• Ever respond to one simple text and have it suddenly turn into a 2-hour/50 message table tennis match?
• Ever sat in what feels like the same go-nowhere meeting you’ve been having every week for five years?
• Ever wonder if there’s any hope for reclaiming your time and attention? You’re not alone. Seems like every day we’re presented with more and more stuff that wants our time and attention on its own schedule and terms. So, how can we shake that terrible feeling of overwhelm and dread in order to get back to focusing on the work that we know really matters?
In this talk, Merlin Mann demonstrates how changing technology and culture have unintentionally plotted to upset the balance of scarcity and plenty in our lives—and why leaving that imbalance unaddressed can be poison to every knowledge worker.
You’ll learn why it’s critically important to set and honor boundaries that protect your time as well as how to develop new skills to guard against unwanted or unproductive drains on your already-overwhelmed attention.
This provocative and engaging presentation applies refreshing, high-level thinking to the problem of how to renegotiate and reclaim the attention you’ve ceded to others, as well as fostering discussion on the changes your team can start making today to improve work culture and create a healthy, respectful, and productive work environment.
Merlin Mann is known for his ability to help knowledge workers, executive teams, and all manner of creative types (including food safety professionals) discover how to reclaim their attention, improve their productivity, and fundamentally reinvent their approach to doing the work that they love. Merlin has received rave reviews for delivering energetic productivity talks at Apple, Google, Yahoo!, Adobe, Xerox PARC, and many other companies and organizations.
Merlin co-hosts the Back To Work podcast, an award-
winning talk show discussing productivity, communication, work barriers, constraints, tools, and more. He delivers practical, useful, and entertaining insight into the challenges of doing great work in an environment defined by distraction and incongruous expectations.