Article Review: How Mindfulness Can Help Engineers Solve Problems

It seems that popular topics find their way into academic circles more often these days. I came across a great example of Harvard Business Review by Reiken et al called “ How Mindfulness Can Help Engineers Solve Problems”. The article has been re-posted several times across a variety of academic sites and it is surely worth a review.

To begin with, mindfulness is essentially about living in the moment and paying attention to simply what is. The authors compare linear, or convergent thinking with divergent thinking, where several options are explored on top of the starting point, to generate a number of ideas and hence favours creativity and innovation. The article makes the claim that most engineers are trained to be liner, convergent thinkers and even though it's important, for the best solutions one requires both convergent and divergent thinking.

The authors performed two studies to look at the impact of mindfulness meditation, which is an exercise known to support mindfulness, on divergent thinking.

1st Study-92 Students were used in a study. The first group asked to do a 15min mindfulness meditation before a task. The control group was given a 15min video on stress reduction. The baseline mindfulness of students was shown to correlate with the creativity of ideas but not the number. The results of divergent thinking performance, therefore, were mixed.

2nd Study 1400 engineering students were used and their baseline mindfulness was compared to their innovation self-efficacy (confidence in their ability to innovate). Mindfulness could clearly predict innovation self-efficacy but mindful attitude stood out as the biggest predictor.

Both studies, as far as I am concerned, were simplistic but offer a great starting point to further research. The authors go on and say how mindfulness supports self-compassion and openness, and reduced fear of failure, thereby supporting creativity. Mindfulness can be improved through practice (such as meditation) and the authors discuss some of the largest corporations are now taking it seriously. I must add, that this has quickly turned into great business opportunities for mindfulness meditation trainers such as ZIVA meditation.

Overall, it is interesting to see how popular self-help ideas are quickly ending up in serious academia and large businesses. There is nothing good or bad about that, as long as serious results are achieved. The authors here have made a case for ‘engineers’ rather than artists or managers, slightly setting themselves apart. As with any paper, this is a drop in the bucket of possibilities but a drop that can be succeeded by many drops, to create a better understanding.

Link to the original article: https://hbr.org/2019/01/how-mindfulness-can-help-engineers-solve-problems?utm_campaign=hbr&utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social

Umair Usman is a Rapid Transformational Therapy practitioner, a businessperson, and a blogger. You can know more about him at www.thecognitiveconsultants.com . To book a free consultancy session, please fill the form https://tinyurl.com/y6n2vv8w