How we use our time each day and the behaviors we choose to adopt can produce positive or negative outcomes. In Dan Harris’ book, 10% Happier, I came across a few ideas that highlighted being more intentional with how we spend our time and where we focus our attention.

Almost two decades ago, Linda Stone, a former Apple and Microsoft executive, identified a specific phenomenon and coined the term, continuous partial attention. She describes this as paying partial attention, continuously. Stone says we’re motivated to do this because we don’t want to miss anything.  When we’re always on, constantly scanning, and on high alert, it produces an “artificial sense of constant crisis.”This phenomenon has escalated because of our increased use and availability of technology.

According to Stone, some of the outcomes that can result from regularly engaging in continuous partial attention include:

• Having a stressful lifestyle

• Operating in crisis management mode

• Compromising ability to reflect, make decisions or think creatively

• Being overwhelmed or over-stimulated

• Feeling unfulfilled

• Feeling a sense of powerlessness

Stone makes a distinction between continuous partial attention and multi-tasking because of the different impulse that motivates them. She believes that multi-tasking is productivity and efficiency driven, while continuous partial attention is motivated by the desire to be connected and alert to the best opportunities.

“We have focused on managing our time. Our opportunity is to focus how we manage our attention.”

— Linda Stone

If you find that your time is being spent in the always-on mode or that your attention is continually pulled between digital devices, tasks and interactions with people, here are some strategies suggested by Linda Stone and Janice Marturano, who is founder of Institute for Mindful Leadership:

• Establish some tech free time

• Give your full attention to others during interactions (as in put away your phones, no typing on the computer keyboard while having conversations)

• Designate part of your day as “interruption-free” time

• Take a breathing break

• Do one thing at a time

• Take mindfulness breaks or “purposeful pauses”

Have you experienced continuous partial attention? Have you felt any of the symptoms associated with it? I’d love to hear your thoughts and your strategies. I invite you to join the conversation!

The pause. Suspending time ever so briefly to notice, to feel, and to sense what surrounds you.  On this recent beautiful, light-filled morning, I took my breakfast outside to eat. As I sat at the "Samuels Cafe," I noticed the percussive sounds of the birds and insects. Their chorus was loud and varied. The foliage waved as the breeze gently moved the air. Patterns of soft light shifted and glistened as the sun danced in between the leaves. In the distance I noticed the occasional featherweight plant floating slowly from the sky to rest on the fern-covered ground.

Like my changing attention to the various sounds, my visual focus shifted too. The pattern of the light through the moving leaves highlighted different patches of the woods. It pulled my gaze to a particular tree stump or row of ferns or patch of grass. It was nature's way of showing me the beauty that exists.

The time is here to notice. The time is here to just be. It's there for you if you embrace the pause. Your moments of mindfulness are available to you.

In this corner of our world that is fixated on doing more, getting more, and being more, the pause is essential. Taking time to appreciate the present, to be in the present, to notice the present can shift your perspective to include gratitude, peace and calm.

Do you make time for the pause? What have you noticed? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Come join the conversation!

Oh yes! I’m sure you’ve heard this before. It’s not news that everyone has twenty-four hours each day. It doesn’t matter where you live or where you’re from. That fact is indisputable. Let’s assume that you sleep for eight hours a day. Sleep is essential for renewal of the mind and body. We need to use part of our day for rest.

After the eight sleep hours are deducted from your “time bank,” your remaining time each day becomes approximately sixteen hours. What we do or don’t do each day greatly affects the quality of our time and lives.

Are you a time savorer or squanderer? To squander is to waste something in a reckless manner, or allow an opportunity to pass or be lost. To savor is to enjoy, delight in, or appreciate something completely.

I’m not suggesting that you fill your time with constant activity. We all need unscheduled time for not doing. I am suggesting that you be mindful about your choices.

I offer you this quote from an unknown source . . .

“Time is precious. Waste it wisely.”

What is your relationship to time? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Come join the conversation!

Isn’t time interesting in that we identify it using certain markers? Our markers can include annual traditions like the arrival of birthday cards or preparing supplies for the new school year. Time markers can be from big life events like births, graduations, or moves. Time markers can even include things like our daily wake-up alarms or buzzers ringing when the cookies are done baking.

One of the time markers that have delighted me for the past several years is the blooming of the hydrangeas. They are the visual punctuation, which lets me know that my special vacation at the beach with my girlfriends has arrived. It’s a time to relax, to reconnect, and to enjoy doing and not doing. It’s a time to have fun, to be silly, and also engage in reflective thoughts and conversations.

There are many different types of time markers and ways to honor or recognize the passage and meaning of time. There are also ways that we purposefully want to lose track of time like when we sleep or when we’re on vacation.

My husband recently shared with me an interesting tool from timeanddate.com that helps you measure time from when something happened to a certain date (like today.) I can see this being useful in many instances, especially because we often forget things like how long we’ve been married or lived in our homes or have been at a job or in business. I don’t know about you, but the longer I live, the harder it is to fathom how long I’ve been doing certain things. Using the tool, I confirmed that . . .

• 33 years and 10 days ago I was married
• 26 years, 1 month, and 28 days ago I became a mom
• 23 years, 5 months, and 28 days ago I launched Oh, So Organized!
• 1 year, 11 months, and 28 days ago I became President of ICD (Institute for Challenging Disorganization)
• 3 days from now I’ll become Immediate Past President of ICD

What I do know is that time goes all too quickly. It’s important to savor the moments, to celebrate the markers, to be mindful of the present. Before you know it days will pass, then years, then decades. Life is a wonderful journey with many bumps along the way. Enjoy the joys and the challenges.

What time markers have you noticed? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Come join the conversation!