Mindful transitions for a better day at work

One of the most challenging aspects of leadership amongst the chaos and diversity of an average day is staying in the present moment and giving full attention to whatever activity is happening at that time.

Here’s some common occurrences in my life that I am working on improving:

Morning fog — Wake up. Check email 5 minutes after waking. Respond to emails I can respond to with one line, star others. Spend rest of morning at home drafting and (re)drafting responses to emails in my head I didn’t have time to respond to — when I want to be a fully engaged father and husband.

Meeting logjam — a first meeting juts up against the second meeting, and ends with a speedy ‘OK great — I have another call starting, lets talk soon’. Second meeting begins, and I’m still thinking about actions and unresolved items from the first meeting. For the first 5 minutes of the second meeting, I’m somewhere else.

1-on-1 stupor — a recurring 1-on-1 meeting begins and I haven’t consciously thought about the agenda. I spend the first few minutes talking out loud to figure out what should be discussed in the meeting.

Email wedge — I haven’t checked email in an hour or two, so I spend 3 minutes before a meeting filling myself in. See morning fog, above.

Evening fog — after the kids go to sleep, to unwind I watch a Netflix show and every few minutes check email with my iPhone next to me. I miss various lines from the show but respond within minutes to emails that come in out-of-hours.

Bringing your day to bed — I have trouble falling asleep thinking about an issue from the day, or a live email discussion that wasn’t fully resolved before lights out.

All of the above in one way or another relate to how I transition from one activity of my day to another. Here are some practices that I’ve introduced to transition with intention, & stay focused and energized:

Create 5–10 minute buffers throughout the day — an extra few minutes minutes is surprisingly sufficient to 1) ensure that prior meetings are closed out appropriately and formally — actions are clear, next steps documented and 2) enter the next meeting consciously with a clear head, having spent a few minutes mentally revisiting purpose of the meeting. Google calendar’s speedy meeting feature is a great facilitator for this.
Use physical notebooks — besides creating a better rapport as humans, not having a screen open during meetings avoids the temptation to check IMs or emails. This keeps the conversation flowing. Later I transcribe the key points to Evernote at a later time- or just photograph the page.
Make email checking a proactive, conscious act — rather than pulling out a phone and checking email mindlessly throughout the day, I’ve tried to set aside time specifically for checking and responding to email. We live in a fast-paced world, but not so fast that a several-hour turnaround time is inappropriate. For more urgent matters, there’s always the phone.
When in doubt — don’t check. I find that the stress of not knowing can easily be forgotten — but the churning of a response in my head stays with me.
Use commute home to transition to ‘home mode’ — its tempting to continue to check or engage in work after I’ve left the office. In my case, I know I will be logging back in later in the evening, so I use my commute home to put the phone down and set my intention of being a dad and husband again.
Save contentious communication for the work day — not every email or phone conversation can be pleasant- however, I don’t engage in debate or unharmonious communication outside of work hours if I can at all avoid it.
Set boundaries—I try and have a hard cut-off time for email in the evening to allow myself to transition to ‘sleep mode’. This is typically 30–60 minutes before I go to bed. And I’ve long since moved my iPhone out of the bedroom to avoid that temptation.

Tying everything together is a meditation practice that I aspire to be a daily occurrence — however, I’ve found that even a small amount of conscious breathing throughout the day keeps me on point.