ILPC 2026

Background: Within a few years, the digital transformation has changed the world of work fundamentally (Huws 2014). Besides creating new jobs and enhancing productivity and well-being, the digital economy also exposes workers to risks of low wages, job uncertainty or unemployment. Additionally, recent research has linked the use of digital media at work or at home with lower attention, concentration, performance, and productivity. Consequently, solutions are developed to limit the distraction by digital media in order to reduce stress for employees and increase productivity. The control of one's own attention and increase of mindfulness at work are regarded as ideal solution to limit negative effects of the digital economy. More and more companies, such as Google, Intel or General Mills, are offering mindfulness trainings to their employees and a large number of self-help literature on mindfulness and the detachment of work has appeared in the last few years. We argue, that this constitutes a new model of worker subjectivity that highlights personal skills of attention control, mindfulness and work-nonwork boundary management (Hardering and Wagner 2018). Building on theories of Boltanski and Chiapello (2003), Foucault (2007; 2010) and Brockling (2016), our contribution aims at showing how various discourses within the digital economy shape a new type of subjectivity, the mindful self.

Methods: To understand the sources of the mindful self, we analyze two discourses within the self-help literature: The discourse on mindfulness at work and the discourse on detachment of work. We use discourse analysis as a research method and ask 1) how the invocations of mindful self are made, 2) and by what technologies the mindful self is established. Finally, we ask about the paradoxical effects of this new ideal self.

Findings: We show that in self-help literature the mindful self is described as ideal form of worker subjectivity that is able to limit the negative effects of digitalized work processes. The mindful self has abilities of dealing with stress by using clear boundaries between work and nonwork and by using techniques of mindfulness. Moreover, the mindful self can make the transition between states of highest concentration during work and a radical mental detachment from work in work-free times. It also provides efficient boundary management at the transitions of work and life and knows the importance of one's own mental self-care.

Discussion:  Based on the analysis of self-help literature, we show that mindfulness is not only seen as a means of stress management, but in particular as a means to increase efficiency. The increase in mindfulness programs paradoxically contributes to the maintenance of the unhealthy and distracting work system because organizations do not change their performance policies and therefore do not fight the cause of stress. The invocation as a mindful self thus challenges individuals to solve structural deficiencies by optimizing their own abilities.