242. The Builders Distraction Tax With Maura Thomas

Welcome to another episode of Professional Builders Secrets. In this episode, I interview Maura Thomas. Maura's a time management expert. She was actually voted one of the top 10 time management experts in the world, but she's also been a TEDx speaker. She's written 6 popular books. She's written for Forbes and Harvard Business Review and done a whole bunch of other stuff as well. What's fascinating about this conversation though is we talk about attention. We talk about the fact that our attention is being stolen from us today through social media and everything that we're using from a software and technology perspective. And Maura has a really interesting perspective on how that can impact your productivity as a building company owner. I hope you enjoy the episode. This episode of Professional Builders Secrets is brought to you by Apparatus Contractor Services. Apparatus provides full-scope, end-to-end QuickBooks Precision Construction Accounting and CFO services for residential builders. If you feel like you can't completely trust your weekly and monthly financial reports, or you feel like you're flying blind, Apparatus Root will rebuild and operate your QuickBooks accounting system and give you Precision Construction Accounting capability you can trust. Learn more at ApparatusTeam.com or on the APB Rewards Partner Directory. Welcome to Professional Builders Secrets, the podcast for building company owners wanting to grow safely and securely. I'm your host, Will Blunt, and today I'm joined by Maura Thomas. Maura, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Will. I'm excited to be here.

Very good to have you on. Now, I'm sure builders would have just listened to the phenomenal introduction that I did of you, which I recorded separately to this. But for those that don't know who you are, can you give a bit of a background? You've written books, you've been featured in all the major publications in the world, you've spoken around the world as well on different topics around attention, and it's fascinating. So please just give me a little bit of a background so everyone can get an idea of who you are and why you're here today.

Sure. I've been in the productivity field for my entire professional career. I started out working at a company that sold paper-based planners, you know, those big leather binders with the zipper that double as a shoulder injury. That was where I worked for 10 years. And then I started my business helping small business owners manage their lives more efficiently. And then the companies that I started working with, that I was working with, just started getting bigger. My— a whole bunch of things. My first book came out, and then I got invited to do a TED Talk, and then I got, um, invited to, uh, start writing for Harvard Business Review, and then Forbes came after that, and then I got a 4-book deal with a self-published book in between. So, um, and now I'm fortunate that I have companies in my client roster, like, uh, a lot of large, uh, commercial builders, also some residential builders, but also companies like Google and NASA and Comcast. So it's been quite a ride.

It has been quite a ride. Uh, you've been voted one of the top 10 time management professionals in the world as well. How did that all come about?

That is funny. So that organization is called Global Gurus and they, they basically rate experts. And what's interesting is that I think 30% of how they decide who makes each list is by votes. And so a lot of people run these campaigns and vote for me, vote for me. And I had never even heard of Global Gurus until I got the email that said, we've named you number 8. And so, I have no idea who nominated me or how it came about. I still, I've asked people, I have no idea who, how I made that list, but I did and I was honored. And so, yeah, so productivity has been my path to where I am. And my sort of my approach to productivity has always been that, well, for about the last 15 years has been that time management is actually an outdated framework for productivity because everybody knows that you can't manage time and time is finite and you can't get more of it and you can't back it up and you can't bend it to your will in any way. And if you've ever had a day where you said to yourself, "Oh my gosh, I was busy all day and somehow I got nothing done." And you've ever had a day where you said to yourself, "Oh my gosh! That was such a good day. I got so much done." In both of those cases, you had the same amount of time. You had 24 hours. That's all you got. And so, really time is not the problem. In theory at least, we have all the time we need to have productive, satisfying, engaged days. Our problem in the 21st century is that we have too many distractions. And you can't solve a time management— you can't solve a distraction problem with a time solution. The antidote to distraction is attention. So for the last 15 years, my approach to productivity has been attention management, not time management. And where I'm sort of headed now is is this— I'm calling it sort of in my head, I'm calling it Attention Management 2.0, which is recognizing that attention has become the most valuable commodity on the planet. And as a result, an entire industry of attention merchants has sprung up to monetize our attention for profit, which, you know, It is what it is. But this has been going on for 15 years that our attention has been systematically really stolen from us for— extracted from us, let's say, extracted from us for profit. Not for our profit. We get left with a cost, but for profit of organizations. And so this has been going on for at least 15 years. And so you know what they say about planting the tree. Planting a tree, the best time for us to have started protecting our attention was 15 years ago, but the second best time is now.

Hmm, there's a lot to unpack there because I'm sure all the listeners— a lot of the what you said was really interesting around everyone's got the same amount of time in the day, all that kind of stuff, right? Uh, and I liked how you talked about satisfaction. Because that's a really interesting word that most people don't associate with being productive or time management. They're looking at achieving more things primarily, but satisfaction is something we all desire in life. So that's a fascinating way to look at it, I think, and a nice reframing there. If we dive into the whole attention thing, I mean, my mind immediately goes to social media, which is I think you were alluding to in terms of the last 15 years and how it's controlled a lot of our lives. It's very, very addictive. And a lot of the time you can burn time without even noticing it. And from a business perspective, I think it's fascinating to see how AI has now caught fire so much from a business perspective. And it's like accelerating that problem in the sense that it's like you've only got so much attention, but now you can do it with all of this help from technology. That just creates more of that busy work that, that once was, you know, considered productive, but it kind of leaves you feeling a little bit empty at the end of it.

It absolutely does. There's some really interesting research about psychological well-being and also motivation at work. And in terms of psychological well-being, there are 3 components that are the sort of primary factors that relate to psychological well-being. And those are competence or mastery, relatedness, and autonomy. And when we can direct our work, direct our days— autonomy— when we feel like we are applying ourselves, in a meaningful way and marshaling our skills and our wisdom and our knowledge and, and getting better. And when we are doing that in relationship to other humans, all of those things make us sort of contribute to our mental stability, our mental well-being, and make us feel satisfied and therefore engaged and accomplished at the end of the day. And therefore, it's no surprise that the research on motivation at work shows that the primary thing that makes us feel motivated and engaged at work is progress in meaningful work. And what you said is exactly right. At the end of the— you spent the day working. But what happens is we get caught in this reactive cycle of email and chat and meetings and phone calls and all of this reactive communication. And so, we don't spend any time during the day being proactive. But we can only, we can only be productive when we can be proactive. And we can only be proactive when we're not being reactive. And so, we get stuck in this reactive cycle and our sort of excuse for ourselves is, "Well, this is work." And it's true, it is work, but it leaves us feeling like we didn't get anything done because we didn't really accomplish anything that felt meaningful to us. We just were on that hamster wheel of reaction all day.

I'm thinking about our listeners now, and because they're primarily business owners of building companies, there's two lenses here. There's one lens which is looking at their own day, and then there's the other lens which you've touched on around how their team are motivated day to day and what they're looking for in work as well. So I don't know, do you need to get yourself in order first to understand how your team's impacted, or is it, is it a dual effort?

It is. It's a— I would say it's a dual effort because a lot, a lot of organizations, especially small businesses where the competition is fierce, the level of service and differentiation needs to be high. The problem is that this desire to be— to provide excellent service and to differentiate, for many people, for many organizations, that has in most cases unintentionally boiled down to speed. The faster we are, the faster we respond, the faster we build the house, the faster we get the supplies in, the faster we do everything, the better we are. The better our service level. Faster is better. And it's certainly not black and white. There is some truth to that. However, oftentimes that comes about without intention. And companies just sort of talk about being responsive and staying on track and being timely in their responses. And what happens is this creates a culture of distraction and a culture of urgency. And there is probably something to be said for speed, but I think that competing on speed eventually becomes a race to the bottom. It's like competing on costs because anybody can be fast. Any— all of your competitors can be fast. And so how— so what I help my clients with is how can you provide the level of service that you want to provide to your customers, to your clients, while also differentiating yourself on quality and innovation and creativity, because anyone can be fast.

Yeah, that's an interesting way to look at it. I mean, I'm just thinking about my own experience, of course, but also through the lens of our builders. There is that expectation to do more, to do more, to get more out there. And taking a breath and stepping back is not something we do a lot these days.

No, it isn't. And so, you were asking before about, is it an either/or or is it both? And so, it's both because the leaders' behaviors tend to proliferate this cycle of distraction, this culture of urgency where everything is now, now, now, and we got to do it now, and we got to respond to everything right now. And so, that stifles, that is completely mutually exclusive to creativity and innovation and deep thinking and really the things that you can differentiate on if you can't differentiate on speed. So, the leaders really need to think about the kind of culture they're creating through their own behaviors and their own language. And also, leaders often think about what motivates their people as being, to a certain extent, in conflict with the needs of the organization. Because, for example, we think about people are motivated by more money, and we have limits to how much we can offer in terms of our pay. People are motivated by, you know, advancement and fancy titles and corner offices, but there's a limit to how much— a small business can offer that. People are motivated by, you know, vacation time and all of those kinds of things, all of which are at least to some extent in conflict with the needs of the organization. But if you understand that what truly motivates people is making progress in meaningful work on a day-to-day basis, then you realize that the needs of the individual and the needs of the organization are actually beautifully aligned. Because if everyone on the team is accomplishing more of their most important work every day, then the company becomes unstoppable.

Yeah, no, it's a great way to look at it. I'm sorry, I've kind of thrown the questions we set out, out the window because everything you're saying is really interesting and I just want to dive deeper. So I hope you're okay with that.

I'm totally fine with that. That's great.

Talk to me more about how our attention is getting stolen from us or engineered away from us on purpose, because you only touched on that very briefly, but I think there's a lot more to talk about there.

So much more. So much more. So we live in the attention economy, and what that means is that attention is the currency. Attention is the resource that is monetized, just like in the industrial age where labor was divided into units and monetized, so now is attention. It's divided into units and monetized. Your attention, our attention is literally the product being sold. And so, and it is being sold to us, um, it is being extracted from us under the guise of convenience and benefit to us, right? If you, um, if you spend more time on, on, you know, this social media platform, you'll find more people that align with your interests, and you'll learn more about things that you're interested in and find people who think like you, and you'll get things that benefit you. All the while, the platforms are specifically engineered with some of the brightest minds in the world on cognitive psychology and behavioral analysis and neuroscience to really hack our, our brains to keep us on the platforms for longer and longer periods of time. Because the longer we stay on a platform or on an app or on a website or with a piece of hardware, the more we, the longer we stay on it and the more we come back to it. That is literally what their success is based on. That's what their profit is based on. And so they are highly motivated to, um, get as much of our attention as possible and to take it even without our awareness, because the more aware we are of when our attention is being stolen, the more likely we are to exert more agency over our attention. So if they can just sort of sneak it in and we don't really notice and then they get more profit. So the way that I look at it is that our attention is stolen for profit. And what is left for us is not only— it's not that it leaves nothing in its wake, it actually leaves a cost in its wake. And the cost is what I think of as a distraction tax because we are paid— we pay in fractured thinking, in damaged relationships, in foggy mental resources, in decision-making ability, in all of— in time, in lost time, right? So we pay every time our attention is stolen, and the research estimates that the cost to an organization is about $500,000 US per year for every 25 employees. Wow. So it adds up quickly.

I guess I'm thinking about it from a personal attention point of view. You know, you get caught on social media on your phone and then you're addicted to looking at that when you wake up, when you go to bed, all those things. But you're talking about during the workday as well.

All of the things we— because social media conditions us, really the whole online environment, the whole online environment conditions us to a state of constant distraction. And it— all of the platforms use a variety of psychological hooks to keep us engaged. Things like You might have heard about variable rewards. It's the same idea as slot machines, right? You pull the lever and maybe, maybe it's gonna be something great. Well, all of our social media feeds work the same way. And in fact, if you think about it, on your phone, what do you have to do to refresh most pages on your phone? You pull down. You pull down. It's the same kind of slot machine mechanism. And a lot of people have, um, kind of a, a little bit of a misunderstanding of dopamine because people talk about the dopamine hit that you get from, um, being on social media. Oh, you find something great and that gives you a dopamine hit. It's not— that's not actually when you get the dopamine hit. The dopamine is related to the anticipation. It's the pull down. It's the, it's the pull. It's the what's going to happen. That is what gives you the dopamine hit. And so that's why we have the bouncing dots when somebody's texting you back. That's why it's pull down to refresh. And, and that keeps us engaged. That's just one of a whole bunch of ways. That these platforms really sort of hack our, our cognitive resources, um, so that they're used in a way that we wouldn't choose if we did choose. And so that's really kind of my mission, is to help people make more intentional choices.

Yeah, slot machines, we call them pokie machines in Australia, uh, it's a big problem out here because in the US, my understanding is that you can only access them at a casino or a reserve or whatever where they're actually planned to be. In Australia, they're in every, like, local bar or pub, um, everywhere. And it's a lot of widespread addiction in gambling.

Yeah, well, and now we have online gambling too, right? I mean, and in fact, there's these, um, prediction markets, and you can bet on, you know, what the weather's going to be tomorrow or what the government is going to do, or— I mean, you can bet on anything. It's It is just, it is a downward spiral that frightens me, to be honest with you.

The other thing we spoke about social media, but I think as well, there's, there's a lot of games available on smartphones and things like that, especially for kids. And the way that they are engineered is to create addiction. And then there's like micro sales in there. So, you know, you buy a token or you buy this or you buy that and it's like incremental. And the kids getting so addicted to these things. I mean, there's obviously ethical issues right there, but it sounds like it's all engineered around the same psychology as, as what you're talking about.

It absolutely is. And not only that, but what I call the productivity paradox, the very tools that we use to do our work use these same techniques, email, chat, our devices that we get, you know, work devices that keep you connected to work, they also keep you distracted and they steal your attention all day long. The more you check your email, the more you feel compelled to check your email.

Yeah, I mean, I do it every morning. I open up my phone and I go to the email inbox and just do the, as you said, the pulldown refresh just to make sure there's anything there. And then if You see, the worst thing is when you do it at night and then you see something that you need to act on or you feel like you need to act on. Yeah. And then that creates anxiety because if you don't act on it, then you don't sleep well, etc. And there's a flow-on effect there. And the only way to not have that feeling is to not look at it in the first place. But that's much harder because it's a habit.

It's so much more even insidious than that, Will, because it's it not just— even if there's nothing there, um, there's the light from the phone that keeps you awake. There's the, the, um, the just the, the, the thoughts about work, whether it's good news or whether it's bad news or whether it's neutral, whether it just, it makes you think like, oh yeah, that project and that, you know, when I'm at that site and did those parts come in and, you know, just totally benign things, but it keeps your brain spinning, which makes you— in fact, I just read a study, um, it was about kids, but I, I think the same is true for adults. For, um, every, uh, for, for every certain amount of time— I can't remember the specific details— but for every certain amount of time they spend, um, on a device at night, it delays their sleep by 20 minutes. And so, so we're all just sort of having all these sleep issues because the last thing we do before we close our eyes for most people is to look at a device.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I've got a very young daughter, she's not quite 2 yet, and we're trying very hard to keep her off devices, so not showing her phones. She doesn't watch TV. We're very interactive with the play. Which is more work for the parents, but it's very important. But when she does look at screens, which is on the rare occasion, she might look through photos on one of our phones or watch an episode. She's just so addicted to it. And then she gets so upset when you take that away from her, even though it's not something she regularly gets. And that's like seeing that happen in like reality. It's like, that's the core of what a human is at that age. And that's how addictive it is. It's crazy.

It really is. And it's because whatever she's looking at is, is really, I mean, every single aspect of what she's looking at, the way that iPhone creates memories or the way that episodes are scripted and executed is designed for engagement. How can we keep I mean, I really, I, I think that on the, the online world is really this, the, um, the, the smoking of, of our generation. Um, and children are not the only ones that are susceptible. And one of the biggest challenges for kids is that, I mean, kids model what they see in their parents.

Exactly. Yeah, you really notice that.

Yeah. And so I heard a psychologist, I believe it was a psychologist from Harvard. Her name is Sherry Turkle. And this was many years ago. And I hope I'm attributing it correctly. But my memory of what she said was that kids are competing. For our, for our attention. They're competing with our devices and they're losing. And so their consolation prize is their own device. Hmm. So that is a—

that's a sad reality.

Punch to the gut right there.

The smoking though, it's interesting. I'm really into my sports and there's been this over my lifetime You can kind of see the addiction of time based on their sponsoring of sports teams and sponsoring of sports events. So cigarettes used to be able to sponsor sports teams. They're not allowed to anymore. I'm not sure if that's the case elsewhere, but certainly in Australia. And then alcohol would be the main sponsors. Now gambling is all over everything, all of the betting agencies and everything like that's all over everything. So, uh, maybe social media is the next one.

Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, gambling, gambling platforms and social media platforms are pretty much the same thing, right? Like the, the gambling platform, the primary way that it makes money is your attention, and the secondary way that it makes money is your money.

Yeah, well, I mean, I guess at least if you're on a social media platform and you click on something and go and purchase something, at least you get something out of that compared to gambling where you're just literally handing over your money. Mostly.

Mostly, yeah.

But to your point, it's not necessarily a monetary payment, it's a time payment as well and a psychological payment around anxiety, etc.

Yeah. Yes, it's a cognitive payment. And so it's psychological, it's cognitive. I mean, our distraction is literally making us dumber. Having our phone in our presence lowers our cognitive capacity. Multiple studies have shown there's a whole new thing since the advent of AI but I think it was happening long before AI, called cognitive offloading, where now we don't— if it seems at all cognitively demanding, we're just like, uh, I don't know, I'll just— now, now it's like, I'll let AI do it. But even before that, it— I mean, how often we don't even try anymore. Like, if you're trying to think of a word, or you're trying to think of a memory, or what movie was that in, or, you know, what was that baseball stat or whatever, we don't even try. We don't even try to remember. We don't work our memory at all. We just, I don't know, let me just look it up. And not only, so there's a cognitive decline, but also do you remember when you used to sit around in a pub with your friends and the social aspect, so many times the conversation revolved around like a friendly dispute dispute about, no, it was that. No, no, no, it was that. And but if it was that, it was this. And then it was this. And right, you're having this whole, like this whole animated discussion. And now all of that is gone. Because it's like, I don't know. Oh, no, it was that. Okay.

Anyway, okay. What do we talk about now?

So we have lost, we have lost wonder. In so many ways, we have lost the sense of awe and wonder. But we've also lost the whole like, I wonder what, I wonder what. And because for any I wonder thought in our head, we know that the answer is at our fingertips. So we don't wonder, we just get the answer. Hmm.

Okay, let's bring it back. I feel like I could talk to you about this stuff for a long time. So let's bring it back so the audience can get some practical takeaways out of what we're talking about today. I really want to tap into your expertise from that perspective. How do we go about reclaiming our attention?

Yes. Well, do you want to talk about it from an individual perspective or from an organizational perspective?

Let's do both. Let's start with the individual and then we'll go, go organizational.

Okay. So there are, there, there are several ways, but if we think about three sort of foundational challenges to our attention at work: our environment, our technology, and our own habits. So, each of those we have much more control than we exert over each of those things. So, for example, in our environment at work, we tend to think like, "Everybody needs me and everybody's interrupting me all the time and this is my job." And I have, especially at the leadership level, right? If I don't If I don't deal with it, then the work stops, right? I often say that communication is the assembly line of the 21st century. And so, we are all very responsive to our communication because communication is how knowledge work gets done. And so, if I'm not staying on top of my communication, then the work is stopping at some point, especially at the leadership level. But we actually do have more control than we think. And at the leadership level, there's sort of— well, let's talk about the individual level. People need you all day long. That's never going to change. And we justify the interruptions by saying, 'Well, this is my job.' And it's true, it is your job. But it is also your job to do all the things that are on your to-do list today. That people are counting on you to get done. And somehow, we overvalue the communication. Everybody needs me. I gotta answer these questions. I gotta help these people. I gotta deal with all the stuff. But we undervalue the actual work that we have to do. And we say, well, I'll just do that when nobody's bothering me. Well, first of all, there's never a time when nobody's bothering you. But the only time that people are even bothering you a little less is when you shouldn't be working, right? Evenings, weekends, holidays, all of those kinds of things. So, at work, we have to create boundaries. And leaders have to empower their teams to have boundaries around their environment so that they can control their attention. So, whether that's often that just looks like some sort of signal that says, "Don't ask me if I have a minute right now. I don't." Whether that is a flag on your monitor, or a light on your door, or a piece of red construction paper or whatever it is. But something— because it's not your answer to the question, "Do you have a minute?" that causes the problem. It's the question itself. No matter how much— I call it brainpower momentum. No matter how much brainpower momentum you have built up on the thing that you're working on, right? You've got this spreadsheet and you're going and the plans are drawn and you're in it. No matter how deeply you are in it, as soon as somebody says, "Hey, well, you got a minute?" Yeah. Right? It is gone. It is gone. And then, you have to start all over again building up that momentum. So, you want to prevent that. "Do you have a minute?" And so, empowering people with some sort of signal and then honoring those signals, infusing that in your culture to say, "We're honoring these symbols and these signals." And really, What I tell leaders is to change the language of your company from time management to attention management. Because the single most important thing that individuals and leaders can do organizationally is raise awareness of distraction. The more you recognize when you are being distracted, the more likely you are to change your behavior. And if you use the phrase attention management, that keeps awareness of distraction high. And when awareness of distraction is high, people start to think things like, um, he kind of looks like he's in the middle of something, maybe I shouldn't bother him right now. And those kinds of behaviors start to become more common because attention management has become part of the culture to say, "Let's think about how distraction is affecting us and let's take steps to mitigate that." So, changing the language, infusing the culture with the language of attention management, empowering people with signs or signals or some way to say, "Don't ask me if I have a minute right now." The next thing is our technology. We're constantly getting pinged and dinged. And you know, we get a new communication about once every 2 minutes at work typically. And most people have their 2 monitors set up so that every time some new communication comes in, they get notified of the new— go, what's that? It's the same thing as got a minute, right? No matter how deep I am into this thing, oh, what's that? Now, I'm totally distracted. And so, what I tell people is to think about the mantra between, not during. So, check your communication as often as you feel like you need to. Just check it in between other things instead of during other things. And then, everything you do will get done faster and better. So, open the spreadsheet, close the email, close the Teams chat. Do the thing on the spreadsheet until it's done or until you get to some stopping point. And then, check your email, check your teams, see who needed you, see who's, you know, been waiting for you to open your office door, whatever it is. So, controlling our environment, controlling our technology. And the last thing that we have to think about is our habits because most people have a habit of distraction. And the more distracted we are, the more distracted we get. And so, the very foundational way to first start to change your habit is to become aware. And that's why using the phrase attention management with ourselves and with each other is so important, because that keeps the awareness high. And the more aware we are, the more likely we are to change. And so the more distracted we are, the more distracted we get. But the reverse is also true. The more we start to exercise our focus and our concentration and our presence, the more that become a habit. So those are— man, sorry, I talked for a long time.

No, it's really— it's interesting. I mean, I'm thinking about like this moment right now. I've got all of my communication apps closed, my phone's in a different room because I need to be present so I can listen and actively, you know, respond to what you're saying. That's how you should be when you're doing any type of deep work or anything like that as well, like you're suggesting.

Yeah, I mean, any type of deep work, any type of So one of the ways that we pay a distraction tax is how we show up in the world. The kind of person we are, the kind of leader we are, the kind of parent we are, the kind of partner we are. And what kind of partner, parent, person, leader are we being when we are half listening to what the people are saying to us while we're also scrolling our devices?

Yeah.

So.

You make a good point as well. I mean, all of those little micro distractions add up, compound across an organization, but the habits of the leaders is what sets the tone. So if the expectation is I've got a minute and someone needs to respond to you, then that becomes the expectation across the whole company. One thing that we try and do really deliberately is have daily huddles within teams and then weekly huddles at a leadership level or one-on-ones, that kind of thing. So those regular cadence of meetings, the expectation expectation is almost all communication funnels through those channels rather than distracting people with micro things. Obviously there's urgent things that you need to go directly to people on, but the idea behind that, and I think Builders do a similar thing with the daily huddles or the daily meetings, the theory is that you can create that space outside of those meetings and therefore the communication gets funneled, but it doesn't always work.

Well, no, and that only handles internal communication. Yeah, it doesn't handle vendors and customers and all of those other things. And we, we often just sort of, you know, think about, well, we'll meet people where they are, and however our customers want to communicate with us, that's fine. But software companies have something called SLAs. Service level agreements. Yeah. When they bring on a client, they say, this is, this is how, this is how we work. Yeah. And this is how we do our best work. And I think every company should have an SLA. If when you bring on a family that you're building a house for, you teach them, this is how we work and this is how we do things. And if you need us for routine communication, then you should do this and you should expect a response in, you know, this time. And if you really, if something is urgent, then you should communicate this way and we'll get right back to you, and right, and if you sort of educate them and onboard them properly, then you really can design your, your communication and therefore your work, how work happens at your company. You can design it intentionally.

Yeah, that's a great point. I can just see a Builder's Day. I mean, they're building high-value, high-priced products essentially for their customers, and their customers are investing a lot of their money the biggest purchase of their whole life. So if they call them, they feel as if I need to take this call right now. It's a client I'm building a home for. It may be, oh, we want to change the paint color. It's like, I mean, it's such a small thing like that. Or it could be something more serious, like, you know, something's happened at the site or whatever it is. But to your point, if you set that expectation up front and there's a clear pathway for raising awareness to something which is more urgent, then if they can follow that process, it gives you— at least it gives you a framework to work within.

Absolutely. And we see this is the problem that we have is that we don't, we don't, we don't provide any guidelines about which communication tool to use in which situation. And so therefore everybody uses every communication channel in every situation and therefore Therefore, every communication on any channel, any text, any phone call, any chat, any email, any communication I get on any channel might be a critical emergency. And therefore, I have to treat every communication on every channel as if it is an emergency until I know that it isn't. And therefore, I am guaranteed to be distracted all day long.

Yeah, we've all experienced that. You get tagged here, you get an email there, you get a message there, and then someone calls you here. And yeah, then all of a sudden that's all you've done for half a day.

That's right. And even something as simple as rolling out Teams or Slack, most companies just roll it out and don't really think about who gets to create a channel, who gets to create a thread, who's on that thread. Who gets notified when something is posted to that thread. And so everybody creates threads, everybody creates channels, everybody adds everybody to every thread, and every time anybody posts anything to any channel, everybody gets pinged. And so then you're just setting your whole company up for constant distraction, and then it's costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

All right. Well, there's a lot for the builders to think about there. I think if you had to give one final bit of advice for a really practical takeaway that they can go away and think about from a personal and business perspective, what would that be?

Yeah, I really think that it is the language. Language. Words have power and language shapes behavior. And if you infuse your thinking, your life, your organizational culture with the phrase attention management, then it really changes how you think about everything, how you show up in your relationships, how you approach your work, how your company executes and scales and serves customers. And it just infuses— I mean, really what I help organizations do is orient their work around human attention because it is the most valuable commodity on the planet.

Great. Well, Maura, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Uh, what's the best next step if people want to find out more about what you're doing? maurathomas.com, we'll drop that in the, in the show notes. But is there, is there another place that people should go?

Yeah, at mauranthomas.com/books Yes, I, I've written a book. It only takes about an hour to read. It's called Attention Management. That's a great place to start at an individual level. And also my most recent book is called Everyone Wants to Work Here, and that is about managing attention at an organizational level.

Amazing. Well, we'll make sure we include those in the notes as well, and I'm sure there'll be plenty of people that want to check them out. I might go and get that book myself. As well. But yes, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really enjoyed the conversation. I know we went a little bit off track from what the initial plan was, but you really showed your expertise and there was a ton of value for builders. It's a really, really interesting topic, but also something that a lot of people just go through life without thinking about. But it's becoming more and more important to do so.

Thanks. Thanks. It's been a real pleasure. Well, thanks for the great conversation.

Thank you. And thanks to our listeners as well. We'll see you all next time.