Thank You To Our Partners The Institute, AutoFlow, AutoLeap, Shop Dog Marketing, In-Bound<a href="https://youtu.be/eFnPxXALWYs" target="_blank">Watch Full Video Episode</a>Todays Show Post -  Our notes today will be in a different format, written by our host.Welcome to another episode of Speak Up - Effective communication.Your place for focusing on elevating our communication skills in the auto repair industry - I’m your host Craig O’Neill…. I want you to ask yourself a question today - each time you receive a notification on one of your devices:Do I need this?Do I need to do something about this RIGHT NOW?This has been my question for any number of the alerts that pop onto my screens on a daily basis. - - As I’ve been at war with distractions in my life.  Loyal listeners have become familiar with my growing concern on the topic and I feel that I’ve begun to find some more balance slowly as of late and will share whats working for me.Of note - I’ve been reading a book titled, “Stolen Focus - Why you can’t pay attention and how to think deeply again” by Johann Hari.This read was a referral from Carm Capriotto - and it’s worth your attention.In our episode today, I have some thoughts on the topic of notifications - and hope to get you thinking differently on what YOU are allowing devices to compromise YOUR focus!Our Word of the Day:Frenetic: fre·net·icadjective<ul><li>fast and energetic in a rather wild and <a href="https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=540de929b15f835b&amp;sxsrf=AHTn8zoO0LqwBh49VyPXzkaKRmPuquLLuw:1744155283000&amp;q=uncontrolled&amp;si=APYL9bt3AE6pJgWWTjOhQnnrwEtIS_5JZ8Ema6V0q3jZDwaes1M52AhRzvtDIIQMLIbYlD9MqhkwcWIkDkKQ2OKX5WT7hzUZMdYL0c949gLJZzV2ckvTSg8%3D&amp;expnd=1&amp;sa=X&amp;sqi=2&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjO-83gzMmMAxUhCnkGHUbUCk8QyecJegQIJBAR" target="_blank">uncontrolled</a> way.</li></ul> Listen to this excerpt from the book, Stolen Focus - the author, Johann Hari, writes about a conversation with a friend who was getting notifications for things he didn’t want… and I’ll quote: “... All this frenetic digital interruption is “pulling our attention away from our thoughts,” and I think we’re almost in this constant stimulus-driven, stimulus bound environment, moving from one distraction to the next.”  If you don’t remove yourself from that, it will "suppress whatever train of thought you had.”  That is a quote from <a href="https://a.co/d/17RhREq" target="_blank">Stolen Focus - Why you can’t pay attention and how to think deeply again.”</a>The consequences of distractions are real - not just from tasks - but from our creative thoughts and even healthy mindwandering. Hari mentions in his book that “a distraction such as looking at an image from a friend pulls the average person away for up to 20 mins!  Not just one!  And if you look around, you’ll recognize that the distractions are EVERYwhere - and we now have this habitual tendency to scan for them, in our own pockets, and on our own wrists!  Look around you now - how many people do you see distracted by devices?Before you blame yourself or feel bad about this - let me state - our technological world has been engineered this way in a deliberate attempt to get more engagement from us.  I will say - while I, like all modern humans, struggle with distractions, I have come to develop a few VERY simple and reasonable disciplines regarding notifications.I feel sometimes a little old-fashioned on this… but as I discussed recently in

Device Discipline: The War Against Notifications [E039] - Speak Up!