Eden Li has a theory about why some project managers are brilliant with generative AI while others flounder. It’s not about technical skills or coding knowledge. It’s about something more ancient: the ability to pay attention to what’s happening right now.
Li, who works at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia, has been studying how project managers are adapting to the flood of AI tools reshaping their profession. By 2030, up to 80 per cent of project management tasks could be handled by artificial intelligence, according to industry forecasts. That’s a lot of change, fast. And it raises an obvious question: What separates the managers who’ll thrive from those who’ll struggle?
The answer, Li’s research suggests, lies in mindfulness. Not the self-help version with apps and breathing exercises (though those don’t hurt), but something more fundamental: present-moment awareness and an open, curious approach to experience. Project managers with higher mindfulness levels tend to be more open, attentive, and creative in crafting their immediate work environment, Li says. This encourages them to explore how GenAI can optimise workflows, and ultimately improves both the frequency and effectiveness of their AI use.
Li and her colleagues surveyed 441 project managers worldwide, measuring their mindfulness levels, how they redesigned their jobs, and how they used generative AI tools. The study used a two-wave design, measuring variables at different times to reduce the chance that some third factor was driving the results. What emerged was a clear pattern. Mindfulness didn’t directly make people better at using AI. Instead, it worked through a kind of bridge behaviour that psychologists call ‘job crafting’—the proactive reshaping of tasks, relationships, and how you think about your work.
Here’s how it seems to play out. Mindful managers notice inefficiencies more readily. They’re better at sustaining attention on troubleshooting and experimenting with new systems. Crucially, they approach GenAI with less fear and more openness. That combination means they’re more likely to actively redesign their workflows around these tools, rather than just bolting them on or avoiding them entirely. The job crafting bit is important. It’s not passive—it’s deliberate tinkering with how work gets done.
The findings get more interesting when you look at project complexity. Li and her team found that the curiosity dimension of mindfulness—the desire to explore and learn—becomes even more valuable in complex projects. When there are more moving parts, more unknowns, more things that could go wrong, a curious mindset helps managers experiment and integrate AI more effectively. Oddly enough, project uncertainty (which you’d think might swamp these effects) didn’t weaken the relationship between mindfulness and job crafting. Perhaps because, as the researchers suggest, uncertainty can also spur learning and adaptive problem-solving rather than just draining resources.
One result stood out sharply, though. Job crafting only translated into better AI use when managers actually knew something about GenAI. Knowledge was the make-or-break moderator. Among managers with high AI knowledge, those who actively crafted their jobs showed much higher frequency and effectiveness of GenAI use. Among those with low knowledge, job crafting made essentially no difference. You can reshape your workflow all you want, but if you don’t understand what the tools can do, you’re redesigning in the dark.
That finding has practical bite. Organizations are investing billions in AI tools—global spending on generative AI is projected to hit $151.1 billion by 2027. But Li’s research suggests technology alone won’t transform anything. What matters is how people think and adapt. Mindfulness, she argues, is a hidden performance advantage in the GenAI era, helping managers stay attentive, flexible, and open to new approaches.
It’s worth noting what mindfulness isn’t doing here. This isn’t about making people calm or reducing stress (though it might do that too). It’s about cognitive flexibility, about being able to notice what’s actually happening rather than what you expect to happen. That’s useful when your job is changing underneath you. GenAI tools are powerful but also weird—they hallucinate plausible nonsense, they’re brilliant at some tasks and hopeless at others, and they require a kind of conversational skill (prompt engineering) that didn’t exist five years ago.
The researchers are now looking at how these patterns play out across different industries and project types. Li and Associate Professor Laurie Hughes, her colleague at Edith Cowan, have outlined four insights for business leaders. First, people will transform projects, not GenAI on its own. Second, mindfulness helps managers turn AI into a practical tool rather than a threatening novelty. Third, the bridge to real impact is job redesign, not hype. And fourth, complexity is where this approach matters most.
So what does this mean for the millions of project managers navigating this shift? Probably not that everyone needs to start meditating (though some might find it helpful). More that paying attention—to what works, what doesn’t, where the bottlenecks are, where AI could genuinely help—is becoming a core skill. The integration of GenAI holds great potential to transform the project management profession, Li says, bringing both substantial benefits and significant disruption. In an era where emerging technologies are transforming traditional practices, the findings provide timely guidance on developing mindfulness and job crafting strategies to support innovation.
The study appears in the International Journal of Project Management and represents a collaboration between Edith Cowan University’s School of Business and Law and Curtin University. It’s part of a growing body of work exploring not just what AI can do, but how humans can best work alongside it. That’s the harder question, really. The technology will keep improving. Whether we improve our ability to use it well—that’s on us.
Study link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0263786326000037?via%3Dihub
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