Whether you want to meditate, zone out, or focus, these
apps aim to up your inner peace. “I’ve worked with some
amazing leaders, and the most productive ones know when
to take a breath,” says Shan-Lyn Ma, co-founder and CEO
of Zola. “Penciling in time for myself has helped me unlock
a new passion for my work.” –K.R.
•
Make time to
meditate
“A couple of years
into Birchbox, I took
a meditation class,
and I was blown
away by how much I
got out of the experience. I began using
the Headspace app;
it doesn’t take hours
or setting up some
sacred space, and it
allows me to recognize that there’s
always time to calm
the mind.”
KATIA BEAUCHAMP
Co-founder and CEO
of Birchbox
•
Minimize
ofce noise
“We recently
took down the
inner walls at
my company,
which makes
it easy to get
distracted. I
use Focus@
Will to get in
the zone and
absorb information more
deeply. It’s
a music app
that uses
neuroscience
to play sounds
that are
neither too
relaxing nor
distracting.”
CARYN
SEIDMAN-BECKER
CEO of Clear
•
Listen and
learn
“My commute is the
only part of my day
that’s completely
mine, so I like to
clear my head with
podcasts. The Tim
Ferriss Show is in a
class of its own, full
of ideas on how to
be more productive.
I love learning new
time-management
tricks and tips on
sleeping or mindfulness hacks to help
me focus, and I
think part of being
productive is staying
open to new ways
of doing things.”
JEETU PATEL
Chief product
and strategy ofcer
of Box
no emails between this hour and this hour, and this
is the maximum number of people who should
be invited to meetings,” says Dan Ariely, a professor
of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke
University, and co-founder of the productivity
startup Timeful, since acquired by Google. “The job
of the leader is to make people better than they are
naturally,” says Ariely, “and that includes helping
them with this.”
IF PRODUCTIVITY WERE a comic strip, the supervillain would be distraction. More has been written about managing email and social media than about the meaning of life. A whole category of productivity tools corrals wandering attentions. CEOs are certainly not immune to the
social siren. But some sufer from the opposite problem. They are so consumed by their companies—
their creations—that they become hyperfocused
while the world around them recedes. And that can
be detrimental. Great leaders have lively minds:
They are curious and empathetic. Engaging widely
with the world, not bound by an agenda, they think
the big thoughts that produce genuine change.
In the ’90s—before the universe coalesced at
our fngertips—I visited a library-supply company in
Wisconsin whose CEO practiced something he
called “universal scanning.” Staf members regularly
pulled intriguing articles from a vast array of publica-
tions and pinned them to the walls of a room. Peri-
odically, the CEO would enter and spend an hour or
so simply browsing through the headlines. The
practice, he said, broadened his frame of reference,
inspired unexpected connections, and heightened his
creativity. Distraction—or exposure, as he thought of
it—made him better. “The enemy of productivity is
that the world is really interesting,” says Ariely. “Hav-
ing lots to do and think about is a blessing.”
And, yes, technology can create space to indulge
that blessing. My onetime correspondent Ferriss’s
research on outsourcing eventually morphed into
chapter eight of The 4-Hour Workweek, in which he
recommends that employees hire remote personal
assistants to handle scheduling, research, and online
errands. Having someone in India handle the grunt
stuf, he says, is not an expense but rather an invest-
ment, as it “frees your time to focus on bigger and
better things.”
There’s another advantage to this tech-
enabled outsourcing for any founder. The ability
to “manage (direct and chastise)” your virtual
aide, writes Ferriss, “is also a litmus test for entre-
preneurship.”
LEIGH BUCHANAN is an Inc. editor-at-large.
KATE ROCK WOOD is an Inc. contributing editor.
PRODUCTIVITY TOOLKIT • TECH 86 - INC. - WIN TER 2017/2018
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