Earlier this month, we talked about how meditation is the first step to reducing distractions. You have to be calm inside your brain to face the onslaught of issues you’ll encounter each day.

But in the spirit of continuing our focus on focus, here's another thought: my morning meditation enables me to be the thermostat, not the thermometer. This was important advice given to me by a friend when I had my second child. She said, “your life is getting increasingly complex, which means there will be unexpected issues all the time. You can decide if they control you, or if you control your reaction to them. I’d recommend you choose to be the thermostat, not the thermometer."

If time is our most valuable resource, and how we spend our time defines who we are, then why do we waste so much of it? And why, in the age of apps and gadgets, does managing our time seem more difficult?

It’s easy to place the blame on the pull of social media, and it’s true that two-thirds of employees spend time on social media at work. But wasted time at work goes beyond surfing the Internet or chatting about your weekend with coworkers.

We’re wasting time when we spend more of our time managing our work than actually doing it.

Our theme this month is Focus. Join us as we explore ways to improve your focus so you can be as effective as possible!

On the blog this month, we’re focusing on focus. It’s the key ingredient to success for any individual or organization: your ability to pay attention to the most important things and block out the seemingly endless distractions.

If I have learned anything in life, it is to learn from other people’s experience. Life is too short to figure everything out on my own. So when I hear people I admire talking about the importance of their spiritual health, meditation, or gratitude practices, I listen. And when I recognize that so many of them point to just that practice as being the most important ingredient of their success, I really listen.

One question we’re often asked when talking with organizations about changing the way they work is, “So you’re just trying to get people to telework or have flexible hours?”

Actually, no. Teleworking and flex schedules are great for lots of employees who need freedom from a physical office location or need to adjust their work hours to meet their other commitments.

But at MatchPace, we want to see much deeper organizational change for our clients.

What if you could design a workday that rewarded efficiency and actual outcomes, not time clocked? What if doing so gave you valuable hours back into your day while making your team more productive?

Offices are known targets of jokes and criticism (why do you think Dilbert, Office Space, and The Office are so funny? They resonate with our experiences of pointless reports, unnecessary overwork, and oddball colleagues).

So most people think: if you want something to be different, you have to leave an office job and become a free agent or go start your own organization. There’s no way you can update an existing bureaucratic behemoth to be more nimble, to adjust to the knowledge economy, to be anything other than Dilbert in real life.

Similarly, many people would also say that you should just build a new house if you want to cut your Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions to zero - reworking the one you already live in just won’t work.

Click here to read more about our net-zero home project and how you can retrofit your workplace to be more efficient and effective.

Once upon a time (though really not that long ago), MatchPace almost became “The Pareto Group.” We were so inspired by the Pareto Principle that we nearly named our company after it!

I was brainstorming names for the company with my husband, and he said “it’s like the Pareto Principle!”

If you are like me, and not my economically-minded husband, you might be asking “But what is the Pareto Principle?” I was not familiar with Vilfredo Pareto, the Italian economist Joseph Juran named the Pareto Principle after. But you may have heard of the “80/20 rule.” Back in the late 1800s, Pareto observed that 80 percent of Italy’s land was owned by just 20 percent of the population; he then took the principle a step further, noting that about 20 percent of the peapods in his garden produced 80 percent of the peas.

Read on to learn how you can apply the Pareto Principle so your entire team is efficient and effective.

In the classic film Chariots of Fire, Eric Lidell says “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.”

Too many people dread waking up and heading to work on Monday morning. At MatchPace, we believe work is more than a way to pay the bills - it also gives purpose and meaning to our lives and provides a way to contribute to building a better, healthier society.

Most of us spend thousands of hours at work each year, making our contribution in the marketplace. We can think of these hours as the daily grind, glancing at the clock and counting the days until the weekend. Or, we can view our working hours as a way to contribute to improving the world around us: using ethical business practices, managing well, providing goods and services that improve lives, stewarding our planet’s resources well, furthering justice, and providing for our families and communities. Often, furthering the ability of employees and employers alike to contribute in this way means moving beyond the 9-5 and rethinking the pace at which we work, all while maintaining the highest levels of productivity, quality, and effectiveness.

Work can have purpose, and not be a drag.