The ART of mindfulness skills in making the most of intentional silence at work

Building meta-awareness means developing an applied understanding that you can observe conscious processes within your mind, inclusive of attentional dysregulation, from a position of bare awareness—in other words, awareness without conscious intent to respond to the content of experience (Bernstein et al., 2015). With self-awareness skills, attention is trained on the choice to lean into or out of silence and its goals, and thus, setting the table for self-regulatory processes that support purposeful silence. Only with self-regulation can the intended quiet emerge, allowing the employer (and employee) to assess if appropriate benefit is gained, or if more/less quiet is necessary. When applied to the pursuit of productive silence, this skill prompts you to reflect on how silence aligns with personally meaningful values (e.g., I am choosing to be silent from 1–3 pm so that I have the cognitive space to integrate new understandings of my area of study, reflecting my value of being a sought-after expert.