This Isn’t An Article About Time Management

How many times have you blocked two or three hours in your calendar and sat down to work on something important only to be distracted 10 minutes into it? You hop online to look up a stat and next thing you know you’ve read four articles on the best way to air fry sweet potatoes.

Or your mind wanders to the text you had with your brother about taking away dad’s car keys and now your worried thoughts of how that conversation is going to go has taken over your mind.

And yet you expect your employees to be able to block these kinds of distractions better than you do, focus on their work, and deliver results by the end of the week.

This isn’t an article about time management because time management is useless when you can’t manage your mind. Time block away but that’s not going to help with distracted focus.

Your employees can turn off their email notifications, put on headphones to block out noise, and put a sign on their door that says, “Unless the place is on fire, do not disturb!” (yes, I’ve done this ??) and they can still not be able to focus on the task at hand. Because the call is coming from INSIDE the building.

Give Them the Right Tools

So HOW can you help them stay focused and meet deadlines?!

One thing that has been proven to help with focus is meditation. Not the kind of meditation where you sit cross-legged on a mat, chanting in an ashram for hours of the day. Work needs to be done, right?

I’m talking about practices that cultivate present-moment awareness and cut down on the amount of time wandering thoughts hijack from work focus.

Research shows that anxiety can have a significant impact on a person's memory and ability to process information.

There are several simple mindfulness techniques that can help employees center themselves and refocus their attention so they can be more productive. They’re so simple in fact that it can be easy to dismiss them as too basic to work. But that’s exactly why they DO work! Because they’re easy and quick to do.

Let’s say an employee overheard a heated debate between colleagues and now needs to work on a client presentation that’s due tomorrow. That person doesn’t even need to have been involved in the exchange to be affected by it. Their mind is off to the races wondering what that was about, and who said what, and how it might affect their job.

Instead of sitting uselessly in front of the computer screen reading the same paragraph over and over again while trying to formulate a coherent analysis – which is obviously not happening – that team member could put on some brown noise (link to what brown noise is) or healing frequency music (link to what healing frequency is) and do some deep breathing exercises.

Benefits of Deep Breathing

Deep breathing pulls the air in through the nose and fully fills the lungs, allowing the lower belly to rise. This is actually our proper way of breathing; the way babies breathe. But most people no longer breathe this way. Stress and habits have trained people to breathe shallowly, which enhances feelings of anxiety.

When someone engages in deep abdominal breathing, they get a full trade of incoming oxygen for outgoing carbon dioxide. Doing this can slow the heartbeat and lower or stabilize blood pressure.

So, what this might look like is your employee sits comfortably in their chair with their eyes closed, paying close attention to feeling the air coming into their lungs and abdomen and feeling it move fully out. They can do this for 10 breaths or 3 minutes or whatever measure works for them. ?

After taking this short break to oxygenate their body and relax their parasympathetic nervous system, they have the ability to come back into the moment with more clarity and focus and fewer racing thoughts. ?

NOW they are better able to focus on reading and analyzing materials and writing that presentation. Taking those three minutes for deep breathing could potentially save HOURS – and as the saying goes, time is money. I’ve not even mentioned the reduction of frustration, which is another major benefit.

Imagine This...

If EVERYONE on your team was able to use this technique to calm their runaway thoughts and refocus their minds, how much more productive do you think they would be? ?

This is just one technique that can help make your team members happier and more productive. Look for additional tools and practices for creating a healthy and high performing workplace in my other articles.

Or see my profile to schedule a call.

Lori Saitz is the CEO of Zen Rabbit, a forward-thinking health and wellness company specializing in helping corporations build healthy and high-performance focused teams and workplaces. She’s also the host of Fine is a 4-Letter Word. As an award-winning author, speaker, and broadcaster, she has worked with various organizations, including AARP, Insperity, Women in Technology, Infinity Broadcasting, and JK Moving Services.