health system that wishes to utilize it.</p><p>"COVID is everybody's problem, and I think developing tools that can be used to help others is sort of why people go into health care," Dr. Cruzen said. "It was really consistent with our mission."</p><p>Open collaboration is something the world's governments and health systems should be striving for during the pandemic, said Michael Dowling, Northwell Health's president and CEO.</p><p>"Whenever you develop anything and somebody else gets it, they improve it and they continue to make it better," Dowling said. "As a country, we lack data. I believe very, very strongly that we should have been and should be now working with other countries, including China, including the European Union, including England and others to figure out how to develop a health surveillance system so you can anticipate way in advance when these things are going to occur."</p><p>In all, Northwell Health has treated more than 112,000 COVID patients. During the pandemic, Dowling said he's seen an outpouring of goodwill, collaboration, and sacrifice from the community and the tens of thousands of staff who work across Northwell.</p><p>"COVID has changed our perspective on everything—and not just those of us in health care, because it has disrupted everybody's life," Dowling said. "It has demonstrated the value of community, how we help one another."</p>3,000-pound Triceratops skull unearthed in South Dakota
"You dream about these kinds of moments when you're a kid," said lead paleontologist David Schmidt.
Excavation of a triceratops skull in South Dakota.
- The triceratops skull was first discovered in 2019, but was excavated over the summer of 2020.
- It was discovered in the South Dakota Badlands, an area where the Triceratops roamed some 66 million years ago.
- Studying dinosaurs helps scientists better understand the evolution of all life on Earth.
Credit: David Schmidt / Westminster College
<p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We had to be really careful," Schmidt told St. Louis Public Radio. "We couldn't disturb anything at all, because at that point, it was under law enforcement investigation. They were telling us, 'Don't even make footprints,' and I was thinking, 'How are we supposed to do that?'"</p><p>Another difficulty was the mammoth size of the skull: about 7 feet long and more than 3,000 pounds. (For context, the largest triceratops skull ever unearthed was about <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02724634.2010.483632" target="_blank">8.2 feet long</a>.) The skull of Schmidt's dinosaur was likely a <em>Triceratops prorsus, </em>one of two species of triceratops that roamed what's now North America about 66 million years ago.</p>Credit: David Schmidt / Westminster College
<p>The triceratops was an herbivore, but it was also a favorite meal of the T<em>yrannosaurus rex</em>. That probably explains why the Dakotas contain many scattered triceratops bone fragments, and, less commonly, complete bones and skulls. In summer 2019, for example, a separate team on a dig in North Dakota made <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/science/triceratops-skull-65-million-years-old.html" target="_blank">headlines</a> after unearthing a complete triceratops skull that measured five feet in length.</p><p>Michael Kjelland, a biology professor who participated in that excavation, said digging up the dinosaur was like completing a "multi-piece, 3-D jigsaw puzzle" that required "engineering that rivaled SpaceX," he jokingly told the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/science/triceratops-skull-65-million-years-old.html" target="_blank">New York Times</a>.</p>Morrison Formation in Colorado
James St. John via Flickr
Triceratops illustration
Credit: Nobu Tamura/Wikimedia Commons |
World's oldest work of art found in a hidden Indonesian valley
Archaeologists discover a cave painting of a wild pig that is now the world's oldest dated work of representational art.
Pig painting at Leang Tedongnge in Indonesia, made at 45,500 years ago.
- Archaeologists find a cave painting of a wild pig that is at least 45,500 years old.
- The painting is the earliest known work of representational art.
- The discovery was made in a remote valley on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
Oldest Cave Art Found in Sulawesi
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a9734e306f0914bfdcbe79a1e317a7f0"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b-wAYtBxn7E?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>What can Avicenna teach us about the mind-body problem?
The Persian polymath and philosopher of the Islamic Golden Age teaches us about self-awareness.
The incredible physics behind quantum computing
Can computers do calculations in multiple universes? Scientists are working on it. Step into the world of quantum computing.
