This document describes a 5-day mindfulness training program called "Mastering the Moment" aimed at enhancing employee productivity, health, and well-being. It discusses the high costs of mindlessness for companies in terms of health costs, lost productivity, diminished training impact, and reduced innovation. The training program teaches mindfulness skills like focus, concentration, self-awareness, listening, and effective communication to boost thinking skills, emotional regulation, and engagement. Participants complete a distraction assessment and learn techniques over the 5 days to apply mindfulness in their work.

1. Mastering the Moment:
A Micro Training Program
Eric Zook
303 b., LLC
303.589.1926
ericzook@303byoga.com

2. Mastering the Moment: A 5-Day Training in Mindfulness
Mindfulness is quickly becoming a priority for companies seeking to enhance their
employees’ productivity and creativity as well as their overall heath and well-being.i
Google, Target, Proctor & Gamble, Harvard University, the US Military and The Centers
for Disease Control are just a few who now provide formal mindfulness training.
The High Cost of Mindlessness
Mindlessness is a significant challenge in our age of information overload and continuous
multi-tasking. We are deluged with e-mails, texts, phone calls, meetings, appointments
and constant performance pressure at home and work.
We largely cope by operating through continuous partial attention, skimming through
life and hoping we glean the most important details. This generates stress, distraction,
and overwhelmed (often negative) coping strategies. All of which show up in a range of
staggering organizational costs.
 Health Costs – Stress-related illness and negative coping cost companies over $500
billion in lost productivity. These also factor significantly into the $1 trillion corporate
health insurance bill.ii In an effort to manage these costs, companies pour another $6
billion into Employee Wellness Programs that produce little return.iii
 Performance Costs – Multi-tasking costs $450 billion a year in lost productivity, with
people persisting in the activity despite consistent research that it is ineffective (and
that habitual multi-taskers often perform worse than occasional multi-taskers).iv
 Training Costs – Learning decay ranges as high as 90%, raising serious questions
about what US companies are getting for their $150 billion annual spend on training.
 Innovation Costs – stress, multitasking and poor thought skills all restrict our ability
to see things in new, more effective ways.v
The Mindfulness Solution
Research into mindfulness shows a wealth of benefits: reduced stress, increased
immunity and overall health, higher employee engagement in their work, better
concentration and productivity, higher learning and improved creativity and innovation.
By boosting our ability to experience more clearly, fully and creatively, mindfulness
contributes to substantially more effective and enjoyable work.
A Unique Applied-Training Approach
Mastering the Moment teaches core mindfulness skills in manageable increments. On
each of four 30-minute sessions across consecutive days, participants learn 1-2 primary
skills they can apply immediately and then discuss/adjust on the following day. The full
skill set is integrated in a 60-minute Day 5 program with an emphasis on continued
application. Options are available to refresh the learning over following weeks and
months as necessary, including training in-house facilitators.

3. Program Overview
Day 1: Mastering the Moment
Core Skill: Focusing on the moment.
Mindfulness is about mastering the moment. Day 1 provides a brief research review
but emphasizes the experience of mindfulness through simple eating and breathing
exercises. Participants assess their current state and identify a personal focus for
the week by completing a Distraction Factor Assessment.
Day 2: Thinking
Core Skills: Concentration and contemplation
Concentration is vital to accomplishing tasks but interruptions and multi-tasking
rule the day. Contemplation is vital for recognizing needs or opportunities beyond
the way we’re currently working. Mindfulness boosts and unifies these critical
thinking skills to boost productivity, work quality and life satisfaction.
Day 3: Feeling
Core Skills: Self-awareness and self-regulation
Analytic reason is the official language of work. As such, we often fail to
acknowledge (or even realize) emotions, which means we fail to manage them
effectively. Small stresses and slights feed negative workplace politics and pile up
until “final straws” occur. Such emotional hijacking is largely avoidable when we
learn to mindfully surface and channel emotions.
Day 4: Listening
Core Skill: Active listening
Research shows we typically listen to someone else for 7 seconds before starting to
form our reply. We fill in blanks, finish others’ sentences, infer meaning and
emotions that aren’t there and a commit a host of other listening sins. Mindfulness
helps us step outside our personal agenda and build collaboration through truly
understanding other viewpoints.
Day 5: Communicating
Core Skill: Effective engagement
Day 5 blends the skills from Days 1-4 into an extended focus on being an effective
communicator. From e-mails to meetings, participants learn to mindfully reflect
intent, objectives, audience, context, emotions and more, with a commitment to
collaborative “wins.”
For larger companies, managers should be trained prior to the larger employee
population in order to model and encourage application during and after the training.

4. Distraction Factor Assessment
Rate how frequently the following statements are true for you.
1 – Rarely 2 – Sometimes 3 – Often 4 – Very Often 5 – Most of the time
1. _____ I rush through things rather being attentive to what I’m doing.
2. _____ I get so focused on goals that I lose touch with what I’m doing right now.
3. _____ I tend to walk quickly without paying attention to what’s around me.
4. _____ I listen to someone with one ear, doing something else at the same time.
5. _____ I become preoccupied with the future or the past.
6. _____ I keep a lot of programs and documents open on my computer.
7. _____ I snack without being aware that I’m eating.
8. _____ I channel surf while watching TV or listening to the radio.
9. _____ I get lost in thoughts and feelings.
10. _____ I am easily distracted.
11. _____ I daydream or think of other things during chores like mowing and dishes.
12. _____ I do several things at once rather than focusing on one thing at a time.
13. _____ By day’s end I find I’ve spent more time on low value tasks than I intended.
14. _____ I find it difficult to stay focused on a project from beginning to end.
15. _____ I struggle to stay fully attentive in meetings and conference calls.
16. _____ I lose track of time when browsing the Internet or using social marketing.
17. _____ My mind is constantly busy.
18. _____ While doing something, I think of other things I need to do.
19. _____ I talk on the phone or listen to the radio while driving.
20. _____ If I’m on a conference call, I take time to read e-mail or organize my desk.
If you answered 3 or higher to more than 10 questions, you will definitely benefit from
strengthening your attention muscle. But you can make substantial gains even if you
wrestle with only a few items. Imagine the effect of even a 10% improvement on any of
the items.
Mindfulness as a means to build attention and awareness is growing quickly at companies
across the US from Google and Target to Harvard and the US Military. Find out more
and try a selection of attention-building exercises in Mastering the Moment: How to
Clear Your Brain & Focus at www.linkedin.com/in/ericzook/.
This assessment adapted from Siegel,R.D. PsyD. (2010). The Mindfulness Solution:Everyday Practices for
Everyday Problems. (2010) New York: Guilford Press

5. i The Mindful Revolution, Time Magazine, February 3, 2014.
ii Finding extrapolated from data reported in The 2013 Employer Health Benefits Survey, The Kaiser
Family Foundation
iii Do Workplace Wellness Programs Work? Usually Not. The New York Times, September 11, 2014.
iv The Effects of Multi-Tasking on Organizations (Realization 2013)
v Amabile, T.M. and Kramer, S.J. (2011). The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy,
Engagement, and Creativity at Work. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.