Zen and the Art of Faking It Lesson Plan
From Steve Jobs to Marc Benioff, a few Silicon Valley tech chiefs have taken a Zen Buddhism approach to their daily lives and their businesses. And it's not just billionaire CEOs. Yoga studios are springing up everywhere and trainers are in demand.
Some tech companies are bringing Zen to them. 80-7-yr-old Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh was invited by Google last year to run a training session at its campus, and he also planned to meet 20 other tech CEOs, The Guardian reported.
The Meditation Is the Message
At a Churchill Club consequence in Santa Clara I attended concluding fall — a one-day session billed to assist attendees proceeds power in order to "change the game" at their companies — a roomful of techies learned to meditate under the guidance of a Trounce Oil Company executive.
The idea of Zen-similar meditation practiced in the tech industry is, somewhat ironically, all the rage around the Valley. Just isn't there something inherently wrong with tying inner peace to increased profits and mindfulness to consumer gadgets that constantly bombard people with data?
To be off-white, whatever course of meditation where one appreciates living in the moment can exist an incredible stress reducer in an industry brimming with anxiety. As Arianna Huffington points out in a blog mail service last month, entitled "Mindfulness, Meditation, Wellness and Their Connectedness to Corporate America's Bottom Line," there are hard dollars and cents associated with stress in the workplace.
Here are some stats gleaned from a Forbes story nearly two years ago to back up this claim:
- The 2012 Workplace Survey released by the American Psychological Association plant that 41 per centum of American "feel tense or stressed during the workday," up from 36 percent last year.
- Stress was the almost common cause of long-term sickness absenteeism for both manual and non-transmission employees in CIPD'southward 2011 Absenteeism Management Survey.
- And finally, the World Wellness Arrangement estimates that stress costs American businesses $300 billion dollars a year.
Inner Peace for Turn a profit
Obviously, everyone should exist entitled to the wellness benefits of meditation regardless of where they work or how much money they make. Like Tai Chi, with a vast number of people in Communist china (young and old, rich and poor) performing the moves in the early morning every day, meditation do doesn't discriminate.
Then there's that problematic necktie-in to making money off meditation, every bit Huffington surmises:
"In that location's cypher touchy-feely virtually increased profits. This is a tough economy, and information technology's going to be that manner for a long time. Stress-reduction and mindfulness don't just make usa happier and healthier, they're a proven competitive advantage for any business that wants one."
Competitive advantage? I don't think I've always heard "mindfulness" and "competitive advantage" used in the aforementioned judgement before. Yous could argue that the near pop tech products with the biggest competitive advantages produced by companies with soaring profits are the polar opposite of the higher purpose of meditation — that is, finding meaningful happiness.
In truth, much of today's engineering output is superficial and somewhat meaningless.
This sentiment manifestly wasn't lost on Thich Nhat Hanh. According to The Guardian, he advised senior Google engineers and the tech industry at large:
"When they create electronic devices, they tin reflect on whether that new production will have people away from themselves, their family and nature. Instead they can create the kind of devices and software that tin assist them to get dorsum to themselves, to take care of their feelings. Past doing that, they will feel good because they're doing something good for lodge."
Of course, this isn't what the tech manufacture does; it makes products that appeal to the impatient American consumer who doesn't wait inwardly only outwardly, expressed with a social networking-styled narcissism. However, at that place are signs that fifty-fifty the most ever-on consumers are reaching gadget fatigue and experiencing regrets about the loneliness of today's mobile civilisation.
Instead of staring into our iPhones and watching funny true cat videos on YouTube or working at all hours because, you know, time is money and time is best spent when there's a financial return on investment, perhaps nosotros can accept a moment and just breathe in silence — for free.
Tom Kaneshige covers Apple, BYOD and Consumerization of IT for CIO.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @kaneshige. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline, Facebook, Google + and LinkedIn. Electronic mail Tom at tkaneshige@cio.com
Source: https://www.cio.com/article/291229/leadership-management-zen-and-the-art-of-tech-in-the-valley.html
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