Mindfulness and Taking Action to Start a New Business

Mindfulness, meaning a receptive attention to and awareness of present events and experience, is reported to have a wide range of benefits, but it has been suggested that it could prove costly in terms of task performance. This article analyzes how dispositional mindfulness relates to taking entrepreneurial action. Based on two waves of survey data, we find that mindful individuals are less likely to engage in entrepreneurial action than less mindful individuals, but when they do start to act, they take as many actions as individuals who score low on trait mindfulness, and even more if they have entrepreneurial experience.