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Category: Health and Wellness

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Growth Health and Wellness Human Resources Management Women In Business

Without Focus Your Team Will Fail (So Will You)

I can tell a lot about the leadership and culture of an organization just by mingling with the employees. What I often witness is an unintended disconnect between what leadership thinks employees are focusing on, versus what they are. As a result, employees are overwhelmed. They feel overworked and under appreciated as they run frantically on a daily hamster wheel chasing orders they’ve received by leadership.

Leaders, on the other hand, rarely see themselves as the problem. Instead, they get frustrated with employees who don’t make progress, aren’t productive or producing results. Leaders lose hope when their teams frequently ask for deadline extensions or say the work simply cannot be done.

Does this scenario sound familiar to you?

What many leaders are guilty of is initially setting priorities, and then derailing team focus by tossing out non-priority related requests throughout each day. It’s not that any leader wants to see their team fail. They just don’t recognize the frequency of their non-priority requests and the amount of time it can steal attention away from employees’ top goals.

If you want to succeed, you must set your team up for success. The only way to do that is to focus your attention on what matters most, then using this as the filter for all decisions and delegation requests thereon.

Here are 5 ways you can help your team maintain focus, boost productivity, increase engagement and boost profits.

1. Establish a non-negotiable set of goals. Whether it’s each day, week, month or quarter, meet with your team and cover the non-negotiable goals that must be reached for success to occur. Create priorities and tasks necessary to accomplish those goals.

2. Communicate frequently. Remind your employees frequently of the goals you agreed up as a team. Challenge each and everyone of them to use those goals as personal filters for their own work and focus.

3. Empower employees to Say ‘No.’ Employees want to please their boss. They want to pursue solutions to areas of stress and ease the burden of leadership. Their natural need to please can easily derail them from priorities and can make them a target for others to steal focus. Empower and implore your team to say ‘no’ to any requests of their time that don’t directly align with the goals and priorities set. That means even empowering them to say ‘no’ to YOU!

4. Be mindful of your requests. Ever sent an employee an email that started out by saying “Wouldn’t it be great if….” Stop it, now. This is where employees get derailed in their focus and lose time and attention on what matters most. Remember their need to please? Well, if you are tossing out great ideas or concepts without filtering them through your agreed upon priorities, your employees will consider this to be a delegation, not a simple conversation. They will stop what they are working on to pursue an answer for you. Before suggesting or asking anything of your team members, ask yourself if the requests falls square in line with the priorities.

5. Stop messaging them after work. Nothing will burn employees out faster than a non-stop barrage of emails, texts and calls after work hours. Give them the break they deserve. Let them focus on friends, family, home life, fitness, and whatever else matters to them personally. Discourage them from checking work-related emails after hours and encourage their personal priorities. Permit them to rest. In turn, you’ll have a more engaged, well-centered team the next business day.

Company culture and tone starts with you. If you want a well-balanced team who is engaged, positive and productive, start by concentrating your attention on what matters most. They, in turn, will do the same. Together, you can achieve deadlines, establish boundaries and create a happier, more productive and profitable organization.

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Accounting Best Practices Growth Health and Wellness Human Resources Management Taxes

Travel and Entertainment Business Expense Deduction Summary

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made some major modifications to the travel, entertainment, taxable fringe benefits and moving expense deductibility for taxpayers. Above is a summary that shows the difference in the current deductibility (or inclusion in income for employees) for certain of these deductions.

At GROCO, we assist high net worth clients and their families with wealth creation, family transfers, taxes and charitable giving. Please give me a call at 510-797-8661 if you need assistance or have questions on these new rules or would like to know how to make, keep and/or transfer your wealth.

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Accounting Best Practices Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Human Resources Industries Investing Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

What’s Your Company’s Moral Compass?

Imagine that you’re in the running for a coveted spot in a well-regarded organization for a high-level position. It’s taken you years to get to this place and you really want this job. You wait and wait through the agonizingly long interview process and in the end, you don’t make the grade.

These are the kinds of situations that “try men’s (and women’s) souls.” How you go through the stages of making the decision to apply, to how you tolerate the waiting, to how you manage the disappointment of being overlooked are great indicators of how you handle stress (and life) in general.

This is just one example of how reaching beyond your comfort zone initiates a series of mental challenges. In his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optima; Experience, Michaly Csikszentmihalyi (Harper Collins, New York, NY, 1990)l, spent years researching the question of what makes one happy. Ultimately, according to his findings, the answer to this very illusive inquiry was: “The control of one’s consciousness determines the quality of one’s life.”

In other words, how we internalize and make peace with the myriad of disappointments and loses as well as deal with our successes and celebrations determine our level of satisfaction we experience in our lifespan.

Given that introspection and transformation are such critical factors in every person’s – and ultimately in every company’s well-being, I’m always amazed at how little attention is paid to the recognition of how important this kind of mental training is.

And I specifically use the word “training,” because the mindset needed to weather the ups and downs of life are not natural. Our brains are wired for danger and spew forth an endless sea of worst-case scenarios. These peak performance skills need to be taught We learn them, either through the school of “hard knocks” – which can take a lifetime – or through parents, teachers, coaches and mentors.

What then, is the role of the company?  Business is business, and the bottom line is the barometer of success or failure.

Yet, the world is changing. The balance of power is shifting, and employees are demanding a more human approach to their work experience – which is in greater synergy to the more spiritual yearnings of mankind. They are asking their companies to honor higher moral values, such as a sense of purpose, respect for family life, racial and gender equality, awareness of individual differences and authenticity, to name a few. In other words, they are asking their organization to be “conscious.”

To be “conscious” means to be transparent, to allow oneself to be vulnerable, to accept responsibility for one’s own behavior and to be on the path of continuous personal and transformational growth. Where is your company on this moral compass?

Here are three ways you can begin to tackle this worthy challenge:

1. Make Your Own Personal Growth a Priority

Wherever you are in the hierarchy of leadership, ask yourself, “Where am I on my own path of personal growth?” Have I invested my efforts to be the best person I can be? Do I have a trusted advisor that helps me see my own blind spots? Every highly successful person I know has someone in their corner who helps them navigate those precarious situations that keep them up at night.

2. Listen to your employees.

Goal setting is a common measure of performance in companies. But when people don’t reach their goals, do you really know why they don’t? There are ways of increasing the level of meaningful communication between managers and employees that go way beyond the traditional semi-annual or annual reviews. Beaconforce, a startup here in San Francisco is one of those innovative companies that have a great solution to this problem.

3. Train Your Employees for the Olympics

As I mentioned above, a resilient mindset is critical for sustainable growth. It may sound like Utopia, but imagine you had an entire organization of individuals who had the mental fortitude to handle the daily pressures of work and life outside of work. Did you know that $1 billion is lost in productivity in the US alone due to stress-related absences? These stress management and peak performance skills, as I said, can be learned. Be that company who understands, appreciates, and puts into action, the concept that all change in your organization and the world, begins with each and every individual having a healthy and resilient mental mindset.

If you’d like to dive deeper to learn more about your own level of Peak Performance skills, go to http://masteryunderpressure.net or join our Facebook community at Mastery Under Pressure Community.

Or contact me directly for a 30-minute complimentary consult at tina@tinagreenbaum.com

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Human Resources Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

Are We Being Negative?

Negativity. It is emotionally draining. We are bombarded with negative messages all day long. I was on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook over the weekend and I had to log out after only a few minutes on each platform.

There were so many quotes that start with “don’t”. So many opinions about things that quite frankly, are immaterial, or opinions about things that really did not happen.

We have become so accustomed to just putting it out there, everywhere. Sometimes we need to ask ourselves, “are we being negative?”

  • Instead of being sarcastic be kind.
  • Instead of being rude be respectful.
  • Instead of lying be honest or silent.
  • Instead of self-righteous be understanding.
  • Instead of judgmental be forgiving.
  • Instead of fearful be hopeful.

Emotions are contagious. How we think and feel affects those around us. Be positive. The power of positive thinking is amazing!

Think of best-case scenarios and work towards those goals.  Greet people with a smile and say “hello!” Let someone else have that parking spot. Take a deep breath and practice patience. Share a laugh. Say, “sorry”. Ask for help. Do your best.

Have a wonderful day!

Michelle Nasser, Executive Coach, Motivational Speaker, Author

Teaching you how to make the best decisions for your organization.

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The Millennial Attention Gap

Maybe my favorite generation is the millennials. I love their insights and ability to change quickly … and they can also learn from generations before them. So, I was excited when I recently watched the movie, The Intern, about a Baby Boomer going to work for a young, hip start-up company. This company was very successful, full of bright ideas and innovative ways to succeed. Initially, they looked as though they thrived in chaos, when in fact, they were suffering from the very methods that made them successful.

While the movie was a light-hearted comedy about an older generation fitting into a Millennial mindset, I couldn’t help but notice the number of mistakes the young professionals made because of information overload, a barrage of interruptions, and an obsessive need to multitask leading to a frantically fast paced life. They worked together for hours on end yet knew little about each other. They celebrated professional success while suffering personal losses in relationships at home.

The movie was fiction. The situation was reality.

Millennials weren’t the age of technological discoveries. They were born into the technological age we created. They never knew life before the internet, texting, streaming and social media. Before most of them could walk, they could operate an iPhone. Many of them watched their first programs streaming from their parents’ devices while sitting in a restaurant for dinner. As the Millennials grew up, they formed new languages ripe with acronyms as they felt there was no time, or need, to write in full, complete sentences.  Now that this generation has aged and entered the workplace, they struggle to turn their attention from devices and into real relationships that communicate openly, thoroughly and effectively.

At one point in the movie, a younger employee approached the Baby Boomer to ask for relationship advice. He admitted to having messed up with his girlfriend, and he failed to see how his attempts to mend the relationship were unsuccessful. He said he sent a “ton of text messages” – to which she never responded – and a “super long email” laced with acronyms and emojis. At which point the Baby Boomer simply suggested that he talk to her face-to-face. Guess what? The advice worked.

Now let’s hop over to real life.

How often do you, or Millennials in your life, attempt to communicate with others in this fashion? With phones buzzing, emails flying, and alerts binging, it’s no wonder we miss the connection. What if we encouraged Millennials to pay attention to relationships, not technology, and to address others in a real-time conversation, saving time and confusion from back and forth digital dialogue. Imagine the time we could save if we would focus on our relationships and began paying attention to what matters most.

Another hysterical scene in the movie came when the young CEO inadvertently sent her mom an email not intended for her to read. Watching these characters go to great lengths to undo a digital mistake made was a riot! I couldn’t help but consider the number of times we have all been guilty of hitting ‘send’ on a message not intended for the receiver, and the following countless hours/days/weeks/months/years we spent trying to recover from our lack of attention to detail. The Millennial boss was moving at such a fast rate of speed, dealing with one distraction after another, she almost risked a vital relationship in her life as a result. Ever been guilty of doing the same?

We have an opportunity to lead by example for Millennials and other future generations. We can show them how to slow down and pay attention to details. We can demonstrate how to step away from gadgets and build relational bridges with peers, employees, spouses and friends. Our time spent before the digital age could enlighten them on advantages that came with it.

Can you become like the Baby Boomer in the movie? Can you mentor young professionals and encourage them to invest in sincere relationships – getting to know each other on a deeper level? Can you lead by example by focusing on one task at a time, saying ‘no’ to distractions that lead to mistakes? Will you demonstrate what it means to stop living a ‘crazy busy’ life and start paying attention to what matters most?

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Human Resources Management Skills Women In Business

The 40-Day Leadership Challenge

Aren’t there times when you wish you could yell “do over!” and start with a clean slate, like you did as a kid? The good news is, even though it might not be enough to simply declare the “do over,” it is possible to start again on a clean page. How? Take my 40-Day Leadership Challenge.

For Christians, the forty days before Easter are known as Lent, reflecting the forty days that Jesus spent fasting and praying in the desert before his crucifixion and resurrection. During this time, many people make forty-day sacrifices like giving up sweets, eating in between meals, or video games; or making some extra effort like reading the Bible daily, or volunteering at a soup kitchen. The idea is that it should be a time of purification, after which you emerge as a better person and closer to God. But it strikes me that, at a deeper level, there is a universally valuable leadership challenge and lesson inherent in this kind of experience.

Everyone has some relationship, whether professional or personal, that could be improved. Maybe there’s someone who perpetually rubs you the wrong way. Or on a grander scale, maybe you need to project a more compelling leadership image you project for people to see you as a leader to admire. Fundamentally, relationships are made and broken by the communication patterns they promote, and it’s up to you to take the first step towards making these patterns healthier, more respectful and more productive, based on how you choose to communicate.

All you have to do is take that first step today, and then another one each day for the next 39 days. That’s your personal 40-Day Leadership Challenge. Pick something that is difficult enough so that you can’t do it mindlessly; it will require a conscious effort for it to be successful. The goal is that after 40 days, you will replace old, bad habits with positive new ones, which will not only make you a better person, but will improve the lives of others around you.

So where should you start? You might choose to “fast” from gossip or snarky comments, both in conversation and email. Hold your tongue instead of criticizing someone in public even when others do, or let the other person get the last word even when you want to add more.

Perhaps you have a tendency to be blunt, dramatic or insensitive in some contexts. If that’s the case, try committing to a 40-day diplomacy challenge. You could also abstain from exaggeration, swearing, or drama for 40 days, or opt to walk away from a conversation when you feel yourself starting to get heated – then be sure to follow up later when you feel more focused and composed.

On the flip side, maybe you try to avoid conflict at all costs. For you, the challenge could be committing to address problems rather than letting them fester and hoping they go away on their own.

If nothing else, try this: Simply make an effort to explicitly thank people for their efforts, big or small. You’ll be amazed at what a big impression such a small gesture can make. I promise you it won’t go unnoticed.

Remember: it doesn’t have to be 40 days of consecutive perfection; it’s about 40 days of conscious effort to be a better person, and a better leader. Even if you fall off the proverbial bandwagon occasionally, it’s okay! Try putting a dollar in a jar every time you realize you’ve broken your commitment, and after your 40 days, donate the money in the jar to charity. No matter how often you put money in the “oops” jar, you still get to call a “do over” the next day!

And the best part? It doesn’t matter which 40 days you choose, whether at the start of the new year, during your summer vacation or any other time. By the end of your 40 Day Leadership Challenge, others will feel the difference through smoother and more collaborative exchanges, and your new patterns should start to feel natural and replace the old ones. That’s the best way to build the foundation of a new kind of leadership that makes others want to follow suit.

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Want to discuss your potential 40-Day Leadership Challenge? Email me at laura@vocalimpactproductions.com or click to set up a 20-minute focus call with me personally.

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Accounting Best Practices Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Human Resources Industries Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

Tips for Performing Under Pressure: The Resilient Mind

Over the past 35 years, I have worked with many high-achieving professionals – athletes, actors, dancers, speakers, and business leaders in a variety of fields. One of the common denominators that is true across the board, is as soon as we raise the stakes of the game and more is demanded of us, new skills and new perspectives are required.

It’s interesting to note that emotions are processed in the brain as predictions based on our past history. In other words, if we had a bad experience at an earlier time in our lives, our brain remembers that experience and expects the same result in the future. This is why telling ourselves to “just get over it,” doesn’t always work.

At the time of this writing, the Winter Olympics are just ending. What can we learn from these athletes about performing under pressure? A number of them have come back from heartbreaking defeats and devastating injuries. How do they work with their minds to overrule the brain’s natural tendency to avoid pain and danger?

There are many factors that go into that answer, but again, to play at a very high level, new skills and perspectives are required. We can summarize the needed qualities in one word: “Resiliency.” Some people are more naturally resilient than others. But resiliency can be learned and nurtured from a very early age.

Let’s look at three essential qualities of a resilient mind:

1. Attitude – Resilient people look back at difficult experiences as challenges to invent a new future. They see solutions, strength and inspiration. So, one’s attitude can mitigate the brain’s natural tendency to see the world as an unfriendly place. By changing your attitude, you are actually building new neural pathways, which now means you are writing a new story.

2. Positive Self-Image – Resilient people are constantly evaluating themselves from a NON-JUDGMENTAL perspective. What worked, what didn’t work? They are willing to make course corrections based on their objective analysis.

3. Sense of Purpose – in order to subject ourselves to the high demands and challenges that “going for it” requires, we need to have a powerful reason. Simon Sinek, in his Ted talk, called it “Your Why.”

When your attitude, your self-image and your purpose are in alignment, you have the magic ingredients to forge a new future. Even though your mind “remembers” past negative experiences, you are not destined to repeat them.

If you find that you “know” this information, but are still not able to let go of situations you feel are still holding you back, I invite you to take the Mastery Under Pressure quiz on your level of peak performance skills at www.masteryunderpressure.net.

And join our Facebook Community at Mastery Under Pressure Community, where you’ll learn more about strengthening those building blocks to greater resiliency and
peak performance.

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Best Practices Health and Wellness Human Resources Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

Use Project Management Principles to Accomplish More

“The project is 10 months behind, you need to deliver it in two months and raise $10 million dollars. Can you do it?” That’s the questions my boss Phil asked me. This was totally outside the scope of my existing role in the oil industry, but I had developed a reputation as someone who could get things done. Oscillating between excitement and terror that I’d been selected for the challenge, of course I said, ‘YES!”

Admittedly, I didn’t sleep for two months but I did deliver the project, on time, and within the budget with 100% compliance from the stakeholders.  It was one of my career highlights and it reminded me project management principles could be applied to every aspect of your life.

Project management has been around for thousands of years. I’m picturing some fabulous Egyptian leaders standing around debating the process for delivering stone blocks for the pyramids. Can’t you just see that?

Let’s take a look at nine project management principles that will help you in business, and in life.

1. Have a project management mindset. Start with that 30,000-foot view. Evaluate what you need by way of budget, time, milestones and deliverables for every project.

2. Be budget smart.How much time and money does your project require?

3. Timing is everything.Put a timeline in place from start to finish.

4. Put it in writing.Outline your milestones and mission plans and write them down.

5. Organize and order. Create the checklist and timeline for the progression of tasks.

6. List the stakeholders. This helps keep you focused and on task.

7. Appoint a project sponsor. This might be your mentor, your boss, or colleague. This person will assist you progress the project, help handle any challenges you might face, and help you be accountable for deliverables

8. Create a folder for every project with the following structure:

  1. Project chassis (overview)
  2. Budget
  3. Communications
  4. Meeting Notes
  5. Miscellaneous

9. Focus on the outcome. Keeping your eye on the prize helps drive personal energy. Especially when you are in the thick of things, tired, and need to be inspired!

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Best Practices Growth Health and Wellness Human Resources Management Skills Women In Business

Managing Reverse Culture Shock

We’re all familiar with the principle of “culture shock,” reflecting the surprises and challenges of living and working abroad. Comparatively, you’d think it would be easy to move back home after the assignment is complete. Surprisingly, however, readjusting to the home culture and office is often harder than going abroad in the first place, a phenomenon known as “reverse culture shock,” or “reentry adjustment.” I certainly encountered this personally upon returning to the US after spending a couple of years in Japan. Here are some reasons why, and strategies to help ease that transition so that, contrary to the popular expression, you can go home again.

First, whether you’re abroad for a year or a decade, the fact is that, whether or not you realize it, you have changed as a result of your experiences, and your home (and home office) environment has evolved over time as well… but not on the same trajectory. Yet you will both expect the other to be the same as when you left at minimum, or even subconsciously expect them to have changed in the same way that you did – whether or not you recognize exactly how.

Plus, once you’ve adapted to the new language and cultural expectations, there’s a good chance that a lot of those new behaviors and expectations will have become second nature, often because you have learned to appreciate the principles that those behaviors reflect. For me, I was always a very direct speaker, but learned to appreciate and comfortably use the comparatively subtle approach in Japanese, which is the Japanese norm, based on promoting respect and harmony. Unfortunately, when using similar strategies in English back home, I sounded wishy-washy to my American peers.

When you return to your home office, others may respond to these new habits with resistance and skepticism. If you start to recognize this pattern, have a heartfelt conversation with your team, explaining what’s behind the new behaviors. Don’t go into tons of detail, and don’t present it in a way that seems like you’re bragging about your experience abroad. Smile, and let them know that you understand their reaction because it’s exactly how you reacted when you first encountered those patterns when you first arrived overseas. Depending on what the change is, you may just need some time shift back to the original style. Alternatively, once they understand the change, they may decide they appreciate the rationale for it and want to adopt it too.

Another key cause of reentry adjustment is that you expect to be surprised in one way or another when you go to a foreign country, but not when you return home. You know that the new language, culture, and norms abroad – from foods and table manners to what it means to show respect – will probably differ unpredictably from what you’re used to, for better or worse. But you also assume that it should be easy to return home because – in theory – you already know all the rules of the game.

On the contrary, this isn’t always the case. When I went to live and work in Japan, and studied the language and culture, I was very explicitly instructed how to do everything from gift exchange rituals to protocols for conducting meetings. I learned the rules consciously. Then when I moved back to the US, I committed a variety of little faux pas because I realized I didn’t know how to shift back! So many of my original American practices had been learned unconsciously; I had done things a certain way because it’s the way everyone did them, so I was just going with the flow, as it were. I never thought about why I used certain English words, American gestures, or routines. Without being equally able to articulate the “rules,” there was occasionally an awkward feeling of uncertainty.

Part of the solution, simply put, is to expect similar surprises – likely on mundane little things – upon completing an extended stay overseas. More importantly, when they happen, be patient and forgiving with yourself. Don’t beat yourself up for making mistakes, and when you do, remind yourself that this is normal. If necessary, apologize, but again, share the cause: you were simply on “auto pilot” from living abroad. The best remedy is to have a sense of humor about it and laugh at yourself, which is also an invitation to others to laugh with you. This builds mutual empathy, educates others, and promotes support to help you make the rest of the transition to your new life in the old country.

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Are you or is someone you know struggling with reverse culture shock? Email me at laura@vocalimpactproductions.com or click here to set up a 20-minute focus call to discuss it with me personally.

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Take the 5 Step Attention Challenge

You think you’re paying attention – you’re not. We live in an attention deficit society. Technology distracts us. Social Media overwhelms us.  Daily to-do lists leave us feeling exhausted. We are constantly being asked to do more with less, to the point we have lost sight of what is important as we race each day to cross off another meaningless task or chore.

I believe in order to be influential in the world, and make a true impact on it; we must give our undivided attention to people and things that matter most in our lives. Instead, we are allowing those that are most important to compete with all of our daily distractions. It’s time to commit to change.

Attention isn’t a little thing. It’s everything. What you focus on grows. What you don’t, goes. When you decide what gets your attention, that becomes your future. I challenge you to start turning your life into one of attention abundance instead of distractions in five steps. Are you up for the challenge? It won’t be easy. It will bring to light the aspects in your life that are worthy of your focus, your time and your undivided attention.

Step 1: Identify What Matters Most

Grab a piece of paper and write down three priorities that come to mind at home, at work and in your community. Perhaps it’s the name of people, or high-profile goals. Maybe it’s a charitable cause or public service. Either way, be specific in each of the three categories and limit yourself to no more than three priorities for each. This step is going to help you identify what matters most to you, the core of you. These are the priorities that get you out of bed each morning, and give you a sense of purpose. When we attempt to define too many priorities, we dilute the meaning of those that matter most.

Step 2: Be Accountable to the Calendar

With your limited priority list now identified, it’s time to get selective with your calendar of commitments. We only get 365 days each year to reach our goals and objectives. That’s a pretty tight calendar budget if it’s not managed wisely. Consider this, if you only had $365 dollars in the bank and were forced to choose between food and jewelry – you’d choose food, right? That’s easy. So why do we think of the days in a year any differently? We are all working from the same limited budget of days, yet some are too quick to spend their days on what doesn’t matter. It’s time to be accountable to our calendar.

First, go through your work calendar and identify two meetings this week that are not necessary. If you feel the objective of the meeting can be accomplished in a simple phone call or email, choose those options instead. If you have the meetings scheduled merely out of routine and habit, they aren’t needed. If you are attending meetings and feel they are not a valuable use of your time, decline them.

Second, for those meetings you choose to keep on your work calendar, email the host and request an agenda. Take a few moments to be certain your time will be respected and used wisely. If you are the host, give respects to the attendees by creating an agenda that you commit to using and sticking to. If you want others to respect your time, you must first start by respecting theirs.

Third, at home, review your personal commitments and obligations. Have you accepted a dinner invite you didn’t really desire to attend? Perhaps you have requests for lunch, parties and gatherings that you aren’t certain how you’ll fit into your already tight calendar of events. If any of these scenarios sound familiar, it’s time to employ the power of one simple word: “No.” That’s right, “no.” “No” is a complete sentence and doesn’t require explanation. Your time is your time, and only is gifted to others when their requests of it fall in line with the priorities you listed in step one. When you say “no” to some, you’re saying “yes” to whom and what matters most. Consider this – if there is a dinner invitation you’ve received that you’re not thrilled to attend, and you would rather stay home and watch a movie with your family, who is going to benefit the most from you saying “yes” to the dinner invite? You? Your family? No – the person with the invitation is the one that benefits. If they are not in your list of priorities, then you are allowing them to take time away from those truly deserving of your time.

Step 3: Be Accountable to the Clock

There are only 1,440 minutes in each day. Considering we sleep approximately 440 of those, we are left with only 1,000 minutes to accomplish what truly needs to be done each day. We are all gifted with the same amount of time in a day; how we choose to use it and prioritize it is solely up to us.

Have you ever stopped to consider the amount of time you spend each day on social media? What about watching television? How about checking email? Now, consider how much time you spend building relationships with family, friends, colleagues and clients? Who is winning your attention and what is stealing your time.

I want you to consider your day in 15 minute increments. Discipline yourself to limiting time on non-essential tasks for 15 minutes only. Dedicate at least 15 minutes of time to those that haven’t been getting it.

First, upon waking in the morning, take 15 minutes to check social media and read the news – then log off. Do not give into temptation to check it again until your next scheduled 15 minute window – either later that night or the next morning. Utilize apps that block alerts and notifications on your phone to avoid distractions they cause.

Second, review your daily calendar and challenge yourself and your team to cut back meetings to 15 minutes only. Require agendas and don’t permit devices that cause distractions. When you limit meetings to 15 minutes, you’ll reach agreements more quickly and be less likely to get lost on non-related topics.

Third, schedule 3 – 15 minutes increments time for checking email throughout your workday. When your 15 minutes is up, turn off your email and turn your attention to accomplishing projects, tasks and priorities. Move away from allowing email to run your day and dictate how your time is to be spent. Emails are just another person’s request for your time to do what they need to accomplish their tasks.

Fourth, dedicate 15 minutes each night to having one-on-one conversations with each person in your household. Give them a minimum of 15 minutes of your time without technology, tv or distractions. You’d be surprised how your relationships grow when you invest your undivided attention into them.

Fifth, allow yourself 15 minutes each day for decompression and quiet time. Give your body and your mind an opportunity to quiet and rest. Go for a walk. Take a hot bath. Get a stretch. Meditate. Either way, permit your mind to quiet down so it has an opportunity to recharge for the following day.

Step 4: Put Technology in its Place

By silencing distractions, such as smartphones, people begin to excel at their jobs, relationships and tasks. A cell phone is a crutch. It fools us into believing everything is an emergency, even when the situation is far from it. When people let go of the need to connect, they get better at sleeping, they come to work refreshed, they learn to trust their instincts, and they begin to rely on their skills and knowledge. In short, they become better leaders, better middle managers, and better employees. They also become better spouses, better parents and their quality of life grows.

First, use your Do Not Disturb function on your phone. Schedule it to turn on from 8pm to 8am each morning. This will ensure time each night is spent focused and dedicated on your personal well-being. In this time period, you can exercise, spend time in uninterrupted conversation with friends and family, sleeping and resting up for a more productive day following.

Second, do not permit technology in meetings. If you are hosting a meeting, make it known on the invite and in the agenda that your meeting is a no-phone zone. If you’re going to be cutting down meetings to 15-minute increments, every minute requires each participant’s undivided attention.

Third, make your dinner table a no-phone zone. If you are out to dinner with friends, make a deal that the first person to look at their phone has to buy dinner. If you are at dinner with your family, put all devices away and keep them off the table. Use that time to make genuine connections with those you are dining with.

Fourth, use smartphone apps to silence your phone throughout the day when you are otherwise committed to scheduled activities such as checking email, focusing on projects or accomplishing tasks. You will maximize your productivity when you keep your focus exclusively on one task as a time instead of allowing yourself to be distracted every few minutes.

Step 5: Gift Your Time

Our society depends on each of us to give the gift of our time to charitable causes and be purposeful in how we contribute to our community. Choose how you will contribute to causes that matter to you and your community. Be intentional in scheduling time to volunteer, donate and help others. Reflect back on Step 1 and what you listed as your priorities. Decide how you will contribute to aiding those causes and make the commitment to follow through.

Remember, Attention isn’t a little thing. It’s everything. What you focus on grows. What you don’t, goes. Decide what gets your attention, and allow that to become your future. Are you up to the challenge?