Positive Disengagement

Disengagement gets a bad rap. People in HR hate it, and consultants line up to offer fixes. I think there is a positive side to it.

As we believed we were coming out of lockdown, and were being encouraged to go out more, fly more and return to the office, the amount of time people I know had to reflect, individually and together, around what is really going on diminished.

That precious white space started to disappear as people attended face to face meetings, or commuted, or went out. The analgaesia of meetings increased, whilst the food of conversations decreased.

I think there are two sorts of disengagement – the passive sort, where what we do just does not give us the stimulus or recognition we want and feel we deserve, and the active sort, where we deliberately stand back and observe. This latter type is often promoted as mindfulness or meditation, which, while valuable, is only part of the productive disengagement story.

We cannot determine the character or nature of a system within …