High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 615: Control Your Attention, Control Your Life with Maura Thomas, Author, International Speaker and Productivity Expert

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

Maura Nevel Thomas is an award-winning international speaker, trainer, and an author on individual and corporate productivity and work-life balance, and one of the most widely-cited authority on attention management. Maura’s clients include the likes of Google, Old Navy, L’Oréal, and NASA. She is a TEDx speaker, and author of six books on the topics of attention management and personal and organizational productivity. She has columns in Forbes and Harvard Business Review.  Maura earned an MBA from the University of Massachusetts and has studied the field of productivity all over the world for more than two decades. In this episode, Cindra and Maura discuss:  How productivity advice gets it wrong   Her Empowered Productivity System  10 signs that you need to master attention management When multi-tasking works and doesn’t work And, her communication guidelines for leaders  HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE LEARN MORE ABOUT LAURA  FOLLOW SIGN UP FOR THE FREE MENTAL BREAKTHROUGH CALL WITH CINDRA’S TEAM TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MENTALLY STRONG INSTITUTE Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode.  

Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Sindra Kampoff, and thank you so much for joining me here for episode 615, where in today's episode, we're talking about controlling your attention, and this helps you control your life. Today's interview, I interview Mara Neville-Thomas, who is an award-winning international speaker and a trainer.

She's the author of six books on individual and corporate productivity, and she's one of the most widely cited authorities on attention management. Her clients include the likes of Google, Old Navy, L'Oreal, and NASA. She's a TEDx speaker and has columns in Forbes and Harvard Business Review. Mara earned her MBA from the University of Massachusetts and has studied the field of productivity all over the world for more than two decades. In this episode, Mara and I talk about how productivity advice traditionally gets it wrong, her empowered productivity system, 10 signss That You Need to Master Your Attention, and When Multitasking Works and Doesn't Work, and our Communication Guidelines for Leaders.

To see the full show notes and description of this podcast, you can head over to syndracampoff.com slash 615 for episode 615. And without further ado, let's welcome Mara to the podcast. Thank you so much, Mara, for joining us today. I'm so excited to talk to you. You are ranked in the top 10 time management professionals in the world. You have six bestselling books. And today we're going to be talking about two of them because these are the ones that I've read. And I love how your books are so easy to read, so tangible, and really applicable to everyday life and leadership. So today we're going to

talk about your books, Time Management, and Everyone Wants to Work Here, but you have other books. So just welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to talk to you today. I'm happy to be here. And thanks for the invitation, Cinda. Absolutely. Well, let's just go ahead and get started. And I have some questions right at the beginning about your book, Attention Management, and how to create success and gain productivity every day. And I love your quote where you say attention management is a new path to productivity. Why don't you just start and tell us about how attention management is a new path to productivity?

Sure. So ultimately, my job is to help people be more productive. And what I mean by that, really what the dictionary means by that, is achieving significant results. So my job is to help people achieve more of what's important. And we've been framing our ability to achieve what's most important in terms of time management for decades, maybe for a century, right? If I only had more time, if I could manage my time better, I could get more of the important stuff done. But the truth is we've all had days where we say to ourselves, oh my gosh, that was, I was busy all day and somehow I got nothing done. And we've all, where we've said, oh my gosh, that was such a good day. I got so much done. And in both of those circumstances, we had 24 hours,

right? We had the same amount of time. We didn't have one day less time another day. So we have as much time as we need. And when we talk about managing our time, we realize, you know, we know we can't really manage time. What we mean is managing our schedule, right? So we've got the appointments with ourselves to do things. But the problem is the first person you will break an appointment with is yourself. Yeah, absolutely. So we have as much time as we need. We can't really manage time. And the techniques that we use to try aren't super helpful. Our biggest challenge in the 21st century is not that we don't have enough time. Our biggest challenge is that we have too many distractions. You can't solve a

distraction problem with a time solution. The antidote to distraction is attention. And how we manage our time doesn't matter if we don't also manage our attention. And so I think that if we stop using the phrase time management and we start using the phrase attention management, then it raises awareness. And this is what my clients see. It raises awareness in ourselves and in other people that focus and presence is important. And the more we have that awareness and the people around us have that awareness, the more likely we are to change our behaviors. The more likely we are for yourself is to start saying, oh, I should have put my phone on silent. Oh, I should have used do not disturb. Oh,

I should have closed my office door. And the way that we interact with each other in a corporate setting is we start to say, maybe I didn't need to like chat you on Teams and say, hey, do you have a second? Or maybe I didn't need to yell over the cubicle wall. Hey, can I ask you a question, right? Everybody's behavior, the more aware we are of distraction, the more we start to be less distracted and the more we start to be less distracting. Some good mic drop moments there, right? So incredible ideas right from the beginning. And I agree that I can't add time. I only have 24 hours, but I can manage my attention, what I pay attention to, how I'm distracted. And so tell us, can you define what attention management really is? Let's just go there to start.

Yeah. So the way I define attention management in my book is that it's a collection of behaviors. It is focus and concentration, but it's also about presence and it's about managing the collection of behaviors so that you have the opportunity to say to yourself more often, to recognize in yourself more often, you know what, I'm not really in the right headspace to get the best results for this thing that I'm in right now. And so let me shift. Now, we do this sort of unintentionally a lot.

If somebody has ever walked into your office and you're kind of working away and somebody's like, hey, send her, do you have a minute? And you're like, yeah, yeah, what do you need? And they say something. And have you ever had that experience where you were like, what? Yeah. What was that? Say that again. Right. Right. Some part of your brain was like, hello, that thing that they just said you need to pay attention to. But the more that we can do that intentionally, make intentional choices about kind of the headspace that we're in, whether that is to whether the most important result in that moment is to do that important task that you're doing or make that person feel heard and like you are with them, like they're important to you, or whether it's, you know, soaking in a moment, an experience you're having in your life, whether it's living according to your values, right?

To be kind and to be helpful instead of like being in our phone when we're waiting in line at Starbucks, maybe we look up and maybe we say, hello, how's your day going? Thanks so much for the coffee. You know, those significant results could mean doing the important thing on your to-do list, or it could mean, you know, living according to your values and making sure that your life has meaning and impact, or pretty much anything in between that you would consider to be significant. Mara, I think about how this happens in my family a lot where like yesterday I was working on something on my computer and then my son said something and I didn't really hear because I get so focused on the task that it's like how I get things done really quickly, but then I don't hear

sometimes when people say something to me. So this happens to me quite a bit in what we're talking about. So as we think about how traditionally people kind of go to managing time versus managing attention, how do you think, what does kind of the most widely accepted productivity advice, how do people get it wrong? Sure. I think we have all of these, what I call unconscious calculations, right? And the way I describe unconscious calculations is I behave in a way that seems to indicate that I believe a thing, but I haven't actually examined that thing to know if I truly believe it. And even if I do believe it, is it really true? So for example, one of the unconscious calculations, I think that we have sort of adopted as a society is, well, this is just the way the world is, right? This is,

everything is, is moving fast and super demanding and we have to we have to be doing all these things at once we have to be constantly scanning our communication and we have to be you know we have to be everywhere at once and really what that means is people we've sort of accepted we have to be distracted So my challenge for people is to examine, do you really believe that? And if you do really believe that, is it really true? And when we stop and think about, and when we look at the research, sometimes we think like you do, well, I don't really have to be distracted by work when I'm alone with my family. Work is demanding and people expect things, yes, but, and maybe some people do think that I should be available all the time, but I don't

believe that. And so I'm going to change my behavior. And when we can really examine these behaviors, because my feeling is I believe that I can reject that notion that we must be distracted. because no one gets to control my attention, at least in theory. If somebody's going to be controlling my attention, I want it to be me. And the way that I kind of look at life is we can either live a life of reaction and distraction or we can live a life of intention and choice. And that decision is 100% up to us. I love it. So to live your life by intention and choice. And I'm thinking about a lot of people that I know who have a really hard time turning it off, turning work off when they get home and it blurs and they are having their phone in their pocket, constantly reacting to work stuff instead of being really present with their family. What advice would you give them, Laura?

Yeah. So my two things. The first is, are you behaving that way? Because we tell ourselves all these stories, right? Well, I have to, people expect me to, you know, you can't change other people's expectations. Maybe they expect certain things from you and maybe they don't. So again, if your belief is people expect that, then do you really believe that? And is it really true? And if your belief is, but I have to, in order to stay off on my work i have to do you really believe that is it really true because in most cases it's not true and we think we think to ourselves oh but if i just you know um review my emails on sund, then Monday is easier. Is it though? Is it? And what do you give up on Sunday? You're giving up recreation, sleep, time with your family, exercise. What is the cost of

that? And is the cost really worth it? So the first thing is, you know, why are you doing it? Question those expectations. The second thing to recognize is that the more distracted we are, the more distracted we will be. And if we go through our days allowing that constant distraction every minute or so, then we just get in this habit of distraction. And then that habit of distraction gets reinforced every minute or so all day long. And so then it becomes a really strong habit. And so then we find that we just, it's really difficult to, we can't, sadly, habits don't work in such a way that you can be like, well, I've been totally distracted every minute all day long, but now I'm going to go home

and be totally present with my family, right? Exactly. Very difficult. Doesn't work that way. And so we have to recognize our habit of distraction and take intentional steps to reset that habit. One of the things, Mara, that I really liked from your book, Attention Management, is you talked about your empowered productivity system. And I think that includes four quadrants.

Do I got that right? So I have a model for, I call it the attention management model of productivity. And it does have four quadrants. And those are sort of an oversimplified version of like the brain states in general that we can be in and tell us about those and like how because i thought that was really helpful to have this visual diagram of my attention and where it tends to go and it made me just take a step back and think about like, how can I be more focused and mindful? Yeah. So the model is a graph, right, with control over your attention on one axis and the attention that you get as a result on the other axis. And so the four quadrants are when we are actively

managing, working hard to manage our attention and we are getting a lot of attention, a lot of attention as a result. So I call that focused and mindful, right? I'm going to do only this thing. And that's a great place to be. Another quadrant is when we are not at all focused or mindful and we have very little attention as a result, right? And that's sadly the place that most of us go through our day. I call it reactive and distracted. So we're really not, we're just sort of reacting all day to all the things that are constantly coming at us. And sometimes that quadrant is necessary. The problem comes and each quadrant itself isn't good or bad.

It's just, is the quadrant you're in giving you the best results in the moment? And so if we are in that quadrant all day, we're probably not getting great results all the time. Another quadrant is I am not at all focused. And I'm not actively being focusing on anything at all. And I am actually benefiting from that. And that's the quadrant of daydreaming and mind wandering. And too much of that is a bad thing. But when we allow our mind to wander, that's where insights come from. That's where solutions to problems come from. If you've ever gone to sleep and woken up and been like, oh, I remember where I left my sunglasses or like we can't command ourself to have insights or ideas. They just sort of happen when we are just

allowing our mind to wander. And I call those the in-between moments. And we lost those in-between moments, right? Those in-between moments used to happen when we were like waiting in line or riding an elevator or walking across the parking lot. But now we don't have any of those anymore because in every moment and any pause of activity, all of us just reach for our phone. And so we've lost those moments. So that's daydreaming, mind wandering. And then the last quadrant is getting a lot of being fully present and fully immersed in something without even trying. And this, sadly, we can't put ourselves in this state. This is the quadrant of flow, right? And sadly, we can't say to ourselves, I'm now going in flow. Here I go, right? It's not like a light switch. Right. The only thing we can do is be focused and mindful

in that quadrant. And then we might get lucky enough that our brain will tip us into flow. And the hallmark of flow is that it's effortless. We are in it. We are fully immersed without even trying. We're just there. And when we're in flow, that's usually where great stuff happens, right? Where our highest and best self comes out when we are really applying ourselves and it feels productive and it feels joyful and it feels satisfying. But sadly, we don't get there very often because we're so distracted all the time and

distraction completely prevents flow. Yes, those are the four quadrants and so just thinking about where do i what would be ideal for me to spend my day to get the best results and what's the reality that's the exercise i have in the book um to think about so what's the reality and then where like if i could design my day what would it be yeah yeah yeah Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's life is different. Everybody's job is different. And really your day might be different, right? On one day you might need more time in a different quadrant. But if you look at sort of in general, like take a typical week on average and then sort of guesstimate like what would be ideal,

usually for most people, the ideal that they identify and the reality is very different. And so any effort you can make to get closer to the ideal, the better results you'll get. Well, when I think about my ideal, I'd like to spend most of it in focused and mindful. I think for me, I daydream and mind wander when I'm running, which I try to do every day. And, you know, sometimes I'm distracted just because I it's, you know, I'm human. And we have a phone in our pockets, which makes it we get really distracted with different alerts and all the things. What would you tell somebody who's listening that says, gosh, I really want to spend more time in the focused and mindful and the flow? I appreciate what you said about, hey, all of these have benefits, but if I want to spend more time there, what would you tell us to do? Yeah, I mean, the first step

is that you have to create those zones of with no distraction. So you have to make intentional choices. If you want to do this thing in or if you want to be this way, right, for some experience, then you have to control your distractions. So if you decide, you know, for the next 30 minutes, I'm going to work on this article and I'm going to just, I just want to knock it out. Then you need to close your email, close your chat, put your phone on silent and out of your sight, go full screen with your, you know, word processing program

or whatever you're using and just decide for that period of time, I'm just going to do this because otherwise it's just too easy to go off on tangents and also to be present. So I kind of make rules for myself because sometimes you probably experience this. You're writing an article and then you're like, oh, true maybe I need to cite a source for that so then you jump on the internet and you're looking for the source and then 30 minutes later you're watching cap videos somehow right absolutely right and so now I've gotten really good to just like mark the spot you know cite the source or find the study or whatever and

and just keep going with my thoughts yeah so the job of the internet is to keep you on the internet so isn't that so true i i noticed that like one of my browsers has like um uh i don't know if it's like microsoft or i don't but it's a news channel. And then whenever I open my computer up, you know, like a browser up to search something, then I get stuck in there for like three minutes. Like, Ooh, what happened to Taylor Swift? And it's like, I had to change it. So it was just simple.

So I didn't get stuck in it because it was really easy to be like, yeah, what's happening with Biden or whatever it might be right way to recognize that because yeah let's don't it it took a little bit until i realized yeah i'm wasting some time here i think i really don't matter to me uh maro i really but i also really liked about your book attention management is you gave us 10 signs that we need to really be paying attention to, you know, that we need to master attention management. Do you remember what some of those are as people who maybe recognize themselves in this list and say, OK, I need to pick up Mara's book. I need to really be mindful of my distractions. What what are some of the signs that we really need this in our lives?

I was afraid you were going to me that syndrome um so um one of them is being available 24 7 right if you feel like you are always you are never disconnected and you're telling yourselves these stories about why you are, why you have to be, right? That's certainly one of them. And what goes along with that is never taking any sort of extended disconnection time, like a vacation, which means not working, right? I think we have the definition of vacation, which is no work. And again, we tell ourselves these stories and, you know, in some cases it's very hard to believe that it might not be true. Part of the reason that so many people work when they're on vacation is because it feels like it's not really time off. It's just work shifted, right? I have to work so hard to get ready before I leave. And I have to work. There's such an avalanche

waiting for me when I get back that it's just not worth it to go or I'll go, but I have to spend like one hour every day just trying to stay on top of that. And so looking at that and figuring out kind of how you're going to deal with that is, again, we tell ourselves these stories that this is how it has to be. Well, what if you really shined a light on that and said, I really want to be disconnected. How can I make this happen? And so that would look like, you know, leaving somebody to take over in your place and maybe putting, maybe having your out of office message say something like, um, there's, there's a, there's a range of how how extreme you could be right so you might say i am out of the office and i'm not checking my messages and please contact so and so in my

absence however if this message is really for me please resend it on april 23rd when I'll be back because your original message has been deleted. That's one thing you could do. Or if that feels too extreme, you might just say something like, because your original message might get lost in the shuffle or something. And then you could set a rule in your email that says, if every message that comes in during these two periods, you know, between these dates, they all go into this folder. And I'm not going to look at that folder unless I really have to, unless somebody is like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize and I say all this information.

Can you please review? Yeah, fine. Then go look at it. And you can still do that even if it's deleted, as long as you don't have your deleted items set to like go away forever but those um those are a couple of things to look at um yeah see if uh or another thing is to check with other people around you to see people that you care about to see how they feel about your relationship with your device your relationship with your device. Your relationship with your device. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And if they're saying things like, you know, you're always on your computer or you never look up, things like that. And then here's like. Might be your watch, not just your. Yeah. Or it could be your computer or your iPad. There's so many different options. Hi, this is Cyndra Campoff and thanks for listening to the High Performance Mindset.

Did you know that the ideas we share in the show are things we actually specialize in implementing? If you want to become mentally stronger, lead your team more effectively and get to your goals quicker, visit freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free mental breakthrough call with one of our certified coaches. Again, that's freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free call. Talk to you soon.

Mara, when I emailed you recently, I thought it was really cool the response I got back. And it was something like, I take downtime very seriously and I'm off until blank date, right? And I was like, whoa, Mara is practicing what she's preaching. And then it was also really helpful for me to say, okay, I don't expect her to get back to me ASAP because I know she's on vacation and she's taking down time. And I think that's the power of the auto, auto, you know, like the office reply is, you know, people don't expect you to, because we do have these unrealistic expectations that we expect someone's going to get back to us in like, you know, 15 minutes or something crazy. Yeah. And even for those solopreneurs, like sometimes I will say like,

you can contact so-and-so, you know, my assistant in my absence or whatever. But the truth is, I mean, there's no such thing as a productivity emergency. And so I tend to not even put that. My response is just, I'm out and you'll hear from me when I get back. Because there's really, in my back because there's really in my world

there's really no such thing of something it's something that just can't wait I mean in our world right um it might be like a media request well if it comes in when I'm out on vacation I'm gonna miss it and it's fine you know yeah it's at the end of the world yeah there really isn't anything else that can't wait until i get back um there were several other of year 10 that i thought were really eye-opening and and i thought this one was really funny like thinking i can sleep when i'm dead which i think there's a lot of people who think that or another one was busyness is a badge of honor. That you work in an open office environment, which is interesting because I could imagine there's lots of distractions there.

You often feel exhausted or overwhelmed. Multitasking is a coping strategy. Yeah. Most people tell me I would never get anything done if it weren't for multitasking. And the truth is that you would get a lot more done faster and better if you didn't multitask. And I get it. It doesn't seem that know, because it's, yeah, maybe because our attention can only be in one thing. So maybe we're trying to work on two things at once, but it's, you know, it just feels not very productive. Yeah. I mean, so the truth is there's three types of multitasking and we can do two of them. We can't do the third one. So the first type of multitasking is physically doing two things at once, right? You can walk and chew gum without too much of a problem most of the time, right? As long as the

two things that your body is doing are not too difficult, then you can do it without too much of an issue. The second type of multitasking is one physical thing and one cognitive thing. So if you, for example, pace when you're on the phone, right, that's actually a great way to multitask because your brain actually works better when your body is up and moving a little bit. So that's a great way to multitask and most people can do it well. It's the third type that gets us into trouble and the third type really isn't multitasking. So multitasking implies two things at once, but the third type is two cognitive activities

at the same time, seemingly at the same time, which really isn't possible. If you've got that spreadsheet open and you're working on it and somebody walks into your office and says, hey, do you have a minute? And you decide to talk to them, you're not still working on the spreadsheet, right? It's open and it's still on your computer, but you're not really working on it. You've given your attention to that other person. And then when you're done with that other person and you come back to the spreadsheet, your thoughts yourself is, all right, where was I? What was I doing? And there's a cost to that switch. And the more we switch, the greater the

cost, the older we get, the greater the cost. And so that task switching or cognitive switching is really what stifles our ability to be our best selves. Well said. And I appreciate you describing that there's three types. And I'm thinking about times where I can do the physical, two physical things at once, or a mental and a physical, but I can't do two cognitive things at the same time. But people think that they can. Yeah, absolutely. It feels like we can. And the truth is we can switch that. We can only have one conscious thought at a time, but we can switch what that thought is so fast in some cases that it feels like we're doing many things at once, but really it's a linear process.

It's only one at a time. So love these really practical tools that we can use. I know everyone who's listening got at least one thing, hopefully multiple things of our conversation about attention management. Your new book is called Everyone Wants to Work Here. Tell us a little bit about why you wrote that book and what made you decide to title it that because I think it's a really powerful title.

Thanks, yeah. It's called Everyone Wants to Work Here, Attract the Best Talent, Energize Your Team, and Be the Leader in Your Market. And the reason that I wrote it is because after working in this industry for many, many, many, many years, what I have learned from working with teams, large teams and small teams and big companies and small companies, what I've learned is that often the biggest thing preventing the team from having those days where they say, oh, my gosh, that was such a good day. I got so much done. The biggest thing preventing that is the behavior of the leaders and the culture of the organization. And so when I say culture, what I really mean is how does everybody act?

How does everybody in the company behave? How do we interact with each other? How do each of us behave? That's the culture. So every single person in the company has an impact on the culture, but nobody has more of an impact on the culture than the leaders. And what I find is that leaders unintentionally, often, often unintentionally, create a culture, what I call a culture of urgency. So everything is fast. Everything is super demanding.

We have to be very responsive. We have to offer good customer service and be really responsive, but leaders never really define what exactly that means. And so in the absence of any definition of responsive, what I hear is fast. If you're telling me I need to be very responsive, that tells me I need to be fast with my responses. And if fast is the baseline of what you want, I want to be really good, not just baseline. I want to be really good. And so fast, not just fast, but faster, fastest, how fast can I be? And the answer to that is immediate. And so I am trying to respond to everything immediately, which means I am never focusing on anything for any period of time, because we get some sort of communication pretty much every minute of every

day. And if we have to look at that and say, do I need to respond to that now? Then we can never focus on anything else. But that culture does not change unless the leaders change it. Now, an individual contributor can sort of buck that trend, but they're going to get a lot of slack all the time from, you know, why did, didn't you get my message? Didn't you, did you get that email I sent you five minutes ago? Why is your door closed? What is going on? You're so, right. And so standing firm in the face of that, right? Because the answer to that is, yes, I was trying to get some work done. That's why it's been 30 minutes and I haven't responded to you yet, right? I'm

never suggesting that people go offline for, you know, days at a time. I'm saying 20 or 30 minutes every hour or 60, 75, 90 minutes, couple, two, three times a day, whatever, whatever your job requires. But in order to get that other work done in a thoughtful way, you have to separate from your communication sometimes. And leaders make all kinds of unintentional mistakes that I outline in the book. Another thing is saying that you value work-life balance, but then emailing your team at 11 o'clock at night and saying to them, oh, I don't expect you to, you know, don't worry about this. Or just assuming that they know that this can wait until you get in in the morning. But there's so much research about how detrimental,

I've written an article both for Forbes and for Harvard Business Review about how detrimental after-hours emails are, not only to the employees, but to the employee's whole family. And so it's really hard. Yes, the employee can say, I'm not checking my messages at night. I'm going to be present with my family. But it's really hard to do that if you know that your boss is emailing you all night long. Absolutely. No one can give you work-life balance. You have to take it. It is 100% your responsibility. But the message to the boss is you have to help. If you're really making it hard for them to have a good work-life balance, that's a problem.

So, I mean, there's, you know, seven chapters in the book. Each of them tackle several of the problems. But that's why I wrote it is because I can't go in and train the team if the leaders aren't on board, because if the culture is not conducive to really productive behaviors, then nobody in the company is going to be able to be productive. Well, I appreciate what you just said, that we have to take ownership of our work-life balance. And whenever I'm working on the weekends or in the evenings, I try to, you know, you can schedule your emails so it goes out at 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. or something like that. I try to do that because I think that it's easier, right? Especially if it's something that takes a

lot of thinking where I think about times where I've been emailed on the weekends and maybe it was a meeting request or, you know, something that I got really stuck on for a whole weekend you know and trying not to because I have some mindset you know tools and stuff but it's easy when it's a it's a something you really care about yes and so you know a lot of people tell me oh well I I see it and then I just ignore it but like you, now you're thinking- Really? Yeah. And now your weekend is consumed by that message,

whatever it was, and it really didn't need to be. It really could have waited. Yeah, and I'm thinking about some of the stuff that you've talked about related to burnout in your book. Everyone wants to work here. And even some of the, you know, on 127, you give some communication guidelines that I thought were really helpful. You know, the types of communication, should I do it during work hours or outside of work hours? And when should I do that? So for example, the email during work hours, you said routine requests, information sharing.

Outside of work hours would be hold or use and delay send. And I was also thinking about text messages. And you say, you know, only time sensitive or urgent, both for during work and outside of work. And I think about how much do we just use text message? Because we know the person is probably going to respond quicker to that than email. Why is this, you know, these communication guidelines really important? And is there anything else you want to say about them? Yeah, I mean, there's so much to say about it.

Part of the reason that people are monitoring their communication all the time is because that real emergency or that real time sensitive thing really could come any way. It could come by phone, it could come by text, it could come by email, it could come by chat. And if every message I receive in any format might be an emergency, then I have to treat every message that I receive in any format as if it is an emergency until I know that it isn't and so we need to create some we we need to create essentially like a bat signal that says if this is an emergency I will do x and know, for example, and that's why I suggested, I mean, companies have to decide for themselves, but in my sort of example communication guidelines, you might say you can feel comfortable at night and on the weekend signing out of email,

signing out of chat. If there's really an emergency, I will text you or I will call you, right? And if it's not, then you don't have to worry about it. And you can feel comfortable with that. But we also need to do that within our workday. And also what happens is without any sort of communication guidelines, everybody has different preference, right? Everybody in the company, some people prefer chat, some prefer text, some prefer email prefer email some prefer meetings and if I work with 20 people I can't remember everyone's preference so now I'm just gonna send all the communication in every format I'll leave you a voicemail I'll send you an email chat you I'll send you a text and now my bases are covered but that

means but what that means is that everyone has now four messages about one thing instead of one message about one thing. And so the volume of communication becomes way too high, but the efficiency of communication becomes way too low. And it just leads to chaos. And it just overwhelms and speeds everything up. And it just contributes to yeah overwhelm and speeds everything up and it it just contributes to that culture of urgency well one of the things you talk about and everyone wants to work here is that um leaders should be available less often and i was like oh what does she mean by that and i and as i was reading it you were talking talking about, well, if I'm available 24-7, people also don't learn how to solve their own problems and they're always relying on me.

What do you recommend there for the guidelines on availability? Because some of the leaders I work with that I coach will say, well, I want to have an open door policy. But then people are kind of stepping in in the middle of their focused work time and then they're working on the weekends and they're feeling overwhelmed and they can't sleep, right? So what do you think are some good guidelines for people there? Sure. Yeah. I wrote an article for Forbes in my Forbes column, something about 10 terms that you need to explicitly define for your team. And open door policy is one of them because we talk a lot about we want to have an open

door policy. Well, what do you think people think you mean when you say that? And when I ask my, you know, leadership groups, what do you think your employees mean when you say that? Everybody says, interrupt me any time. That's what I think they think that I mean and then my question is is that what you meant because it usually isn't it means like I'll talk to anyone I'll I'll talk to the janitor I'll talk to anyone I don't care if I'm the CEO I don't I

don't care and I want to help you but it doesn't mean anyone can interrupt me anytime for any reason. At least I think that's not what most people intend for it to mean when they say it. And so it's fine to say it, but you have to tell people exactly what that means. this kind of formula for how leaders can sort of change the dynamic of everybody coming to them with every little speed bump in their day because you hire people to do their job. And if they have to run everything by you, then what's the point of having someone else in that role? You might as well just do it. So the first step in that formula is to use a phrase something like i trust your judgment because if people always come to you and you always help them then you teach them to always come to you with everything right and so the kind of unconscious calculation in their brain is

i'm sitting at my desk i maybe could figure this out on my own, but if I just ask Sindra, she'll tell me what to do. And that's fast and easy. So I'll just do that. But if you start to use the phrase, I trust your judgment, then people are going to think, if I ask Sindra about this, she's just going to tell me, I trust your judgment. So I guess I should figure this out on my own. Yes. And it starts to change the relationship and it helps people learn and grow and you get new ideas and, you know, it just brings all kinds of good things into the organization. Is there anything from Anyone Wants to Work Here that we haven't talked about that you really want to share with the audience, you know, in terms of helping them create a culture of people thriving at work? Yeah, there's one chapter where I talk about how much influence

leaders have that they don't recognize. And there's so many examples in the book. And I just need, I really, really want leaders to understand that you influence people. And so when you influence people, you influence families. And when you influence families, you influence communities. When you influence communities, you influence the whole world. And so thinking about really recognizing how much influence you have and wield that influence wisely. I talk about being the leader your team wants to follow. And I know, I mean, the leaders that I work with genuinely are good people who want good things for their employees, and they just don't realize the effects that they might be having on people by accident. And so when leaders start to recognize how much influence

they have and what behaviors they have that are exerting this influence and how it might be negatively impacting people and families, then they start to change their behaviors. And so then that has exponential impact because you have a positive influence on all of these things instead of maybe a by accident negative influence. Very helpful. And I think it's helpful to think about the ripple effects. You know, when I'm asking somebody, and I haven't even asked them, but I expect them to answer at six o'clock at night,

how am I impacting their families? How am I impacting the community? And leaders want to have a positive impact. So Mara, how can we get information about your books? Where can we buy them? Tell us where we can get more information about your speaking or the training that you do in corporate and other spaces. So just tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, thanks. The books are available pretty much anywhere books are sold in every format, physical, digital, and audio. And the best way to get all the information is at marathomas.com. There's a speaking page, there's a training page, there's also a free

resources page. Almost all of the books, there's also a free resources page. Almost all of the books have a discussion guide that goes with them and those are free to download. So if you wanted to have like a little book club on your team or with your company, that's a really kind of inexpensive way to expose people to the idea. So all sorts of resources available there. Excellent. And I'd recommend everyone purchasing the books. Easy

to read, really practical, and just, you know, a great read. So really nice job on them. You know, Mara, one of the things I most appreciated when we were talking about your four quadrants of reactive, distracted flow, daydreaming, and focused and mindful to help people think about their attention and where it's to help people think about their attention and where it's at. We talked about these signs that you need to master your attention, three ways that we can multitask. And at the end, you gave us some really great strategies that leaders can use in terms of

building a culture that really allows people to thrive. Do you have any final advice for people who are listening? I want everybody to be able to make the most of their moments. There's an expression, it's not the moments in your life that matter, it's the life in your moments. I actually think it's both. It's the moment in your life, recognizing that moment that you're in and then choosing to make the most of that moment. And you can only do that when you are fully present. And when we are not fully present, we miss. We miss the moments in our life and we miss the life in our moments. And I don't want that for people, for your listeners, for anybody,

because our moments get richer and more meaningful and we just can create these amazing memories and have these positive impact on the world when we are fully present and being the best version of ourselves. Well, that's beautiful. What a perfect way to end. Thank you so much, Mara Thomas, for joining us on the High Performance Mindset today. Thanks for having me, Cinder. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Cinder for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindhra.

That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com. See you next week.