Productivity Tips – How present in the moment are you?

Productivity Tips – How to be present in the moment

Productivity Tips – How present in the moment are you?

Have you ever stopped to people watch for an hour? Heck, even 10 minutes will allow you to witness what I’m about to describe.

When was the last time you saw two people sit across the table from each other and just talk, making eye contact the entire time?

Productivity Tips – The Opposite of…

Instead, it usually goes a little something like this:

Jan sits down to wait for Ricardo. While waiting, she pulls out her tablet so she can “report” her geographic location via social media. She’s so engrossed that she doesn’t see Ricardo walk up, and he startles her.

Ricardo sits down, setting his smartphone on the table. As their conversation starts, his phone rings. He picks it up, looks at who’s calling, then apologizes for leaving the ringer on. He turns off the ringer and returns his attention to Jan.

Another minute into the conversation, Jan sees out of the corner of her eye something change on her tablet screen. She glances at her screen, swipes something on it, and then looks back up at Ricardo.

Ricardo’s phone vibrates on the table. He looks at the number on the screen, apologizes, and says he must take this call. “Hi, Nathan. I’m in a meeting and can’t talk. Can I call you back later?”

And this is how their meeting goes. Thirty minutes of constant interruptions. There is never any truly focused time when the person across the table is the only thing in the world that matters and, therefore, has the utter and complete attention of the other. This is a case of not being intentional. This is not being present in the moment.

Productivity Tips – Be present in the moment

It’s really important that we focus on being present in the moment, that we’re intentional with everything we do. The more attention we pay to what’s in front of us, the more productive we’ll be.

Over the next three weeks, we’ll examine productivity tips that will help us to be more present, more focused and become more productive.

This post: How present are you?

Next time: How can you be more intentional, more present in the moment?

Part 3: 4 steps to be more present in the moment

Part 4: Questions to ask yourself in order to be more present in the moment

For more productivity tips, check out our other blogs.