Here's a growing trend I'm interested in and excited to see catch more eyeballs: satisfaction and impact are replacing money and power as the sole focus of what we do with our lives.
That sounds vague, speculative, and basically like any other ThoughtCatalog article published in the last year. But what I mean is that thought leaders are starting to consider the larger world in which they operate.
In 2012, Chris Hughes, one of the cofounders of Facebook, bought The New Republic. At the time the publication was dying, declining in readership by 50%. His reason for the investment, as reported by Fast Company is a desire to tackle the "cultural deficit of longer, more thought provoking journalism."
Hughes adds on to this comment: "There is a strong group of people who value getting past headlines and the hype of news cycles, spending more time with an issue."
The Fast Company article goes on to highlight several other instances including Rachael Chong's Catchafire, a skill based volunteer matching platform, and Ev William's very popular Medium. There's even a term for the types of people orienting their careers towards longer impact goals: Tech Humanists.
The name itself is regrettable and will likely be lumped in with the laughable lexicon of Silicon Valley's latest. But what this signifies is a growing language around mindfulness.
TIME magazine's The Mindfulness Revolution is also getting plenty of circulation around the web these days. The feature includes John Kabat-Zinn's popular work on mindfulness and a few more thought out applications of meditation towards businesses. TIME cites Janice Marturano's corporate mindfulness initiative initially introduced to General Mill's employees in 2006. In corporate human relations that means about 500 General Mill's employees have attended the course and conclusive evidence is just now starting to be drawn out. Meditation found a place front and center at Davos in 2013, and my humble employer even has it's own meditation course called Google's Search Inside Yourself.
I certainly haven't solidified any conclusions on the Tech Humanist rise but my thinking (and hope) is that the penetration of mindfulness into our work and careers is developing a breed of Tech Humanists (or whatever you want to call them), people who care about tackling issues that require long term thinking.
Having newly acquainted myself with meditation, I'm excited to continue exploring what this new trend means.