Author, speaker, and leadership strategist Neen James reveals the thing you touch 2,000 times a day, and breaks down concentric circles of attention, dedicating yourself in increments, the very real economic cost of distraction, and why YOU, the leader, might be the problem.

Neen James has a book called Attention Pays, How to

Drive Profitability, Productivity and Accountability

to Achieve Maximum Results. Neen, welcome to the show.

What a delight to be able to serve your listeners.

The thing I'm always interested in, especially in

productivity. What is new? What do you think is the forward

thinking element of this book? And how do you think this

advances the conversation around productivity and results?

When you think about time, time is going to happen,

whether you like it or not, you and I, we get the same 1440

minutes in a day. We can't control time. Time's a great

equalizer, and time is not prejudiced. And I don't believe

in time management. I think time management's out the window. And

in the world, we don't have a time management crisis. We have

an attention crisis. You can't manage time, but you can manage

your attention. We get a choice about what we want to gift our

attention to, and I think we have developed this attention

deficit society. And I'm not talking add that's something

very different, that's medically diagnosed. I'm talking about an

attention deficit society where people are wandering around to

your point. They're overwhelmed, they're overstressed. We are

attached to our devices. When I was researching the book

attention pays, I named this overwhelmed, overstressed,

overtired as the over trilogy. And we did all this research

around the concerns people have. And I don't know if you've heard

this, but one of the things we uncovered in our research is

just take a stab. How many times do you think we touch our cell

phone in a day? Just like take a guess how many times? According

to D Scout study last year, the average user touches their cell

phone 2617 times a day, like that. Imagine touching anything

or anyone that many times a day. But here's what concerns me

about that is, I think what's happened in moving the

conversation forward is we've made technology more important

than people, and so what's happening is we're creating

these behaviors and habits where, if the person's not

engaging us, we look to our device, or when, as leaders,

when people come into our office, we don't look up from

our computer. We keep finishing that email. I watch people when

they're out on this hot date, and they're both sitting there

texting. It's crazy, and I think devices have a place, and I'm

not anti cell phones, and I love the way they help us stay

connected in the world. However, I think what is really important

as leaders to think about is, how do you truly want to get

people focused on the results, whether it's productivity,

profitability, and holding that team accountable? And so the

work when I was my body of work now, is really focused on

advancing the conversation who deserves your attention? What

deserves your attention? And how are you going to pay attention

in the world? And that's what we call the attention pace

framework. So personally, professionally and globally,

because we need to pay attention to those important

relationships. And think about the way we show up in the world,

with our spiritual lives, emotional lives, relational

lives, our physical lives, like we have an educational life.

There's all these components to us. And when you think about the

fact that, let's just stay like some basics, if you don't get

the sleep you need, you don't have the energy that you need,

if you don't take care of your body and you eat the right

things if you're not meditating or doing your quiet time or

whatever that means it looks like for you. These components.

What happens is we constantly respond to busy. And I think we

live in a society where we try and out busy each other like

it's fascinating to me, especially in the US where we

were busy like a badge of honor, like you go to a party or you go

to a meeting, if someone says, Well, how are you? And you're

like, Oh, I'm busy. And then someone goes, Oh, my God, you

think you're busy. I'm so busy. And we're like, wearing this,

like it's something we're proud of. And what I want people to

think about is we can have 100% choice about who gets our

attention and where we're spending our time and our

energy. And so I think what's happening is we're just doing

things. We're crossing things off lists, and the wrong things

are making it to our list. We're going through our email, but

we're not diligently being strategic about what really

requires our attention.

So let's talk about that specifically. How do you decide

who deserves your attention? Yep, this does deserve

attention, and. Nope. This does not.

Think of it as like concentric circles. In the

middle circle, you have those most intimate relationships. So

obviously our attention is going to be to our intimate circle

first, then it's going to be maybe the immediate circle.

These are people like your family, your extended, close

relationships, and these are the people that we wear in our

heart, that us, that have that place in our heart, that are

super important. But then when you think about that, it then

goes out beyond that, and we look at the colleagues that we

work with, our team, members, that we serve, our leadership,

that we serve, our clients we serve, and then ultimately,

wider than that, is our community. Many of us have board

positions volunteers in our church community temple. So if

you think of it as concentric circles, and when you're really

pressed for time, you want to think about how close are these

people to you. And so when you consider what priorities you

have on your plate, the people that you care the most deeply

about are often the reason you work as hard as you do, the

reason people work so hard and get stressed and get tired is

they're trying to create a lifestyle for people they love.

The challenge is that those people end up getting the

leftovers because they're working so hard, they don't have

the best of that individual. I just want leaders to start to

consider how they're prioritizing and scheduling

their time so that that intimate and immediate circle become a

priority in their calendar. You might have, as a leader,

multiple meetings you get invited to, but you want to

think about of those meetings, of those people, those

relationships, who's going to advance what meetings can you

attend? What people can you invest in? What relationships do

you need to improve to ultimately impact your results.

And most leaders that I know have their own KPIs key

performance indicators, that it could be profitability targets,

it might be performance objectives, but there are things

that are going to impact that. So we have to think about who in

those circles is impacting those results, and that will help you

make those decisions about who deserves your attention. And I

think of my life in seasons. And so for example, there are

certain seasons when you publish a new book, when you released

your company, when you were building your team, when you had

a new baby. We have these seasons in our life, and those

seasons often dictate who becomes the focus of our

attention. So when you write a new book, like attention pays

it's like having a baby. It's maybe not as physically painful,

but it's emotionally ridiculous, right? So it's going to be time

consuming, thought consuming. It's going to be the focus of my

time and attention when we look at our calendar and the seasons

in our life, there will always be choices. There will always be

people who want your attention. There will be people that want

you to serve churches, temples, associations, industries, there

will be people on the team who want more of your attention than

others, and one of the things that we have to think about is

it's not selfish to take self care. And so you may need to

start with yourself and think about, Okay, today, what do I

need to do? Who do I need to invest in? In order for me to

advance my goals, my objectives, my relationships? Are you going

to feel bad? Yeah. Are you going to disappoint people?

Absolutely. Are you going to feel a little bad about those

things? Definitely. And we have to, as leaders, come to terms

with the fact that we can't be everything to everyone. We can't

be at every meeting. We can't be at every board meeting or

Association event or conference we want to attend, we have to

make very deliberate choices. And I really believe that our

attention is a choice. Attention is all about connection. We get

to choose who we want to connect with and how that's going to

connect us to the bigger objectives we have.

Talk to me about what to lend your attention to. I think

you describe this as professionally, right?

Yeah, this is really, if you think about what

deserves your attention, is how do you really get productive?

It's really about choosing what is going to deserve your

attention. Now, for many of the leaders I work with, they have

KPIs, K performance indicators, or they have objectives. And

many of your listeners would have their own version of goals,

whether it's the personal or professional goals that they've

set up. But what is all about prioritizing the time and

attention you have to achieve the goals that you have in your

life? So for many whether you're an individual, whether you're an

entrepreneur, whether you're a solopreneur, maybe you're a

speaker listening to this, maybe you are a service leader, a

community leader, what you want to think about is one of the

things that will actually advance what it is your working

lunch. So for me, I'm going to call that productivity. One of

the things I encourage people to think about is think about time

in a different way. So if we'll get that 1440 minutes in a day,

and chances are these days, people don't feel like they have

an hour anymore, could you just look at time in 15 minute

increments. I think 15 minutes is the key to productivity, and

if you can have 15 dedicated minutes, it's amazing what you

can achieve. And so what I encourage all my leaders to do,

let's just start with a 15 minute strategic appointment

with yourself every single day. Have one strategic appointment

at the beginning. Of the day. And here's what I encourage all

my leaders to do. And it doesn't matter whether they're

executives from Paramount Pictures, Comcast, J and J, all

the leaders I work with, they have this 15 minute strategic

appointment. And what they do is they identify their top three

not negotiable activities. So before your head hits the pillow

tonight, what's your three? And I look my simplest way to do

this. I've tried every app, spreadsheet, you name it. I've

tried it, and I still come back to a super fancy little post it

note. And on the post it note, I literally write today I will,

and then I write my three things. It is truly the easiest

thing, because that little 20 post it note becomes your

decision filtering system, and you can carry that post it note

with you everywhere. So it's just one strategic appointment.

It's 15 minutes slow, and you identify your top three not

negotiable activities. And every listener can do that just by

investing 15 minutes. And they get hyper clear on what's most

essential for today. So the what is about identifying, what is

your not negotiable activities that absolutely must get

completed.

One of the words that you introduce here, which I think is

powerful, is globally. So can you talk about the concept of

what you mean when you use the word globally?

I do. I think that the way that we choose to show

up in the world, this is the how, like, how are we really

taking care of? Let's look at the resources we have the planet

that we live on. So globally, is not just the world in which we

live and taking care to make sure we're paying attention, to

recycle and protect the species and just to be a better human,

to make better, more responsible decisions. It's also about the

community in which you serve. And for many people, it could be

that, if you're listening to this, maybe you are involved in

your school board, maybe you are involved in your church

community, maybe you are involved in a community where

you can then think about, how do I show up as the best version of

myself? How do I take care of the resources that I have, the

people that I serve? So global to me is obviously a planet in

which we live and how we're paying attention to that. But

also, too, if you think about this as a business owner, and I

know many of your listeners are business owners. As business

owners, we have a responsibility to take care of the resources

that we are given, and it could be as simple as implementing a

recycling program in your organization. And so many

organizations have done a brilliant job of engaging their

employees and helping with this many of the clients I work with,

some of my pharmaceutical clients, for example, they give

their employees a day of service where they are at choice about

where they want to serve in the community or something they're

passionate about, and they're paid for this day because the

company is so committed to that there are organizations. One of

my favorites is an organization called City Year. It's a

partnership that Comcast, one of my clients, Dave Gon, is on

their board, and so every year, they support City Year. And City

Year is just a phenomenal organization, but what Comcast

has done as a corporate citizen is support City Year. There are

so many ways that as companies, we can do it. As leaders, we can

look for opportunities to encourage our team to give their

attention to things that they're passionate about. Doc Kenley,

Wine to Water. He saw a need for he was a bartender in Raleigh,

North Carolina, and he realized the world needed more water, and

there were places without it, and so he created these wells

all over the world. There are so many ways we can pay attention

to the planet we live on, and the community, the communities

we serve in, and we just have to start directing our attention,

because we may only have a small amount of time, but we

definitely have resources and attention we can give to it.

And so how do you just kind of reconcile that the

conflict you know kind of coming back to your you know early on,

where you have, like, your intimate circle, your immediate

circle, and then you get out to the community. And now here,

when you start singing globally, is that the same thing is kind

of going, Okay, think about certain places we can use our

attention. Are those the same two levels in that conversation?

Or are they different? And how do you...

I think they can intersect. I think they're

different. So for example, if you're a leader listening to

this, you have employees who work with you. There might be

particular things they were really passionate about. As an

organization, are you able to even implement something like a

matching program that every dollar they donate to a

particular organization, your organization matches it. That's

not actually going to take you a lot of time, but as an

organization, you're saying we stand for something. It might be

as a leader that you have the opportunity to control

sponsorship dollars for different events. Maybe that's a

way. So you may not have a lot of time on your hands, but you

may have resources. It could be the opposite. It could be you

don't have a lot of finance. Resources to contribute, but you

do have time where you could volunteer and you could help. So

I think it is that outer concentric circle of community,

but I do believe that each of us has a responsibility to truly

take care of the community we serve in and the greater world

now being Australian, Australians are very

environmentally we're a small country, we recycle everything

like things are organic, just because they are and that's sort

of how I grew up. And then when I moved to the US, there was a

really big disconnect. And so for me, I think there is a

incredible personal passion too, but it doesn't have to be a big

deal. Imagine if people just started like recycling in their

homes a little more diligently. Imagine if we just took more

care about maybe there's an opportunity to walk catch public

transport, as opposed to constantly getting in our cars.

Now this is my little bandwagon. This is my little soapbox, I

guess. And I think each of us every day can make different

decisions around what we're putting our attention towards

that have a greater impact on the world, at home, at work and

in your community, it's another set of circles, and I think for

each of us, it doesn't have to be something we're spending time

on every day. I just want to raise the awareness of how we're

investing our global attention.

So I have one other question for you in just a

second about leaders. But before I do that, where do you want

people to go to connect with you? And Attention Pays again,

is the name of the book. Where do you want people to go, Neen?

I'm the only Neen James online. So if you Google

Neen James, n, e, e n, j, A, M, E s.com, you will find me. So

Neen James on Twitter and LinkedIn. If you want to see my

adventures, go to Instagram, but you'll be able to find

everything you need about the book. If you just do a search by

my name, there's only one Neen James online.

So our last little question for you. Neen, in the

spirit of leadership, business owners and leaders measure every

financial cost to a business, but almost nobody measures and

tracks the amount of time that is wasted, or in your case,

let's say, the amount of attention that is wasted. But

when you're a leader, knowing that attention is a form of

currency. Every second of attention that someone on your

team is spending on something that is not in alignment with

the vision or the objectives that you're moving them, there

is a real financial cost to that. So what is a leader would

be the very first thing you would suggest that they take

action on?

The first thing I would suggest is eliminate

distractions. In according to the information overload group,

it costs us businesses 580 $8 billion every year because of

constant interruptions. So think about how do we eliminate

distractions? And just as a leader, one of the biggest

distractions is you. You as the leader are often the problem,

right? Because you're constantly saying to your team, hey, you

have a second. You have a minute to have a second, you have a

minute. It's never a second. It's never a minute. And then

you might say to someone, Hey, can you What do you think about

this man? That person then takes that and says, Oh, my God, my

boss wants me to go find out about this. And so they go on

this path as a leader, you call meetings unnecessarily. You've

always had an 830 Monday morning meeting, so you still have the

830 Monday morning meeting. And I'm suggesting maybe what you

want to consider is every time you ask someone to spend their

minutes with you, they never get them back. So as a leader, can

you eliminate some of the distractions, including how you

are a distraction to your team as well. I often consult to

organizations, let's just say, even on their environment, some

of my clients have moved from offices to open plan

productivity. And while open plan is collaborative and it's

fun and it's energetic, it can also bring its own set of

challenges. And so for many of my clients have had to be able

to teach them. How do you pay attention in these fast moving,

open plan environments? I want to encourage the leaders have a

look at where you can eliminate distractions. Maybe encourage

people to wear headphones if they're trying to get work done.

Book a meeting space if they're trying to get very thoughtful,

strategic work done. Allow some of your team members to work

from home if they're working on something strategic and

important, start canceling meetings that are unnecessary.

Stop sending emails late at night. Oh my gosh. So many

leaders that I work with, I beg them to stop sending emails late

at night, while it may be out of your brain and in someone else's

inbox, every time you send a team member an email late at

night, you're stealing minutes from their family. And I want

you just to think about you can write the email, just don't send

it, save it as a draft and send it tomorrow. There are so many

ways as a leader, we can help prevent this wasted money and

time when we start focusing on how we can eliminate being a

distraction.

Wow, that's a sobering thought, that as the leader, you

are some of the cause of the distraction. Well, very good.

Neen, thank you for sharing with us, and so we wish you all the

best.

Thank you. I appreciate being on here, and

thank you so much for everything that you do.