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quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Tired of being too busy but not productive? Sick of feeling over-whelmed and stressed out? Can’t seem to find enough time to devote to either your work or your personal life? Attention Pays offers an antidote to the constant barrage of disruptions we find ourselves faced with. This extraordinary book shows how to unplug from the daily stressors that drive us crazy and plug into the tools, strategies and mindsets that have the power to harness our attention and help us reach our highest potential.
Attention Pays shows how to be highly productive and achieve lasting work-life integration by putting the spotlight on the power of attention and absolute focus. The author discovered, through years of speaking, training and coaching, that we are too consumed with multitasking and tuning out to hear what’s being said. Our minds are so busy we fail to make genuine connections and enhance our existing relationships.
As the author explains, intention is what makes attention valuable. Intention involves seeing, hearing and thinking about who is with you and what needs your focus right now. Attention Pays is all about intentionally investing your attention in what matters at the moment … the people you are talking to, the priorities you are acting on, and the passions you are pursuing.
No matter what you role - executive, leader, parent, business, owner, coach - you can join the Attention Pays revolution by adopting the personal, professional, and global intentional attributes. PERSONALLY: Be thoughtful as an individual. PROFESSIONALLY: Be productive as an individual and leader. And GLOBALLY: Be responsible for your community and your world.
Attention Pays is your guidebook for becoming happier in your relationships, more fulfilled at work, and safer in the world you have created.
Neen James is an international speaker and coach specialising in client experience. This slight, but practical guide aims to help readers improve their attention in their personal, professional and within your community/globally and has useful tips for working out what matters to you and assisting in organisation and delegation. However the focus here is on individuals rather than company culture and James’s chatty style didn’t really work for me.
I picked this up because I do find that self-improvement books such as this have useful nuggets that can assist in working life and this is not an exception. James clearly has a lot of experience in this field and has a client list of impressive companies who bring her in to help assist senior leaders.
The book is divided into 4 parts.
Part 1 is fairly generic and looks at the attention deficit issue generally. I liked the fact that James debunks the belief that it’s possible to multitask because I’d one of my big bugbears and she also makes clear the link between being overwhelmed, over-stressed and over-tired and how they feed into each other. There’s less new information in the sections where she talks about how technology robs attention with people being addicted to social media and games. James goes onto to talk about how to improve what you pay attention to and what’s good is the way she talks about focusing on personal relationships and deepening the same because it’s refreshing to read a book of this type that discusses the important of your personal life outside work.
Part 2 looks at how to be thoughtful and attentive in your personal life. There isn’t a huge amount that was new to me here - it’s all about establishing routines, learning and showing an interest in other people, setting aside time for yourself, setting boundaries, managing communications, creating significant moments. It then goes onto looking at who the most important people are in your work life and building relationships with them. Again, I liked James’s focus on being personal (sending notes to clients to show appreciation is actually something I realised I could bring to my own work).
Part 3 turns to your professional life. I really enjoyed the way James talks about protecting your time and recognises how much of the working day can be lost to firefighting and she is absolutely dead on the money when she says that no is a complete sentence. The issue is that not all companies have a culture that support you in implementing some of the tips here and there is no recognition of this on James’s part or indeed how senior leadership can try to tackle that.
Part 4 looks at the wider impact of paying attention for community and the world. This is all about leveraging leadership and using time at work to do things for the community, e.g. employee volunteering days. The section also goes into more general subjects like consistency of customer experience (although using Peloton as an example of good customer service has not aged well but this book was published in 2018 before it started to suffer financial issues).
In general terms - like a lot of books of this type - James has constant cross-references to her website for more general points and exercises. I don’t have an issue with that - books like this are part of the author’s business model so it’s all part and parcel of it. I did have more of an issue with James’s chatty tone and her constant references to be Australian. This is purely a personal thing and I do not doubt that other readers will like the references and tone but I found it a bit too perky and conversational.
All in all, it’s a solid book that has some useful practical points for you to implement and as such, it’s worth checking out if this is a subject you are interested in.
The Verdict:
Neen James is an international speaker and coach specialising in client experience. This slight, but practical guide aims to help readers improve their attention in their personal, professional and within your community/globally and has useful tips for working out what matters to you and assisting in organisation and delegation. However the focus here is on individuals rather than company culture and James’s chatty style didn’t really work for me.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
Tired of being too busy but not productive? Sick of feeling over-whelmed and stressed out? Can’t seem to find enough time to devote to either your work or your personal life? Attention Pays offers an antidote to the constant barrage of disruptions we find ourselves faced with. This extraordinary book shows how to unplug from the daily stressors that drive us crazy and plug into the tools, strategies and mindsets that have the power to harness our attention and help us reach our highest potential.
Attention Pays shows how to be highly productive and achieve lasting work-life integration by putting the spotlight on the power of attention and absolute focus. The author discovered, through years of speaking, training and coaching, that we are too consumed with multitasking and tuning out to hear what’s being said. Our minds are so busy we fail to make genuine connections and enhance our existing relationships.
As the author explains, intention is what makes attention valuable. Intention involves seeing, hearing and thinking about who is with you and what needs your focus right now. Attention Pays is all about intentionally investing your attention in what matters at the moment … the people you are talking to, the priorities you are acting on, and the passions you are pursuing.
No matter what you role - executive, leader, parent, business, owner, coach - you can join the Attention Pays revolution by adopting the personal, professional, and global intentional attributes. PERSONALLY: Be thoughtful as an individual. PROFESSIONALLY: Be productive as an individual and leader. And GLOBALLY: Be responsible for your community and your world.
Attention Pays is your guidebook for becoming happier in your relationships, more fulfilled at work, and safer in the world you have created.
Neen James is an international speaker and coach specialising in client experience. This slight, but practical guide aims to help readers improve their attention in their personal, professional and within your community/globally and has useful tips for working out what matters to you and assisting in organisation and delegation. However the focus here is on individuals rather than company culture and James’s chatty style didn’t really work for me.
I picked this up because I do find that self-improvement books such as this have useful nuggets that can assist in working life and this is not an exception. James clearly has a lot of experience in this field and has a client list of impressive companies who bring her in to help assist senior leaders.
The book is divided into 4 parts.
Part 1 is fairly generic and looks at the attention deficit issue generally. I liked the fact that James debunks the belief that it’s possible to multitask because I’d one of my big bugbears and she also makes clear the link between being overwhelmed, over-stressed and over-tired and how they feed into each other. There’s less new information in the sections where she talks about how technology robs attention with people being addicted to social media and games. James goes onto to talk about how to improve what you pay attention to and what’s good is the way she talks about focusing on personal relationships and deepening the same because it’s refreshing to read a book of this type that discusses the important of your personal life outside work.
Part 2 looks at how to be thoughtful and attentive in your personal life. There isn’t a huge amount that was new to me here - it’s all about establishing routines, learning and showing an interest in other people, setting aside time for yourself, setting boundaries, managing communications, creating significant moments. It then goes onto looking at who the most important people are in your work life and building relationships with them. Again, I liked James’s focus on being personal (sending notes to clients to show appreciation is actually something I realised I could bring to my own work).
Part 3 turns to your professional life. I really enjoyed the way James talks about protecting your time and recognises how much of the working day can be lost to firefighting and she is absolutely dead on the money when she says that no is a complete sentence. The issue is that not all companies have a culture that support you in implementing some of the tips here and there is no recognition of this on James’s part or indeed how senior leadership can try to tackle that.
Part 4 looks at the wider impact of paying attention for community and the world. This is all about leveraging leadership and using time at work to do things for the community, e.g. employee volunteering days. The section also goes into more general subjects like consistency of customer experience (although using Peloton as an example of good customer service has not aged well but this book was published in 2018 before it started to suffer financial issues).
In general terms - like a lot of books of this type - James has constant cross-references to her website for more general points and exercises. I don’t have an issue with that - books like this are part of the author’s business model so it’s all part and parcel of it. I did have more of an issue with James’s chatty tone and her constant references to be Australian. This is purely a personal thing and I do not doubt that other readers will like the references and tone but I found it a bit too perky and conversational.
All in all, it’s a solid book that has some useful practical points for you to implement and as such, it’s worth checking out if this is a subject you are interested in.
The Verdict:
Neen James is an international speaker and coach specialising in client experience. This slight, but practical guide aims to help readers improve their attention in their personal, professional and within your community/globally and has useful tips for working out what matters to you and assisting in organisation and delegation. However the focus here is on individuals rather than company culture and James’s chatty style didn’t really work for me.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
