Want to accomplish more with your time? Stay hyper-focused on the task at hand. Don’t multi-task. If you are consistently fully engaged in whatever you are doing, with no distracting thoughts or activities, everything in your life is more vivid and interesting. You feel less stressed out by wandering thoughts, and you are more productive.

—

Whatever you are doing, be focused exclusively on just that, to the exclusion of anything else. At work, with family, learning, taking a walk. Even when relaxing. Be totally immersed in the present, not thinking about the past or the future. (Certainly not regrets or worries.)

When you are talking to your spouse or child, be fully engaged with them only. The time together will be so much richer. You’ll be tuning in to who they are, to their underlying emotions under their words. You will connect better. When you are ‘off somewhere else’, the other person will feel it. (Have you found yourself in conversations in which you’re so concerned about what you are going to say next, that you don’t even hear what the other person is saying?)

—

Inevitably, your mind will wander. And when it does, you can shift it to focus using Notice-Shift-Rewire.

NOTICE when your mind starts to wander. (It can be helpful to set up cues in your life to help you remember to notice: Shachris, Mincha, Maariv; each time you stop at a stop sign; each time you walk into work, or each time you pull out your phone.)

SHIFT your attention and focus on the now. Consciously engage more fully in whatever you are doing: typing that email; listening fully to the person you’re talking with; slowly tasting that bite of food you just put in your mouth; paying attention to sights, sensations in your body, or the sound of birds, the wind, or blaring car horns.

REWIRE, refocus, and savor the moment. The final step is to strengthen this new habit of mind. To do this, all you have to do is take 15 to 30 seconds to stay in the state and really savor the experience of being here now.