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Introduction
The concepts of mindfulness and meditation are now commonplace in the community and increasing in popularity in the workplace. Many people begin mindfulness and meditation practices to reduce stress, improve health or to have peace of mind in their fast-paced, busy lives.
Killingsworth and Gilbert (2010) have shown that for about 47 per cent of our day, we are not in the present and our minds wander somewhere else. When we are not present, productivity suffers as we are less efficient, make more mistakes and are unable to learn because we are unaware of our surroundings. According to their research, when the mind wanders, we experience greater moments of unhappiness because it drifts to personal concerns. They also found that the greatest moments of happiness occur when we are in the present and immersed in the task-in-flow.
Flow has also been shown to have many benefits for the workplace (Csikszentmihalyi, 2004). While the experience and characteristics of mindfulness has similarities to flow, there are some important differences that suggest that mindfulness and flow cannot occur together. Little has been written or researched regarding whether mindfulness and flow can occur at the same time and how they contribute to organizational learning.
This article describes similarities and differences between mindfulness, meditation and flow and explores whether a process of mindfulness-in-flow (mindflow) can contribute to organizational learning and the learning organization.
Mindfulness and meditation
According to Kabat-Zinn (1990) and Williams and Penman (2013), mindfulness is a state of enhanced attention to and awareness of present experience in an open, relaxed, non-judgmental way. Mindfulness practices include letting go of biases, pre-conceptions, judgments and negative emotions.
Meditation is commonly taught as an important part of mindfulness and involves setting aside time to quieten the mind, focusing on one thing - a word, an image or the breath - and bringing the attention back to the object of meditation when thoughts, emotions and distractions occur.
Meditation is a specific form of mindfulness and, like mindfulness, it includes being aware of what arises (sounds, feelings, emotions) but also aims to attain a deep level of stillness and experience of the "ground of consciousness" (Reninger, 2014).
Mindfulness can be practiced in ordinary activities like walking, eating, driving and working, while yoga ,