Maura Nevel Thomas - How attention management drives productivity and helps your business scale ScaleX™ Insider Podcast

In today’s episode I’m delighted to introduce Maura Nevel Thomas. Maura is an award-winning international speaker, trainer, and author on individual and corporate productivity and work-life balance and is the most widely cited authority on attention management. 
She helps driven, motivated knowledge workers control their attention and regain control over the details of their life and work. Maura has trained thousands of individuals at hundreds of organisations on her proprietary Empowered Productivity™ System, a process for achieving meaningful results and living a life of choice. 
 In today’s episode, Maura talks about:  
Why time management is outdated How attention management is the new path to productivity How to be present in the moment How we become conditioned to distractions The biggest challenge of a team’s productivity is the culture of the organisation and the behaviour of the leaders. Winning the war against information overload Managing people’s expectations Why we must control technology, or we end up at the mercy of it How we are training our brains to expect interruptions The importance of single tasking How to avoid distraction Managing work-life balance How business leaders can improve their productivity Listen Out For:  
The biggest challenge that we have is distraction and you can't solve a distraction problem with a time solution. It doesn't matter how much time you have. If you are distracted and frequently task switching, you will not be able to muster brainpower momentum. It’s not the moments in your life that matter, it’s the life in your moments that matter. Productivity is about the legacy that you leave behind all the way down to the most important thing you need to do today, and anything in between.  The more distracted we are, the more distracted we will be, and. We have become conditioned into a habit of distraction. When we apply ourselves fully, when we unleash that brainpower momentum, that's when we do our best work. That's when we feel satisfied and accomplished and competent at the end of our day and happy . This habit of distraction that we all have is insidious, because it lies to us about what makes us happy Productivity has six components and we need all six to really achieve our most significant results on a consistent basis.  Burnout is such a huge problem. Every time you choose to work, you're not doing something else right. You're not exercising or you're not sleeping, or you're not spending time with your family.  Leaders have a lot more influence on the lives, the happiness, the health, the wellness and the well-being of their employees.  When people are happy at work, they tend to be happier at home which affects their kids, their spouse and their communities. When they're miserable at work, then they have nothing left to give to their families or their communities. Exhausted workers mean exhausted families and exhausted communities and exhausted worlds. Exhaustion is optional.  Just because people expect it doesn't mean that you must conform to those expectations.  The more you think about ways to single task only one thing at a time mentally, the more you will find that your ability to stay focused increases. Your habit of distraction starts to fall away, and you are reconditioning your brain.  Sometimes the best thing that you can do for your work is not work. Work Life Balance in simple terms is ‘don't work too much’ and if you wonder what too much means, studies show that productivity starts to go down after about 50 hours a week.  About the Host  
Director and Founder of Simple Scaling, Brendan brings 25 years’ experience of scaling businesses. Previously, Brendan spent 16 years as a global business leader with CDE, 12 of those as Group MD, steering the company through the global financial crisis to considerable strategic growth success with offices now in 6 continents employing almost