Is it fair to say that Brand Harmony sets out the liturgy, the words that must be engrained and recited from habit,the keva, while WE adds the concentration, the intentionality, the recognition that you can’t be in the moment every moment, but you don’t have to be if your auto-pilot is functioning properly?

What I find useful when coaching people around interruptions is to talk about choice. Outlook allows your to work offline. Messenger allows you to set I am busy. You can choose to answer the phone. Book a meeting room and hide if you have to!

Another area I explore is honesty about interruptions – many people like being interrupted -sure they moan about it but it’s the ultimate excuse for procrastination on things you should be doing.

One area that concerns me in office culture is the – “I get more emails than you” or “I am drowning in email” type conversation. It’s become a badge of honour. Why???

I am fascinated by the deliberate use of subconcious – I read an article about shamanism at work now I know that may raise a few eyebrows in an office but the deliberate changing of mental state is something we have not really explored in depth. Coaching uses relaxation and empathy to guide mood etc. That’s a start.

Music is another area – I sometimes work from home and often choose music to get into a certain groove.

There are many ways to change this – the choice is yours!

When writing about productive focused thinking he was telling about the United DC-10, flight 232, that failed in 1989 and had to make an emergency landing in Sioux City … the pilot’s thinking process was a great example of intense kavanah. The pilot, Al Haynes, was able to shut out all extraneous thoughts, in a period of amazing pressure, and focus himself on only the things he could control. He, apparently, figured out new ways to fly the disabled plane that were counter-intuitive, and managed to bring the plane down and save about 2/3 of the passengers, who otherwise would all have died. When the conditions of Flight 232 were recreated in a flight simulator, no other pilot could bring the plane down with fewer than 57 crash landings.

Lerher writes about how our brains can associate different ideas in our working memory when we manage to have only the most relevant information in working memory. That’s why great focus on “the things that matter” is so productive, and why distracted multi-tasking and constant interuptions make us so unproductive.

The human mind is a tricky thing! Learning to apply it well, in the right ways at the right times, to our businesses can have a major impact on success.

“In my experience, we don’t generally lack resources but often lack resourcefulness.”

David – This is great! Thanks!

Steve, I really like when you take a religious, philosophical or scientific concept and apply it to business. It reminds me that our business can be deeply meaningful and should be full of purpose.