How can mindfulness be promoted? Workload and recovery experiences as antecedents of daily fluctuations in mindfulness

Abstract

While previous work on mindfulness has focused predominantly on the benefits of mindfulness and of mindfulness interventions, the present article addresses the question of how natural experiences of mindfulness can be promoted in the context of work. Accordingly, this article sheds light on day‐to‐day fluctuations in workload and recovery experiences (psychological detachment and sleep quality) as antecedents of state mindfulness. Furthermore, this study extends extant research that has documented beneficial effects of mindfulness on subsequent recovery experiences by arguing that the relationship between mindfulness and recovery experiences is reciprocal rather than unidirectional. Using an experience‐sampling design across five workdays and involving three daily measurement occasions, we found that sleep quality and workload were related to subsequent levels of mindfulness. While not displaying a significant direct relationship with mindfulness, psychological detachment was indirectly related to mindfulness via sleep quality. Fatigue was identified as an important mechanism explaining these relationships. Furthermore, findings confirmed that the relationship between mindfulness and recovery experiences is reciprocal rather than unidirectional. Taken together, this study contributes to an enriched understanding of the role of mindfulness in organizations by shedding light on factors that precede the experience of mindfulness and by pointing to the existence of gain spirals associated with recovery experiences and mindfulness.Practitioner points Organizations seeking to promote mindfulness among their workforce should try to keep workload to a manageable degree.Organizations may also pay attention to care for employees' day‐to‐day recovery as it has been shown to facilitate mindfulness.

Mindfulness-based programmes to reduce stress and enhance well-being at work: a realist review

“…Finally, previous research has demonstrated how feedback loops and gain spirals might contribute to the positive effects of MBPs. 92 93 More recently, a study by Hülsheger et al 94 on state mindfulness in working populations showed how previous day recovery experiences benefitted mindfulness and subsequent recovery experience (gain spiral), whereas workload hampered the experience of mindfulness as well as subsequent recovery experience (loss spiral). Findings from our review support these observations by proposing that resource gains and losses in workplace MBPs may have to be seen in the context of resource availability.…”

Can mindfulness mitigate the energy-depleting process and increase job resources to prevent burnout? A study on the mindfulness trait in the school context

“…However, to date it is not so clear how job and personal resources can interact in predicting job burnout, and future research should invest more interest about the role exerted from mindfulness. In this vein, future studies could focus on the booster effect that the interaction between job resources and personal resources may have on work engagement [63].…”

“…In this vein, results of the present study could be further analyzed within health promotion intervention aimed at sustain teachers’ wellbeing through MBI interventions. For example, future studies can improve the extant knowledge about the effect of mindfulness training [63] on mindfulness state, using diary studies to integrate the JD-R assumption about the potential mediating role of stress appraisal and the way by which teachers value their work as full of meaning.…”

Problem solving and affect as mechanisms linking daily mindfulness to task performance and job satisfaction

“…Moreover, mindfulness has been examined as a trait in the majority of published empirical studies within and outside the organizational sciences, as pointed out by a number of researchers (Blanke, Riediger, & Brose, 2018;Hülsheger, Walkowiak, & Thommes, 2018;Olafsen, 2017;Tuckey, Sonnentag, & Bryan, 2018). Yet mindfulness is inherently a state experienced during specific moments in time (such as particular epochs of work activity).…”

“…A number of characteristics of mindfulness can impact on affect experienced in the workplace. In particular, mindful employees are able to attend to the present moment in a non-judgemental way, evaluate stressful events in an objective manner separate from one's self as well as maintain an open and accepting awareness of one's thoughts and feelings (Hülsheger et al, 2013(Hülsheger et al, , 2018Shapiro et al, 2006;Slutsky, Rahl, Lindsay, & Creswell, 2017). Such characteristics are likely to improve emotional processing and regulation, particularly in response to difficult interactions and in the face of demanding situations.…”