Energize Your Team With Attention Management with Maura Nevel Thomas
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
Maura Nevel Thomas is recognized as one of the top 10 time management experts in the world. She’s the author of six impactful books and a regular contributor to Forbes and Harvard Business Review. In this episode, Maura joins me to discuss her latest book, Everyone Wants to Work Here, and to share powerful insights on why attention, not time, is the true driver of productivity and engagement.
The Hidden Productivity Gap
Most people leave work feeling busy but unproductive.
Leaders often overlook a critical cultural element: a culture of productivity.
Real productivity is when people feel they’ve accomplished meaningful work by the end of the day.
Rethinking Time Management
Maura advocates abandoning the outdated term "time management."
Our challenge today is not time scarcity but attention scarcity.
Giving people more hours won’t solve productivity if attention continues to be hijacked by distractions.
Distraction vs. Attention
Distraction is the true enemy; attention is the solution.
People often spend their days reacting—emails, chats, meetings—rather than proactively focusing on priorities.
Cultivating attention is key to meaningful work and team engagement.
The Power of Organizational Culture
Leadership language defines culture: words like “responsive” can create toxic expectations.
Open-door policies often unintentionally encourage constant interruption.
Leaders must be intentional with language and model focused behavior.
Doing One Thing at a Time
Multitasking lowers quality and increases time spent.
Borrowing from Deep Work by Cal Newport, Maura supports single-tasking in focused intervals, adjusted for realistic attention spans.
Practical Attention Strategies
Environmental Control:
Create clear physical or visual boundaries (closed door, signs, lights).
Most people fail to honor their own boundaries—leaders must both set and enforce them.
Technology Boundaries:
Turn off notifications, silence phones, close email and chat windows while working.
Create organizational communication guidelines: what channel to use and when.
Establish a “bat signal” system for true emergencies.
Habit Transformation:
We’re conditioned to distract ourselves constantly—even when nothing pings.
Restoring in-between moments (like waiting in line or taking breaks without phones) supports deeper reflection and insight.
Leaders should actively develop new habits by designing their environment to reduce temptation.
Unconscious Calculations
Many professionals operate under false assumptions, like “We’ll lose business if we don’t respond instantly.”
Challenge these beliefs: clients value thoughtful responses more than fast ones.
Define and align what “responsive,” “emergency,” and “urgent” actually mean in your company.
Culture Starts with Leaders
Leaders should:
Replace “time management” with “attention management” in language and job descriptions.
Increase awareness of distraction by modeling and reinforcing attention-based practices.
Encourage deep work and redefine urgency thoughtfully.
Final Thoughts & Resources
Maura offers keynotes, workshops, leadership retreats, and a free productivity assessment at maurathomas.com/productivityassessment.
Her work equips leaders and teams to be more productive, focused, and fulfilled.
Website: https://maurathomas.com
Productivity Assessment: https://maurathomas.com/productivityassessment
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Mike Goldman (00:00)
For over two decades, my guest today has been helping busy professionals at places like Google and NASA discover how to accomplish more of what's important. She ranked in the top 10 time management professionals in the world. And in addition to her six popular books, she also writes columns for both Forbes and Harvard Business Review. I'm happy to have productivity and attention management expert.
Maura Nevel Thomas with us today. Maura, welcome to the show. Yeah, I'm super excited. It's been a long time coming with us talking about you, having you on the show and where we're gonna focus. Maura's got, and I think it's your latest book, right? Everyone wants to work here, attract the best talent, energize your team and be the leader in your market is perfect for the audience of this show. So super excited to dive in and.
Maura Thomas (00:31)
Thank you much Mike! I'm super excited to be here!
Mike Goldman (00:56)
Maura, you know what our first question always is on this show is, what do you believe from your experience, what do you believe is the one most important characteristic of a great leadership team?
Maura Thomas (01:10)
Most leaders think about culture. They think about culture in terms of like a culture of safety, a culture of trust, a culture of, you know, ethical behavior, all of that kind of stuff. And all of that is important. What I think most leaders miss is a culture of productivity, which really translates to a culture where everyone on the team
including all the leaders can go home at the end of the day and say that was such a great day. I got so much done because most people have too many days where they leave work thinking I was busy all day and somehow I got nothing done. And when you have that sense of satisfaction and accomplishment at the end of your day, it makes, it changes your relationship to your job.
and it changes everybody's engagement and it changes the company's ability to achieve their goals and serve their clients. So that's the thing that I think is super important and most leaders overlook.
Mike Goldman (02:07)
What's interesting about that is when you started out and you set a culture of productivity, if we stopped there, the picture most people, including me, would have in their head is, you know, I'm whipping a bunch of people just to work harder, work harder, work harder, but I loved you adding that very important part. And so you get to the end of the day, you actually feel good about what you're doing and you feel good about what you've accomplished. And that's exactly what we're going to
we're going to dive into and it kind of starts to overlap with the first question I really had for you, is, you know, it's interesting. I know about you and we've talked and we've met through, you know, Brand Builders Group and we've met at NSA Influence. And for those that don't know though, that's the National Speakers Association and Influence is the big conference. And I know, you know, you're all about time management.
So when I looked at the book and the book is all about, you know, everyone wants to work here, attracting the best talent. It's like, wait a minute, how does, I didn't expect that. How does time management and attracting the best talent, how did those two things tie together? And I think in your answer to the first question, you started approaching that, but dig a little deeper on how those two things tie together.
Maura Thomas (03:28)
Well first, first I have to address the idea of time management because really I am on a mission to eliminate this phrase from our vocabulary because the idea of time management and the techniques of time management were created in a world that no longer exists. Time management as a concept is probably a hundred years old or more and
Right up until like the advent of the personal computer and certainly the internet, we could manage our time, right? We could, which really just means planning our day and following our plan, right? That's time management. What am I gonna do? How am gonna spend my time? And that worked until the information age, the attention age.
was upon us. So for the last 30 years, I think our biggest challenge is not that we don't have enough time. If you've ever had a day where you said to yourself, that was such a good day, I got so much done, then you understand that you have all the time you need to have productive days. And...
If I were to give you 26, 28, 30 hours in the day and you still spent it the way you probably spend it now, the way most people spend it now, you wouldn't get any more done and it wouldn't get done any better because here's the problem. We spend our days reacting.
to all of the incoming stuff that comes at us all day long. The chat, the text, the email, the other people, hey do you have a minute, the pings, the dings, all of that stuff. We spend our days being reactive. And so most people sit down at work in the morning and do whatever happens to them.
I open my laptop, I boot up my email, I boot up Teams or Slack or whatever my chat is and I'm off to the races. I'm answering emails, I'm answering all the stuff, I answer the phone, I go to the meeting, I come back, I start all over, answer the email, answer the chat, off to the meeting, start all over, right? We spend all day reacting and so when we say I was busy all day, you are busy all day and you're working. All of that stuff is work but.
You feel like you got nothing done because your to-do list just keeps getting longer and longer and longer. So if I could give you 26, 28, 30 hours in a day and you still spent it switching, reacting to everything, switching what you were doing all day long, jumping to this, to this, to this, to this, to this, everything's half done, you wouldn't get any more done. So the antidote to distraction.
Distraction is our biggest problem. Not having enough time is not the problem. Too many distractions are the problem now. And the antidote to distraction is not more time. The antidote to distraction is attention. So I feel like I am on this mission to get people to kick the phrase time management to the curb because it's not, it's not only not helping us, I think it's holding us back.
If we start thinking instead of how we manage our time, if we start thinking about how we manage our attention, everyone would accomplish more of what's most important to them. And that's the definition of productive that I use. so maybe that, so this is a long way of getting to the answer of your question, but I think it really sets the stage. What does time management and
everyone wants to work here have in common, everything is better at your company. When everybody goes home every day saying, my gosh, that was such a good day, I got so much done. You're serving more clients, the quality is higher, you are meeting projects on time, on budget, you're serving more clients, everybody's getting more work done, and everybody feels better. Everybody enjoys their work more, everybody...
is more engaged, everybody is more motivated to come back to work the next day instead of waking up, my gosh, again, that's so exhausting. Instead of feeling like you're on that hamster wheel. And so I talked a lot and I'll stop now.
Mike Goldman (07:42)
That's it's
fine. It's fine.
So I love that idea of the antidote to distraction being attention. How do we make that real? So what does that look like for that individual that is waking up and kind of letting the day manage them and letting other people manage them through emails and phone calls and voicemails and meetings and all this stuff? How do we take that concept of attention?
and make it real so we could really start managing that.
Maura Thomas (08:15)
Yeah, so there's individual behaviors and then there's kind of the organizational culture. Because what I find is that often the biggest challenge to the team's productivity is the behavior of the leaders and the culture of the organization. So let's look at that one first. A lot of leaders, I think we forget how much power words have.
And so we use words that create the culture of the organization. And because words have power, let's get on the same page. When I say culture, I mean how everyone behaves. That's it, that's your culture. And so culture of trust, a culture of honesty, a culture of camaraderie, of this culture of psychological safety, all of those things manifest in how people behave, but also a culture of productivity manifests in how people behave. example,
Many organizations have and say this a lot and are very proud of their open door policy. Which in theory is a fine idea, right? Everybody helps everyone, everybody's here, happy to help, right? But what that translates to for most people is anyone can interrupt anyone at any time for any reason. Or even some people take it a step further.
We are not allowed to close our doors here. Nobody ever closes their doors. And if a door is closed, it means someone's getting fired. And so it's okay to say that you have an open door policy, but it is also useful to just to explicitly explain what that means to you. So that's one example. Another example is talking about being responsive. We need to be responsive to clients.
Well, if you say to me, we need to be responsive, what I hear is fast. Responsive means fast. And I want to be good at my job. I don't want to be just good at my job. I want to be really good at my job. So if you want me to be fast, what's the best version of fast? That's immediate, right? So the more responsive I can be, the better I must be. And so
By using this word, a lot of leaders set an unintentional KPI of speed, an unintentional competitive advantage, speed. The faster we are, the better we are. The faster we are, the happier our clients are. The faster we are, the more business we'll get. And those things might be true, nobody's ever, in most organizations, nobody's ever looked at them. And I think being,
I think competing on speed is like competing on price. You can only be, it's a race to the bottom. You can only be so fast. And so...
And so we react all day. Really what we're doing is switching what we're doing all day. So for example, most people have to saying, I'm going to be responsive. I need to be responsive leads to everybody has two or three monitors on their desktop. And if they have multiple monitors on their desktop, it's so that they can monitor email while they do everything else. Right? So you've got work on one screen and
your email on the other screen. And so I'm checking every email as it arrives to see if I need to be responsive to that one. And so then I'm switching what I'm doing all day so I'm never getting anything done well. so we create leaders with their language, with their word choice, create a culture of urgency. And that undermines the team's productivity.
Mike Goldman (11:58)
So I remember reading years ago a book called Deep Work by, oh, what's his name? Cal Newport. I almost said Caleb Carr, and he's like a fiction author. I'm like, that's not him. But it starts with a C, Cal Newport. So is it, and not that there's one magic answer to everything, but is part of what we're talking about encouraging, modeling as leaders and encouraging our people to not keep switching back and forth and.
Maura Thomas (12:04)
Cal Newport. Yep.
Mike Goldman (12:26)
And by the way, I'm assuming everybody's read the book and probably most people haven't. Deep work is all about taking, you know, large blocks of time. And in the book, he talks about days at a time or weeks at a time. For some of us, it may be time blocking, you know, two hours on this or four hours on this or an hour on this. Is that part of the answer or is it not quite as simple as that?
Maura Thomas (12:52)
Well, I love the concept of the book. I disagree with a few things. our attention spans are shorter than they ever used to be, and it is very difficult to focus on anything for that long. But the idea is the same. Do one thing at a time.
Research shows if you do one thing at a time, everything you do gets done faster and better. Now that one thing could be 30 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour, or in many cases, you know, in some cases, sure a couple, two, three hours. Although after a couple of hours, it's very hard to maintain that level of focus because we have to use the restroom and we need a drink of water and our neck is getting stiff and like all of these kinds of biological things distract us. And so.
And I understand, you know, he talks about taking breaks in between, but then going right back to it. But I think a lot of people feel like they can't, you know, more than a couple of hours in a day on one thing is not realistic for most people in today's modern work, right? In academia, sure. But for most people, that's really difficult. But the concept, I totally agree with the concept. Do one thing at a time.
Apply your full attention, manage your attention, so eliminate all other distractions. Apply yourself fully, because deep work really is just cognitively demanding work, is how he defines it, right? And when we switch what we're doing, a couple minutes here, and then I switch to something else, and a couple minutes back, research shows that everything we're doing takes longer, and the quality goes down. So we do have to block out time, but really what I...
my sort of bottom line is do one thing at a time.
Mike Goldman (14:46)
And how do we, how do we do that? Right. With, with the email, which is not only on our screen, but, on our phone and our iPad and our watches vibrate and, and, know, when it's not, you know, it's, it's texting, it's email, it's social media, it's Slack. It's, you know, let me go to chat GPT and, and do this. And then other things pop up on our screen. How, you know, let, let, let's talk about how we build a culture of that, but maybe we start simpler.
for the leader listening right now, what's something that they can do to make that concept of working on one thing at a time real? Is there some technique to do that that you find is helpful?
Maura Thomas (15:32)
Yeah. So back to the, you know, assuming that we get the culture things right and we create some communication guidelines, which I've written about, like how fast is timely and on which channel, what channel is the emergency channel? you know, I'll never close my email if every email I get might be an emergency, right? And so if you have to treat every email,
or text or chat as if it is an emergency, then it is in all practicality, it is an emergency until you have decided, ⁓ that's not an emergency. so then you, that's right. That's right. And so then you can never apply yourself. So we have to get the culture right. But then at the individual level, here's, here's another reason why I love the idea of attention management over time management. I am a control freak.
Mike Goldman (16:04)
And then it's already distracted you by the time you get to that point.
Maura Thomas (16:24)
I do feel better when I can control things. I understand there's many things in this world I cannot control and time is one of them, right? Time marches on. I can't back it up. I can't slow it down. I can't bend it to my will in any way. I have no control over time, but whether or not my attention is stolen.
is almost 100 % in my control. I get to decide if people interrupt me, if technology interrupts me. So when it comes to techniques, I talk about three challenges to our ability to manage our attention. There's our environment, our technology, and our own habits. And so we could dive into those, but
The idea is that you have way more control over your attention than you probably exert. And nobody can interrupt you unless you allow it. For the most part. mean, if you know, a bomb goes out, it goes off outside your window or if somebody just barges through your office door or something. But we can control a lot of that.
Mike Goldman (17:37)
Yeah, and if a bomb
does go off outside your window, it's probably urgent enough to distract you. So that's OK. But let's take, you said environment, technology, and habits. Maybe one quick example for me. So from an environmental standpoint, what's something we can do to help us with this?
Maura Thomas (17:41)
Exactly. Exactly.
Yeah, nobody, people don't really know, if you work at a computer to do your job, like for the most part, like most of your days, if you're working, it's most likely, unless you and I are speakers, so we work on a stage or in front of a room of people or whatever, but when we're in our office working, that's usually on a computer, right? And so,
So if we're working on a computer, people don't necessarily know when it's a good time to interrupt us. And so they just interrupt us whenever they need us. So we need to create some boundaries and let people know when it's not a good time to interrupt us. Now that could be a sign, it could be a light, it could be...
It could be a closed door, could be headphones, could be a flag on your computer monitor, it could be literally anything you want. But you have to have the boundary. But then where most people go wrong is that they create the boundary but then they don't honor the boundary. So if you intend for your closed door to be the signal that says please don't interrupt me, but then somebody knocks on it and says hey sorry do you have a minute? And you say yeah okay what do you need? Well then people...
then you've just taught them that that's not actually a boundary at all. So from the environment side, we can exert more control over our environment than we do. We just don't because we think, I don't want to be rude. They saw the closed door and they interrupted me anyway. So I guess that doesn't work. It's like, no, I get a question a lot from people that says, how do I stop my boss from?
walking through my closed door to interrupt me. And I try not to sound flip and I say this a different way, but really the answer is have you tried using your words? If you just say to your boss, like, look, I'm going to close the door for like half an hour, you know, a couple of
like every couple hours so that I can get some work done. So if you see the door is closed, like if you really need me, if it's important, sure. But otherwise, if you see the door closed, could you just, you know, come back or shoot me an email when and you know, I'll get it soon and I'll respond right away. But people are like, I mean, I closed the door. Don't they get it? They it doesn't work. Like, you might have to add a little bit to that.
Mike Goldman (20:16)
Yeah. And in a lot of cases,
people are working, you know, hybrid or they're working remotely. And that's even easier because your door, your door is in your home and your, in your home office. And you can just not answer the call or not answer the email and, and get it later. But, but it amazes me. It amazes me when people think they need to answer right away. Like.
Maura Thomas (20:31)
Right. Well, that leads us.
Mike Goldman (20:39)
People expect, and you train people, right? Like if I answer your text or your emails right away all the time, and then you email me and it takes me two hours, you're email me again and say, did you get my previous email? But it's because I've trained you that I'm gonna answer you like right away. So that's from the environment standpoint. You said it's environment, technology, and habits. What about technology?
Maura Thomas (20:59)
Exactly right. Exactly right.
Yeah, well you made the great point. When we are working remotely, the door is Slack or Teams or email or phone call or text or whatever. And so really, really we have even more control if we work remotely because the only way that people can get to us is through our technology. And so if we are controlling our technology, no one can interrupt us unless we really want them to. And so this is why I have this whole chapter.
and everyone wants to work here, although I also wrote an article for Harvard Business Review on the topic of creating guidelines for communication. Because in organizations, we keep introducing new ways to communicate, and we never provide any guidance about which tool to use in which situation. And so as a result, it just defaults to personal preference. And so if I work with 10 people closely on my team,
and one of them seems to prefer email and one of them seems to prefer meetings and one of them seems to prefer phone and one prefers text and chat and all of this. I can't remember. So I'm just going to send all the information in all the ways. Now I've covered everybody's preference and that's why we receive email. We receive like a text message or chat that says, I sent you an email. Did you get it?
And so the volume of communication goes way up, but the efficiency of communication goes way down. So communication guidelines are really important. Which tool do we use in which situation? But the most important, even if you don't go through the whole communication guidelines, and I have a whole kind of way that I help organizations figure out their communication guidelines, but even if you don't do the whole picture, you need a bat signal, right? You like if the red phone rings, answer it.
but anything else can wait, you know, an hour or two. I'm not saying that people go dark. Unlike Cal Newport, right? I'm not saying that people go dark for days at a time. I'm saying 30 minutes every hour or 60, 75, 90 minutes, couple, two, three times a day. Right? So at most it's going to take you a couple hours to see somebody's communication and
If it can't wait a couple hours, then you need a bat signal. But otherwise, most routine business can wait. so controlling your technology. So you sit down to do that thing that you have to do. And so you put your phone on silent and you close your outlook and you close your chat and you close your door if you have one or if you're working around other people. put up your sign, you do whatever you need to do. You put yourself in a little do not disturb bubble and you get that thing done one at a time.
Check your email as often as you feel like you need to. Just do it in between other things instead of during other things. And then everything you do will get done faster and better.
Mike Goldman (23:57)
love it. So we talked about environment, we talked about technology, the last category was habits.
Maura Thomas (24:06)
Our technology has created in us a habit of distraction.
In fact, there's a place at Stanford that used to be called the Influence Lab. And it's where technology developers go to learn how to create habit-forming technology. And this is not about programming, right? This is about behavioral psychology and neuroscience. How can we hack the human brain to benefit the technology?
Right. And so because of the success metric for any technology, apps, software, hardware, website, the success metric is engagement. Right. And so all of these notifications are just designed to get us engaged. And so most of us receive some sort of distraction, some sort of ping, ding, alert notification, whatever, about every minute or two. And so then you get conditioned to the distraction and then
even when there isn't a distraction, you distract yourself looking for the distraction. Have you ever found yourself feeling the phantom vibration in your pocket? Or just...
Mike Goldman (25:13)
Well, it's I absolutely
have that. then I think anytime I've ever waited online, I can't just wait online. I have to wait online and take my phone out of my pocket and look at my phone and look at this and look, even if it hasn't ding to your point. So yeah, it's absolutely ⁓ an addiction.
Maura Thomas (25:30)
Yeah. And so we need to translate,
we need to translate your New York for the rest of the country, right? And online or inline when you wait inline because, because online means you can, and I'm from Boston. So I speak New York. but cause online means something, something else, right? But yes, when we, that's a great point is that we have lost what I call the
Mike Goldman (25:39)
In line there you go. You want me to say core? Could I say coffee too to really show him from New York?
Maura Thomas (25:58)
the in-between moments when we used to have time to reflect and consolidate information and think about our day, our lives, our world, kind of digest the information that we consume. We used to have that time waiting in lines or riding an elevator or walking across the parking lot or sitting in a stop sign or whatever. And now in any positive activity,
We are so conditioned to go, go, go, do, do, do all the time that those pause moments are gone because we all pull out our device so that we can do something. But we forget that letting our brain reflect and process is doing something and it's doing something really important because that's when insights happen.
Mike Goldman (26:43)
How do you do that? When I'm in line, I said it right this time, when I'm in line and I pull that phone out, is it just a matter of willpower and say, you know what, I'm going to get in line this time and I'm just not going to look at my phone? I'm in a stoplight. I'm not going to look at my phone at this stoplight. Is it really just a matter of developing, using willpower to develop different habits or is there a better way to do it?
Maura Thomas (26:56)
You
Well, so there's ways to develop your willpower, right? Which is one of the easiest things is to make the things you want to do easy and make the things you want to do hard. Like if you drive with your phone in the back seat or in the trunk, it's gonna be pretty hard for you to pull it out of the stoplight, right? So you don't need any willpower at all. You physically cannot access your phone.
Mike Goldman (27:38)
There you go.
Maura Thomas (27:42)
If you are, if you go into get a cup of coffee, leave the phone in the car so that you can just look around and, and process your thoughts and let your mind wander because that's how we learn. That's how we move information that we consume from short-term memory to long-term memory. That's how we learn it. When I, you and I both speak for Vistage Mike and
when I, so we do, I don't know about yours, mine is like a three hour workshop for leaders. And so of course we take a break about every hour, 10 or 15 minutes. And literally as soon as I said the word break, people are reaching for their phone. Yes. So what I tell them is, before, before I tell you the thing that we're going to do next, which you can guess it's been about an hour and I set this up, right?
Mike Goldman (28:12)
Me too.
Maura Thomas (28:34)
when I start, we're gonna take a break about every hour. So then I say, all right, we're coming up at the top of the hour. So before I say that word that you're waiting for me to say, let me just suggest that for the first half, you do not pick up your phone. So we're heading into a break. So my challenge to you is to leave your phone where it is. Take the first half of the break to just reflect, maybe talk to another person.
And then if you must check your phone before we start again, then in the second half of the break, go ahead. But just see how that feels and just see what happens. And so if we can introduce through our, by making it easy for ourselves to introduce these moments of pause back into our day, then we can reflect more. And I mean, what is more important for leaders than self-reflection, right? We can reflect more.
We can digest more, we can process more, we can have more insights, we can stimulate our creativity, all of that stuff.
Mike Goldman (29:33)
I love that. I love that. put the, it's, you're, changing your environment to some degree to make the habit easier to follow you. know you, you talk in your book about unconscious calculations, say a little bit more about what that means and how that kind of reinforces some of these unproductive habits.
Maura Thomas (29:41)
Exactly right. Exactly. ⁓
Yeah. So an unconscious calculation in my definition, I like made this up kind of other people call it other things, but it's an unconscious calculation is something that we seem to believe based on our behavior, but we have never actually examined it to see if we do believe it or if it's even true. So for example, an unconscious calculation that I see in my clients is that aren't
are we will lose business if we do not respond to incoming requests from clients immediately. We will lose business. Are you sure? Have you ever looked at that? Cause I, I would much rather an accurate, thorough response than an immediate response. And if you set up my expectation properly, like I call your office. So when I first moved to Austin,
I was looking for a dentist. And so I asked a bunch of people, I probably at the time posted on Facebook, whatever, who's the best dentist in Austin. Many, many people said this one dentist. So I called and I got, thank you very much for your call. We're assisting other patients right now. If you'd like to make an appointment, we will call you back within one business day. Please leave a message. And I was like, well, they're busy. They're the best dentist in town.
Of course it makes perfect sense that I would get their voicemail because they're busy. As long as they keep that commitment that they made, we will call you back within one business day, which of course they did. I'm fine. I don't have a burning desire to make a dentist appointment right at this instant. Call me back, So what I say to my clients is, not here to tell, you know your business better than I do. The question,
that I would suggest you consider is how can you serve your clients in the way you think they need to be served in a way that doesn't undermine your team's ability to do their best work every day? How can you serve your clients in a way that doesn't contribute to a culture of urgency, a way that instead contributes to a culture of thoughtful, deep work, genius, brilliance, creativity?
authenticity, accuracy, quality, right? So that's the question. so that's what an unconscious calculation is. And there's so many of them that we all have. My work just requires 60 hours a week. Does it? Does it really? I mean, how many companies now are going to a four day work week? And everybody says, we never thought we could do it. And they're doing it.
get more done better. So those are unconscious calculations.
Mike Goldman (32:40)
So
when we think about leaders who
who want to create this organization with the culture of productivity and the way you are defining it and attracting great people and keeping great people and people feel great about what they're doing. Part of the answer is to model these things yourself. All these things we're talking about, model that. In addition to that, and we've talked about a few of them, but what's maybe one most important thing for the leader that
wants to go beyond just making these changes themselves, they want to go out and they want to start making these changes to the culture, to their whole organization. What's one most important thing, maybe the first thing, what's something they can do to start moving forward on that?
Maura Thomas (33:37)
Yeah, I think there are two things they go hand in hand. Remember how much power words have and choose your words to create your culture with intention. So.
I think one of the most powerful things is to change the language that we say in our head to other people, that we write in job descriptions, that we put in company communications, eliminate the language time management and substitute it for the phrase attention management because the more we think in our head managing our attention, the more aware we become of how distracted we are.
And awareness is the first step to changing any behavior, to changing any habit. You can't change a habit that you don't know you have. And so the more I think to myself, attention management, the more I start to say, I should have closed my door. I should have put my phone on silent. I should have left my phone in the car. Right. And the more we start to say that, the more likely our behavior is to change. And not only do we, when we say it to ourselves, not only do we start to become aware of how
distracted we are but then if we use that phrase with other people then those other people start to recognize how distracted they are but they also start to realize how distracting they are and so then the behavior starts to change because the leader is saying through their choice of the phrase attention management they are saying that they value thoughtful undistracted deep work that allows people
to really muster all of the qualities that they were hired for to begin with. Because we're not our best selves. We switch what we're doing every minute or so, and we are not the best version of ourselves in one minute increments, right? If you've ever thought to yourself, I probably shouldn't have said that. Then you know we are not the best version of ourselves in one minute increments, right? And so being thoughtful about word choice. And not only that word, but words like
attention management, words like open door policy, words like being responsive or being timely, words like emergency. What does an emergency mean at your organization? Because most things truly, the easy definition that I give to my clients to define emergency is it can't wait at least a couple hours. And in most organizations, there are very few things that can't wait at least a couple hours. So
I think that's one easy thing that leaders can do is really be thoughtful about their word choice and defining words so everybody's on the same page about what an open door policy means. Everybody's on the same page about what an emergency means or about what being responsive to clients means.
Mike Goldman (36:31)
Excellent. Love it. so in addition to speaking more, you work with clients. What are all the ways you go out there and kind of add value to the world, some of it speaking, but give us a bigger picture of how you go out there and help leaders and individuals.
Maura Thomas (36:53)
Yeah, thanks. I ⁓ train teams. So I speak at company all hands meetings or industry associations like I know you do. I do training for the team on workflow skills that includes attention management, but also things like managing tasks and managing emails and running effective meetings and leadership culture and all of those kinds of things. And I do, I...
I do leadership retreats as well. So I facilitate leadership retreats where we talk about creating the culture of productivity with intention. And those are the primary things.
Mike Goldman (37:30)
And if someone wants to find out more about any of those things, where should they go?
Maura Thomas (37:36)
Yeah, a really great tool that we have just developed. It's a productivity assessment and it is designed to help you uncover where the biggest kind of thieves are in your world. So you take the assessment and then you get this document that has a resource like an article or something to read for every, everything you discover is undermining you.
there's a resource where you can learn how to make it stop undermining you. And most of those resources are free. So that's at maurathomas.com/productivity-assessment
Mike Goldman (38:15)
love that. You know what's beautiful about that? If someone says, Maura, I have no time to take the assessment. You say, well, that's exactly why you need the assessment. That's beautiful. I like that. I like that. Well, this was great. I'm so happy we had a chance to do this. I always say if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. Maura, thanks for helping us get there today.
Maura Thomas (38:24)
Exactly right.
It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Mike.