3

ENGAGEMENT

Engage Commitment to Achieve Big Things

If you want something done, ask a woman.

MARGARET THATCHER

What you engage and focus on is where you will yield results.

VICKIE L. MILAZZO

Women are tycoons of commitment. The average woman has more complex responsibilities than the crew of NASA's mission control, and handles every one of them. Forget Superman, Iron Man and Batman. I'll take Wonder-Working Woman any time. By nature, women are giving and nurturing, ready to engage the devil himself when loved ones are at risk. And this natural edge is a mighty force when we engage any challenge. Because we are tenaciously faithful to the commitments we undertake, possibilities stretch to infinity.

Yet not just any commitment will do. To achieve big, you have to engage big. Women who commit to a passionate vision reach the highest level of wicked success.

Our complex society of family, friends, career and spiritual and social obligations constantly pulls us in different directions. Social media adds yet another layer of complexity, and our always-on devices give us instant access to the world via email, texting and Skype, but they also give the world instant access to us. Opportunities to commit bombard us at every turn.

That's why every woman I know is fully committed, or ready to be committed—to a psychiatric unit. Are you exhausted all the time? Just reading Jackie's commitments is exhausting: “My husband is building refineries on the West Coast while I'm at home on the East Coast growing a business, raising five boys and managing a household. While he makes great money, he works, eats, sleeps and goes out with coworkers. I run a successful business; cook and clean; do homework, teacher conferences, laundry, bills, car pools, baths; read bedtime stories, say goodnight prayers, get everybody off to school and on and on …”

How does today's woman juggle family demands and society's expectations and still have a satisfying career without going insane? That's the million-dollar question.

My motto is: Women can do anything, not women should do everything. This is the greatest dilemma we're facing.

Your opportunities are boundless. Women can handle a lot, and if we're not careful we find ourselves doggedly committing our energy to every person or situation that demands our time. Everything becomes a priority. Before long we have no energy left. We become victims of “one day, some day, I'll get around to living my dreams, and in the meantime I'll help everyone else live theirs.”

Similarly, we can be so overcommitted in one area of obligation that we overlook other important parts of our vision. In the early days of my business, my mind and hands busily engaged every detail. Even after hiring employees, I tried to handle my own work and still oversee the details of theirs. Overcommitment robbed me of some important social events with family and friends—birthdays, weddings, hanging out for no reason—but business boomed.

Engagement starts with choice. Choose the objective of your engagement with your passionate vision in mind.

As a CEO, I encourage my staff to engage fully on a big project, to switch their phones to voice mail and close their email. Sometimes they encourage my own engagement by covering my desk with projects that “need” my immediate involvement. At those times I joke that CEO means “Controlled Entirely by Others,” smile, slide their stack to the credenza and get back on focus.

Passionately believing in the path you're on helps you narrow your commitments. By making judicious choices, you engage your day, your week and all the minutes that make up your life in pursuit of commitments that reflect the fire of your vision.

ENGAGE YOUR FEARS TO CONQUER THEM

Lady Jessica in Frank Herbert's novel Dune taught her son, “Fear is the mind killer.” Fear is also the enemy of engagement. Even when we're passionately committed to an idea or a goal, fear can stop us cold. Fear comes in many guises—fear of failure, fear of looking silly and, most interesting of all, fear of wicked success.

We worry: How will my life change? Will I be consumed by my work? Will my family feel estranged by my success? Will other people like me less? What if I actually do succeed—what can I do for an encore?

As a child, I was afraid of everything: escalators, heights, flying New Orleans cockroaches the size of dinner plates. A near-drowning experience left me afraid of water—not a good thing in a city that lies below sea level. Then, if that wasn't enough, at the age of 8 I even became afraid of Halloween candy.

Normally on October 31, my twin brother and I would step out of our shotgun house and rush to every home within a three-block radius. Most of the homes were only a step or two off the ground. Easy pickings—a piece of candy so to speak. But that year, when we approached one of the bigger houses, a house known to have the best candy, but with 10 tall cement steps leading to the front door, my fear of heights stopped me cold. My twin brother was already up the stairs, knocking on the door and yelling, “Trick or treat,” while I stood frozen at the bottom.

I told myself I might stumble in the dark and drop my bag of treats. I might crash to the concrete below. I might tear my homemade fairy costume. I wanted the candy, but there was no way I was going up those stairs to get it.

That year I learned that life's treats go to those who step out to take them. I lost more than candy. I lost my confidence.

The fear of stepping out took me along the safe, no-risk route through high school, nursing school and into a secure hospital job. Six years later, I woke up to a different kind of fear: the fear of becoming like so many other no-risk nurses—tired, burned out and old before their time. The fear of eating white cake and drinking watery punch at my own retirement party became real, and I faced a decision: Step out into the unknown or spend the rest of my life at the bottom of those childhood steps, never tasting the best candy.

I wanted to start my own business. At first, afraid to step out, I settled for reading business books instead. But I kept thinking of those retirement parties. They put my fear into a new perspective. Compared to that dismal future, how bad could stepping out be?

I wasn't just leaving a secure job and stepping out into my own business—I was stepping out to pioneer a totally new profession, legal nurse consulting. I had to sell an idea that had never been sold before. My retirement-party perspective helped me to acknowledge my fear, refuse to give it more power than it already had and step out to confront it head on.

Step Out to Expand Momentum

Stepping out in my career gave me the confidence to step out in other parts of my life. Although I overcame my fear of those childhood steps, I still get panicky at cliff-hanging heights and never really saw the point in skydiving. I never saw myself stepping out of an airplane unless I could plant my two feet firmly on an air-conditioned jetway. But when two fearless, thrill-seeking women from my company decided to skydive, I chose to engage my fear and join them. After all, wasn't I always the one advocating the virtues of risk taking?

Acknowledging fear is your first step in conquering it, and mine was no fabricated fear. In skydiving, terrible things can happen, including quadriplegia or death. A prerequisite video, guaranteed to scare off anyone easily intimidated, contained no fewer than five warnings about serious injury or death. A 10-page waiver was artfully drafted to scare the crap out of anyone who actually read it before signing. The week I was to jump I learned from one of my clients that her paraplegia resulted from a skydiving accident. All my fears crowded back to waylay my commitment.

Although I was terrified, I jumped anyway. But I had one goal and one goal only, and that was to step out. No fancy aerobatics—I wasn't even prepared to jump solo like the paralyzed woman had done. Yet to meet my goal of jumping tandem, I had to step out voluntarily. Being pushed out did not qualify. The 60-second free fall at 120 miles per hour was both scary and exhilarating—and simultaneously the longest and shortest minute of my life.

I would do it all over again for the delicious high of conquering fear. Who knows what great accomplishments that fear had undermined over the years?

Take Action to Deflate Fear

Fear can also commit you to the wrong people, wrong ideal or wrong decision. You participate in office gossip because you're afraid of being left out. I've put off severing business relationships with vendors, subcontractors and employees longer than I should have, worrying about replacing them. What if I couldn't find a replacement? What if a big project blew in and I couldn't finish it on time? In the end, the worry was for nothing. No one is indispensable, and recognizing that has helped me make better decisions about doing business with people I respect and who share my core values.

Uncertainty is the sister of fear, and adequate preparation banishes uncertainty. Even to jump tandem I needed instruction.

But the best cure for fear is action. I couldn't learn to skydive merely by hanging out at the jump zone watching a skydiving video, taking a class, watching someone else do it or reading a book. The only way to truly conquer this fear was to engage it. In skydiving, you're either jumping out of the plane or standing on the ground watching others free-fall. You never experience the thrill unless you step out. I had to step out.

Before stepping out, I interviewed my tandem master, Scott, to assess his skydiving credentials. My spirits lightened dramatically when I learned he had made 4,500 jumps and competed internationally. It felt especially auspicious to learn that his first skydiving experience was in the womb at six months gestation. He was clearly passionate about skydiving, and if I was going to entrust my life to someone, Scott was a good choice.

I owned up to my fear and was heartened further by Scott's encouragement. His best advice was, “You don't have to be perfect. Your only goal today is to have fun.”

Adding fun to my goal seemed like a great idea. Beyond those two commitments—stepping out and having fun—I wasn't concerned about anything. Well, other than dying.

Rally a Support Team

Even a veteran skydiver never jumps without a certified rigger to pack her reserve chute. Like skydivers, smart women engage risk when backed by a trusted support team. Your team cheers you on, holds you accountable and provides a lifeline, ensuring that you will live through the experience to engage the next risk.

Scott supported me by sharing that one of his clients skydived for the first time on her 85th birthday, again on her 86th birthday and again on her 87th, at which time she declared she wasn't sure she could wait another year to do it again.

That encouraging message triumphed over an earlier discouraging message by one of my staffers who was not skydiving but had joined several others as spectators. She voiced her own fear with, “I can't believe you're really going to do this.” When I playfully reminded her she was there to encourage me, not discourage me, she said, “I'm here to talk you out of it.”

Knowing she was expressing her fear from a place of love and concern, and probably worried about her paycheck in the event I crashed head first into the jump shack, I appreciated that she cared, but I chose to discard her discouraging message.

When stepping out, we should enjoy the ride along the way. We spent a lot more time on the ground that day than we did in the air. The four-hour wait seemed eerily like both an eternity and a brief moment. I was glad I had a team to party with while waiting. They definitely took my mind off my fear.

Step Out to Fly High

Once they called our jump-load, everything happened quickly. I put on my jumpsuit, and Scott helped me into the harness. Stepping onto the plane, I forced my best fake-calm face as I eyed the side door that would become my in-flight exit.

After a dreadfully slow ride up to altitude, we leveled off at 14,000 feet, and the exit door was opened. The magnitude of my engagement became very real, very quickly. I put on my helmet and goggles. Scott snapped my harness securely to his. Suddenly, the jumpers before me were gone, and it was my turn to step out.

As Scott urged me toward the open door, I remembered the instructor's motto: “Once you're in the plane, ‘no, no, no' means ‘go, go, go.'” Not looking down, not thinking about what I was doing and still fully conscious, I stepped out of the plane into 14,000 feet of emptiness.

When my 60-second free fall ended and my parachute opened, the pace of the experience quickly changed from a gallop to stillness and quiet. Houston is not known for its natural beauty, but the sinking sun from my sky-high vantage point never seemed more beautiful. The most exhilarating feeling of all came when my feet hit the familiar ground. I'd done it! The champagne we all shared afterward was the sweetest I've ever tasted.

Living a passionate life is a lot like skydiving. You have to engage commitment and step out into a boundless and unpredictable future if you want to fly high. This is the joy of life—when no matter the outcome, you still step out.

Two women, Sandra and Jill, engaged their career fears entirely differently. Sandra shares:

Jill, like Sandra, had been considering a career change—for three years. When I asked what was holding her back, she told me flat out that it was fear. With more than 20 years of hard-won experience, she was afraid to make a move that would affect her positively or negatively, because either meant stepping into the unknown. To Jill, and to any woman afraid to step out, it helps to redefine success.

Wicked success is not about the achievement. It's about marching boldly into the venture. It's about choosing action over caution. Every time I step out into the unknown, win or lose, I succeed. I might break a leg or invest in a losing business idea, but I won't end up at my 90th birthday party with nothing more than stale white cake and regrets. Sure, bad things can happen when we step out, but I believe worse things happen to our souls when we don't.

DITCH PERFECTIONISM

In healthcare, perfectionism is not only rewarded, it's expected. This is one part of life where “good enough” isn't good enough. A nurse makes a mistake and someone can die. I'm sure mistakes don't win any points with your boss either. But do our toilets have to be so immaculate and our lawns so manicured?

Misguided perfectionism can keep you from stepping out and going for what you want. Perfectionism can also rob you of the enjoyment of experiences. Distinguishing what does and doesn't require perfection is the hallmark of wickedly successful women.

I'm surrounded by perfectionists (lots of Virgos) at my company, and even I sometimes suffer from the perfectionism obsession. Ten drafts of a document are not uncommon.

Improvements are valuable up to a point and then they actually have the reverse effect. They keep you from moving forward to your next Big Thing. Ask, “How much is enough? If I perfect this project any more, will I get more clients and more repeat business? Will the client or anyone important even notice?”

For the perfectionist, the answer will always be, “Yes! Of course it will!” More likely, the real answer is no.

Big Things have big payouts. You never want to deliver faulty work product, but endlessly perfecting the tiniest details is simply wasteful. Move on to something big.

And don't expect perfection from everyone around you. With 23 employees, and each of us making mistakes, I feel lucky to keep the lights on and the business running. But after the crying is over, I find it's best to have a good laugh and accept the imperfections.

Embrace Imperfection as a Wicked Growth Opportunity

Step out, try new things and expect carefully laid plans to go awry. When your best efforts fail, look upon the experience to find tools for growth. If you never tried anything new, you would certainly make fewer mistakes, and fewer things would go wrong, but would you ever accomplish anything worth remembering?

If 50 percent of your ideas succeed, you're better than the average major league baseball player, who generally bats around .260, less than a one-in-three success rate. Sheryl Swoopes, known as the “female Michael Jordon,” three-time Olympic gold medalist and three-time WNBA Most Valuable Player, doesn't sink every shot. Even Rachael Ray cooks up a dish that falls flat. Wickedly successful women achieve success through the mistakes they make along the way. Embrace the value and power of imperfection and failures.

As an example, after presenting successful one-day seminars, I decided to expand the seminars to three days. I booked hotels, revised the curriculum and invested in promotion, but I failed to get a profitable response.

Panic might have led to canceling the whole idea. Instead, I restrategized and expanded the seminar to six days with certification, which is what the market really needed.

I tripled the price, mailed out new promotional brochures and the new strategy exploded into wicked success. Without the mistake of trying a three-day seminar, would I ever have stepped up to the certification program that is now the bedrock of my entire business?

If you don't get the perfect job, or your boss doesn't give you perfectly glowing reviews or you don't perfectly understand that new software package, don't give up. These are perfect opportunities to grow and learn.

Perfect the Joy of Imperfection

Don't let perfectionism rob you of enjoyment. When I made the ultimate commitment to get married, my friend Beth, told me “Vickie, your wedding day will not be perfect. Something will go wrong. Don't let it get in the way of enjoying your special day.”

She was way off. Not just one wrong thing happened, but lots. Our favorite minister was out of town. The replacement minister announced the wrong friend to give a reading, and she gave me her “What's up with that?” look. We arranged the reception on the top floor of a downtown Houston skyscraper, where my stepmother, who was afraid of elevators, wouldn't go and she gave me her icy “You don't want me there, do you?” look. I realized it was a bad idea to have invited my ex-fiancée when he stole a pair of my underwear and wore them on his head like a hat during the reception. Until he ran into his wife. Then she gave me her … well, you can imagine how she looked at me—and I had nothing to do with it! Even worse, the underwear wasn't from Victoria's Secret, but my stretched-out cotton briefs—the kind you wear after the honeymoon.

On another occasion, while dining with two important attorney-clients at an Italian restaurant, I was embarrassed to discover I had splashed spaghetti sauce all over my suit (sleeves, front of the jacket, everywhere). The top partner laughed and said, “You're one of us now. We never eat spaghetti without getting it all over our neckties.”

Realizing that even my “perfect” clients experienced “imperfect” moments took the edge off my chagrin. Sure, in court they were perfect, but in other parts of their lives they were willing to ditch perfectionism a little (or a lot, depending on the sauce).

Today those imperfect moments are fun memories. How often have you let minor screwups rob you of the enjoyment of an experience? Think back to a situation that went so wrong you wanted to cry. Is that outcome so important to you today? Time and distance are wonderful at devolving moments of great calamity into insignificance and fun memories. Those things that went wrong at our wedding, and the spaghetti sauce—they're the memories I still laugh at.

Nothing in life is ever perfect. When we demand perfection, we rob ourselves of the pleasures of life. I try to remember this when I'm in the middle of something that has gone badly wrong.

Lighten up! Relax and ditch perfectionism. Take a breath and reach for a glass of wine to go with that sloppy spaghetti. Don't wait for the perfect moment. It's already here.

BREAK THE FEEL-GOOD ADDICTION

How does a busy woman cope with the mounting demands and pressures of achieving her passionate vision while, all around her, life intrudes? In today's world, you're constantly sabotaged by nonproductive energy-wasters. Wicked success will not wait for you to finish the dishes, or finish that already well-written report, or finish voting for your favorite on Dancing with the Stars.

Because we like to feel good, many of us gravitate toward what's easy instead of what's productive. I call this the feel-good addiction. We are addicted to majoring in minor accomplishments, niggling away our time, surfing the Internet, watching TV, hanging out on Facebook, losing ourselves in FarmVille or Angry Birds.

As I write this chapter, my garden is suffering from the devastation of our winter freezes. I desperately want to share my woes with my thousands of friends on Facebook. I know they'll understand, and it will feel good to read their empathic messages. Then there's the email stacking up in my box.

Even if you like to be productive, you can be addicted to straightening, organizing and reorganizing. The feel-good addiction is insidious for those who like to check things off, because you feel good after completing each small task. This addiction to check marks comes at a high price and bites you on the butt because that cheap check-mark high guarantees to frustrate, overwhelm and stress you out in the long term. You feel busier than ever, but are accomplishing less of real value.

The feel-good addiction begins with the way you start your day. “I'll knock this out quickly and strike it off my checklist.” Or “I can't start my day until I empty my email box.”

Is this feel-good start to your day the best use of your time? You'll be tempted to knock out each item that clamors for your attention. After all, it only takes two minutes to fire off an email or return that unimportant phone call. Since you're not yet feeling the day's time constraints, these trivia steal more attention than they deserve. Two minutes turns into 20 as one item leads to another.

Even if you set them aside, once you put your attention to them, these small tasks buzz around in your head and have the potential to distract you for hours. A colleague misquoted you in an email to your boss, or you need to locate receipts for your expense report. Although you defer action until later, the issue now agitates until you get it out of the way. Distraction diffuses your focus on important matters. Put small tasks out of sight and out of mind until the designated time to deal with them.

About the time you've completed your feel-good tasks and are ready to start in on your real work, your colleagues have completed their feel-good tasks, and they're ready to start interrupting you from the Big Things you're ready to do; or a client calls with the latest crisis. Before you know it, quitting time arrives and you haven't accomplished a single step toward your Big Thing. You'll start asking how you can be so busy yet accomplish so little of importance. Too often our important tasks fall prey to the feel-good addictions of easy ones. By majoring in minor things we never get to our big commitments.

Breaking the feel-good addiction opens the door to achievement. Start by asking yourself, Is this feel-good start to my day the best use of my time? or Are these feel-good tasks best reserved for mental breaks throughout the day?

I too am a happy checker-off-er. Working for two hours on a huge project I won't finish doesn't release the same amount of endorphins as cleaning out my email box. After two hours I need to get something checked off. That's when I indulge my own feel-good addiction and attack the stack of bills, plow into the financials or grab my mouse to viciously click through my email.

We already have precious little free time. Work expands to fill the time available, so we need to make the most of the time we have and not niggle it away.

What you engage and focus on is where you will yield results. Small accomplishments reap small results, and trivia saps the creative energy you need for accomplishing your audacious goals. When you stop engaging the fire of your passionate vision, you lose desire and motivation. The less important your accomplishments, the less important you feel. You start to believe you're not cut out to achieve the future you've imagined.

What feel-good addiction will you quit to achieve your next Big Thing?

ENGAGE ONE BIG THING AT A TIME

Engaging Big Things guarantees a different addiction—an addiction to momentum, which promises a far more lasting high than the transitory feel-good of checking off trivial tasks. Identify three Big Things that connect to your passionate vision, then choose one to schedule your day around. Start strong and you'll experience genuine elation from achieving real goals and solving real problems.

Once you're engaged in accomplishing Big Things, you'll approach routine matters with laser-sharp focus, quickly deleting and delegating and experiencing fewer distractions.

More important, your creativity and productivity catch fire and the momentum keeps you pumped. You'll glide through your day full of confidence and satisfaction from achieving significant milestones.

Engage Momentum in 12 Easy Steps

1. Define three Big Things. Your vision might be to get promoted, live by the ocean or achieve financial security. A Big Thing might be to take on a high-profile work project, locate and buy a property or develop a household budget. Set a target date for completing your three Big Things.
2. Challenge your engagement. Ask: “Am I really going for it all the way?” Or, “If it's too tough, will I quit?” Make sure it's the right engagement for you at this time.
3. Turn cyberspace off. There's no greater blow to productivity than breaking your concentration to reply to an email as soon as it hits your inbox. It's not a contest and there's no reward for being the fastest responder. If you're doing nothing but responding to email, you're bouncing around like a pinball.

   And remember, the purpose of email is not to generate more email. Unless a response is necessary, go ahead, let the other person have the last word. I'm not saying that email isn't important, but if you can't bring yourself to close your email box, at least turn off the sound alert and pop-ups so you won't have the annoying “ping” sound and flash notification every time a potential time-waster drops out of cyberspace and into your mental space.

   Use your triage skills like an ER nurse would. Don't start the surgery unless the patient is critical. Email doesn't bleed out, doesn't need defibrillation and, unlike a critically ill patient, won't expire if not tended to immediately.

4. Turn off the TV to turn on your engagement. I've got a confession to make. I'm not hooked on American Idol. I don't know who's been fired or not, and I've never watched any version of CSI, NCIS or EIEIO.

   I will also confess there are a couple of exceptions. I set aside as sacrosanct an evening each for the Grammys, Golden Globes, Tony Awards, Super Bowl (for Tom) and the Academy Awards. Don't text me on those nights; I won't respond unless we're watching the same show. The other 360 days of the year, my TV is off. My Google homepage tells me the news headlines. If the world were coming to an end, my executive team would notify me and ask me to close the office early so the employees could go home and prepare for the Rapture.

   On the other extreme, I know women who live and die by their TVs. Between The Office or Desperate Housewives and endless hours of anything Kardashian, they eat, sleep and work. I understand the need to let your mind coast and let your body relax. I just think a good movie, the jacuzzi, quiet time and a glass of a great red wine restore in a way TV cannot.

   Every hour you sit in front of a television you're accomplishing nothing. Each of those hours is irretrievably lost. If you're struggling to let go of this feel-good addiction, start by turning your TV off one day or one hour a week. Put that time into your Big Thing. See what you'll reap from that time. You'll never again say, “I'm too busy to …”

   If you dare to fully realize the phenomenal power of TV banishment, take a week off. I hear you gasping from withdrawal pains, and I warn you, this powerful practice is not for everyone; it's only for women determined to take back their time and make something wickedly powerful happen.

5. Tame the social media beast. We all love social media. For example, I use Facebook to communicate with friends, clients and prospects. I truly enjoy reading details of their lives and seeing the fun photos they post.

   There's actually a scientific reason that social media feels good. Informal research is demonstrating that the rush you feel when a social media friend or business associate posts on your wall, comments on or likes your status or tags you in a photo seems more likely than not to result from a release of the hormone oxytocin (the so-called cuddle chemical). This hormone is released into our systems when we connect or experience intimacy with another person, and we feel increased levels of trust, contentment and affection. Your brain processes the electronic connection the same as an in-person connection. That's one reason social media is so addictive—it's like experiencing human hugs all day long. Now that you understand why you like it, it's time to tame the beast.

   Social media can quickly move from a social communication to an obsessive-compulsive disorder. You can get caught up in all of the things to do there—the games and other ancillary applications. That's my big issue with social media. Let's face it, clicking your mouse to get points to build a hen house for your farm or sending someone virtual hugs, flowers or groceries seems like a crazy waste of time. Does “I got a new llama for my herd today” really sound better to you than “I made three sales calls on new clients”?

   The way you unwind is certainly your personal choice, but while relaxation has a beginning and an end, the demands of a “virtual farm” never will.

   Wickedly successful women living in the real world avoid those meaningless feel-good addictions. We spend our time growing our lives and careers, not fertilizing our virtual fields. We measure our lives in seconds, not just hours and days. Thirty seconds here and there add up.

   Social media is a great thing. It's changing the way we connect and communicate. Just make sure you're using it to advance relationships and meaningful engagement.

6. Set aside sacred “momentum time.” Most people claim to cherish their “quiet” time, but be honest: Do you create the space for momentum time? Momentum time is the only way you can stop being a slave to petty distractions. This is what gives us our biggest gains. First thing each week, schedule a substantial chunk of uninterrupted time (aim for two hours) for projects that support at least one of your Big Things. To carve out time, examine every activity and decide how to eliminate it, delegate it, hire it out or do it faster.

   If part of your day is rarely interrupted (such as early morning or late evening), reserve it for momentum time. You'll finish that huge project that seemed impossible, or wrestle that new training program into comprehension, three times faster. My favorite momentum time is early morning, before my office opens, when I can knock out Big Things three times faster. I make time for my cup of healthy green tea and a workout but still use some of that time to accomplish the Big Thing. It does mean getting up early, but I'd rather reward myself with a morning under my control than sleep later and spend my day under everyone else's control.

   My office opens at 8:00 a.m. Often by 7:50 there's a line of penitents forming outside my door; employees asking for my input on projects, directors telling me why they won't meet a deadline and the janitor asking me to diagnose a toenail fungus. Knowing this madness is coming, I use my quiet momentum time to hunker down and work on those projects that need the most concentration.

   Keep your momentum time sacred. Use phrases such as, “I'll be available in one hour. What time after that works best?”

   If you get distracted, even briefly, commit to stopping the distraction. While writing this section, I'm certain emails are flooding in, but I won't know until I switch myself into email mode and start responding. I'm in writing mode, which means all those other distractions will need to wait until this job is complete. If the office is on fire, I'm pretty certain at least one staffer will want to save me. If the company website is down, the staff knows better than I do how to get it back up.

   Poor work habits won't change overnight. As with exercise, what's difficult at first becomes easy. The more progress you see, the more addicted you'll become to momentum.

   Start your day with a two-hour uninterrupted chunk, then gradually add more two-hour momentum sessions each day. Claim your momentum time and you'll find those lost hours you've been looking for. Start strong and you'll finish strong.

7. Interrupt the interrupters. We have enough policies and procedures at my company to fill an electronic employee manual to overflowing. One of my favorites is the Institute's “Interruptions” policy. This simple practice sets up a hierarchy of reasons and times when a person working on “drive-by” (as we call a closed door) can be interrupted. The intention is to give everyone the space and time we need to do that Big Thing uninterrupted. Of course, this policy is routinely and enthusiastically ignored.

   Like any other woman, whether you're working at home with family around you, in an office with colleagues or camped out in a Starbucks with your laptop, I can guarantee you'll be interrupted. Statistically, you're interrupted every seven minutes in the workplace. I personally think there's a secret alarm or flashing blue light that goes off the moment I shut my office door to focus. It seems to be a shout-out for people to start lining up to interrupt and ask me questions, ranging from the important (“Please approve the advertising budget.”) to the mundane (“Can I leave early on Friday?”) to the ones that are so goofy I won't even mention them.

   I handle interruptions pretty easily—I'm sure it's a result of my nursing experience. Nurses must handle interruptions with grace and aplomb and still keep cool. Plus, I know that by letting someone interrupt me, they can get the answer they need and get on with their work, which keeps them productive.

   But other than all those outsiders, there's one person who is responsible for interrupting the work you're doing and keeping you from getting to your Big Thing. That one person is probably responsible for more interruptions than anyone else in your home or office. Who is the responsible party? That's right—you.

   Today we're bombarded by a plethora of interruptions that we invite into our mental space—email pop-up notifications, Facebook postings, text messages, Twitter streams and blinking message lights.

   It's more important than ever to work with focus and a consciousness about whether you're on or off focus. If you can interrupt the interrupter, you'll get a whole lot more done.

8. Alternate momentum time with “weed pulling.” Miscellaneous routine tasks are like weeds in your garden; we all have them, and no matter how often we get rid of them, they never go away. Yet they do have to be handled, and pulling a few weeds can provide a restorative break from more intensive work. Categorize tasks into Big Things or weeds. After each momentum session, devote 15 to 30 minutes to weed pulling—handling email, phone calls or other minor tasks.

   Don't try to tackle all your weeds at once. Prioritize. Set aside a three-hour block periodically to do the deep weeding and organizing. Deep cleaning is cathartic.

   If you need a five-minute break from your Big Thing, don't tackle the weeds. They will only distract. Use those five minutes to refresh your energy with a stretch or bit of nourishment, raw nuts or a cup of healthy green tea.

   Finally, Facebook and other social media used improperly aren't weeds. They're time-sinks. You may decide to hop onto Facebook and just spend a minute, but then 15 minutes evaporate.

9. Focus on one Big Thing at a time. When you engage in too much at once, you risk finishing nothing. Finish your first Big Thing, or at least reach a significant milestone before embarking on the next. I have difficulty following my own advice on this, and do have to tame the beast of “too many good ideas.” Engage one Big Thing then the next and the next.
10. Use technology to your advantage. I love my iPhone; it's with me everywhere I go. It saves time. When I travel, I can get my email done before I pick my luggage off the conveyer belt. By the time I hit the hotel I'm ready to accomplish Big Things—the reasons I traveled to begin with. Likewise, I know when to turn it off. If I'm at a friend's house, I turn it off. If I'm speaking to a group, I turn it off. I used to find a hiding place to check my email, Facebook and text messages during a speaking break, but I enjoy speaking more when I focus on the audience, and they deserve my full attention.

    I also love the variety of iPhone apps available. One of my favorite productivity apps is Dragon Dictation. If you've ever had a eureka thought but no paper to write it down, you'll love it too. No matter where you are, the app allows you to dictate your ideas, save them, edit them and email them to yourself or some other lucky recipient. You'll never again have to worry about reading your scribbled handwriting or decoding the cocktail napkin notes from the two-martini lunch with your favorite client.

11. Let go of bad ideas. Successful women can be successful at many things, so it is tempting to go after all kinds of ideas, even ones that are not so great.

    When we decided to update our training curriculums for our online and live programs, we put extensive time into customizing the material to each format. Midway we realized we were creating two monsters. Every future revision meant double work. It still breaks my heart to think of the hours that went into this before we wised up and created one curriculum that works for both.

    That's an example of a “great” idea that wasn't so great after all. No matter how much it hurt, we had to let it go. When a “great idea” isn't so great after all, let it go. This frees you to work on the next genuine Big Thing.

12. Safeguard your momentum. Accept that you won't please everyone. Someone is bound to be unhappy about the changes you make to focus on your Big Things. A friend gets upset because you stop meeting for lunch on Wednesdays. Your spouse complains because you won't run his errands on a weekday. They'll get over it. Stop feeling guilty and stay true to your goals. Surround yourself with friends, family and peers who support your vision. Discard all discouraging messages. This is your engagement, not anyone else's.

    There's more to feeling good than feeling the feel-good addiction. The more Big Things you do, the more you'll do! Engage momentum. You can have time in your life and still have the time of your life. Make your Big Thing the Big Thing for today.

    What's your next Big Thing?

GET WHACKED LIKE A BUDDHIST

Imagine yourself sitting in a Japanese-style kneeling position on a hard wooden bench in an 800-year-old Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, trying to empty your mind in a breathing, open-eyed meditation. Your eyes are focused in the middle distance, seeing all and seeing nothing. The soft smell of pine and burning incense fills the air, and all around is quiet.

At that almost perfect moment only one thing stands between you and satori, perfect enlightenment—well two, if you count the prickly feeling of your legs falling asleep. That one thing is a smiling, bald monk in a dark brown robe standing in front of you wielding a three-foot-long stick over his head. His benign smile doesn't fool you, because it belies the fact that he is about to whack you with the stick.

Let me start at the beginning. I've always felt I was pretty good with focus. After all, I worked as a nurse in critical care. Nurses are used to working in an environment where the world around us is going haywire—people running left and right, procedures being done, orders being given (or shouted)—where lives hang in the balance while we concentrate on the task at hand. We intubate, defibrillate and resuscitate without a second thought. Total focus!

How about you? Are you really focused, or do you sometimes sleepwalk through engagement? While in an important meeting you make a note to yourself to pick up diapers for the baby, or construct your Saturday honey-do list. In the first meeting you ever attended, you were totally focused on every word, and probably apologized if you sneezed. Then maybe you moved from doing your job with focus to doing it subconsciously, maybe even unconsciously.

Can we truly focus while the past and future intrude upon our thoughts? Are we fully present or merely idling through the motions while our minds traipse away to other thoughts? Are we giving our families, spouses, bosses and clients the benefit of our full attention, or are we cheating them of our wholehearted engagement?

Back to Japan: I had come to this ancient Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto for expert advice, to sharpen my ability to focus. The purpose of meditating with open eyes was to allow the Roshi, or senior monk, to look in the eyes of his students as he walked the room, to see who was focused and who was sleeping or daydreaming.

Now, for me, there's a short distance between meditating and napping. I also find myself following thoughts down rabbit holes instead of discarding or ignoring them when I meditate, so I was anxious for some instruction from a master. This exercise was designed to train us to stay grounded in the present.

My husband Tom and I, along with a visiting monk from another temple, sat in audience while the Roshi talked about meditation techniques. He was funny and self-deprecating, and I immediately liked him. During breathing meditation, he explained, we would observe our thoughts from outside, like watching a river. We were to count our breaths in and out. Our goal was to reach 10 breaths without having a thought other than the count. If a random (or purposeful) thought intruded, we were to recognize it and start over at one. I asked the visiting monk next to me if he ever made it all the way to 10. He nodded. “Of course, many times. Once your mind is clear it is quite simple.”

The Roshi explained that to start the zazen session he would light an incense stick and strike a small gong. Then we'd meditate for the period of time it would take for the stick to burn through. Afterward, he'd strike the gong again, to remind us to return to the present. We settled in and I was ready to leap into the meditation. I heard him strike the match and ring the gong, and there I went, my eyes focused in the empty space halfway to the large seated Buddha figure in the front of the room. Like everything I do, I was “all in.”

One breath, in and out; so far so good. Two breaths, in and out; going well. Three breaths, in and—was that Tom rustling around? Darn. One, in and out. Two, in … and so on. When the gong finally rang I'd never gotten past a count of four. The Roshi told me that was excellent for the first time. The visiting monk flashed me a quick smile, so I knew he'd probably gotten to 10 effortlessly.

The Roshi then asked if we'd like to do it for real. “For real?” I asked. “Wasn't that for real?” “No,” he clarified. “It is easy to focus when you are alone with your thoughts in a temple such as this. But when there are outside influences present, it is not so easy.”

This is when the three-foot-long willow pole appeared. He pulled it out and explained that during the next meditation he would walk around the room observing each student as we meditated. If he felt that our focus was wandering, he would stop in front of us. At that point, we were to bow and thank him. Then he would strike us on each shoulder to remind us to focus.

This is the goofiest thing I've ever heard of, I thought. How can getting whacked help you focus? I asked the visiting monk if it hurt. “That depends on you,” he said, then winked and added, “Whacking does help one to clear the mind … after it stops stinging.” Great, I thought. Too bad this guy's not old and frail. I just hope he's not trigger-happy.

Then came the test. Ever ready for a challenge, and buoyed by my past success of four breaths, I was prepared. I heard the match strike, followed by the sound of the gong. I brought my focus to center. One breath, in and out. Two breaths, in and out. In the corner of my vision appeared a bald, five-foot-six man in gray robes and slippers tiptoeing around the room and brandishing a stick like a baseball bat. Alex Rodriguez in his pinstriped Yankee's uniform holding a Louisville Slugger would have been less obvious.

The Roshi slowly crossed my field of vision, moving left to right in front of us. My eyes stayed centered and unfocused. One breath, in and out. Two breaths, in and out. Three—is that Tom giggling? Is that me giggling? I struggled to stifle myself, but it was like laughing in church with my twin, Vince, back when we were 5, only this time instead of a nun with a ruler there stood a monk with a great overhand swing waiting for me.

One breath, in and out. Back in control. Suddenly I glimpsed a movement to my right and sensed the monk next to me, bowing. Then WHACK! a pause and WHACK! followed by silence. The monk beside me had obviously failed in his focus. I tensed and wasn't present-focused either; my thoughts strayed to the future and whether I was next to be whacked. The visiting monk's failure at reaching serenity was affecting my own attempts. One breath, in and out. The Roshi passed by me moving to the left. One breath, in and out, again. Two breaths, in and out. Focus inside, focus inside.

I sensed movement to my left, then WHACK! It had to be Tom's left shoulder—seemed even louder than before. Was that a whimper? WHACK! Tom's right shoulder. Suddenly I was fully focused, not inside as I should be, but on the future. I was thinking “I'm so out of here. I am not staying around for this.”

My awareness immediately snapped to the present and there he was: the Roshi and his stick. Talk about fight or flight. I couldn't very well punch a man whose life was dedicated to peace and nonviolence. Flight wasn't an option either—after all, I'd come here specifically to learn how to meditate. It wouldn't do to kick him in the shins and run screaming out of the temple with a horde of angry monks (like a bad chopsocky movie) chasing me to the nearest Starbucks for a calming cup of healthy green tea.

I remembered I was expected to bring my hands up and bow to the Roshi, in thanks for two things: first, for bringing to my attention the fact that I wasn't focused, and second, for the reminder to focus more thoughtfully. I bowed my head and then my body to the inevitable.

WHACK! It stung like the dickens. WHACK! Okay, okay, it only stung for a minute.

I bowed again to the Roshi and resumed my open-eyed meditation. It was easy to find the middle distance when my eyes were full of water. One breath, in and out. Two breaths, in and out.

Pema Chödrön teaches, pain is inevitable; it is suffering that's optional. The pain of the stick came and went. Sure, I could have focused on the past and held a grudge. Or I could have focused on the future and worried about whether the Roshi would have time to circle the room again before that darn incense stick burned out. That's the optional suffering, the wandering around in the wilderness of our thoughts. Instead, I focused on the present. Where I was and what I was supposed to be doing: meditating. I was learning a simple lesson taught the same way for hundreds of years.

Focus is important in our communications, too. After listening to a woman I was mentoring ramble aimlessly for three minutes, I politely stopped her: “I would really like to help you solve your issue, but would you please describe the issue?” After a few more attempts, still rambling, and more nudging by me to focus, she finally got to the heart of the matter and we dealt with it easily and swiftly.

As we were about to wrap up, she confessed that she still found it uncomfortable and often unsuccessful to talk to prospective clients. I knew the source of her problem. I had just lived it! It was her rambling method of communication.

People who know me, know that I tell it like it is. Businesspeople are crazy busy. They're working for a living. They're not like patients who lie around in bed with lots of time to spare, waiting for the next visit from their favorite nurse, happy for any company other than a bad reality show.

Focus is one of the essential keys to successfully communicating. Whether you're talking to your boss or a prospective client, you have to focus, focus and focus more. You cannot go into an interview or meeting unprepared or misdirected. Once you lose that person, you lose the opportunity.

When things are blowing up around you, you may need to give yourself a whacking to get it under control. Think back to that monk and remember to keep your focus in the present. Focus on what you can do now and on what you are doing now. Whether you are alone or with someone else, whack all distractions aside. By keeping your thoughts on what you can do now—not what you might do, hope to do or didn't do—you'll be the calm in the center of any storm.

I'm not sure how long I'll retain this precious gift. But as long as I'm here in the present, I'm going to put my all into being here, so l can engage big.

ENGAGE IN WHAT'S RIGHT, NOT WHAT'S EASY

If we only did what's easy, we'd still be riding tricycles. Despite your passion and belief in the path you've chosen, not everything you engage in will come easily, especially when it comes to doing what is right at that moment. Many assume the most successful and happiest people have had the easiest lives. Nothing could be further from the truth.

We rarely fully know another woman's story. But after connecting with many wickedly successful women and learning parts of their stories, I know for certain that wicked success has nothing to do with easy. I've mentored every type of woman, from women with cancer to mothers with autistic children or with sole custody and financial responsibility for their children, and you'd never know by looking at them. Wickedly successful women merely do what less successful women are not willing to do.

Yvonne worked as an executive, went back to school at night to complete a degree, and still participated actively in family life with her husband, 6-year-old son (his school events and sports), plus their extended family. It's nothing for 100 people to show up at her birthday party. How did she do it all? She wanted that degree bad enough to persevere. Sometimes you sacrifice things you don't want to sacrifice. For Yvonne, it paid off.

With only 23 employees at my company, and working as closely as we do, it's impossible not to develop friendships. I prefer working with competent people whom I also like, but this makes being a boss particularly tough when employee issues arise.

The first time I had to fire an employee, I agonized over it. For support and advice I called Mary Ann, another business owner. She said, “Vickie, you know you have to do it. I promise that one day you won't even remember that person's name. Just do it.”

It sounds harsh now, but the way she phrased it got through to me. No matter how much I dreaded firing a person I'd grown to care about, it was the right thing. The next day I terminated her. That night, in bed with Tom and a glass of wine, I cried and laughed about how tough it was, but it was done. The nudge from my friend helped me do what was right, not what was easy.

Buck Up at Camp Buck-Up

I never hire a girl to do a woman's job. Women who expect their lives and careers to be easy just need to buck up. That's why I'm thinking about starting a new camp and calling it Camp Buck-Up. This camp will be for any woman out there who needs to be told to “buck up” on a regular basis. This includes more than just the people who continually forget their responsibilities (“Why are the laryngoscope batteries dead?”), the whiners (“You really want me to make those copies for you?”), and the complainers (“This is the second time this year I've had to work on a Saturday.”).

What's the point of this camp? It's to get people to do their jobs, without complaining. I'm sure you all know a couple of candidates for Camp Buck-Up. I can think of several already. And to tell the truth, I need the occasional visit to Camp Buck-Up myself.

At Camp Buck-Up, we'll start each day with healthy green tea, followed by PE drills, such as shouldering and carrying a heavy load of responsibilities, pulling your own weight in meetings, running an obstacle course of objections while juggling a complex project and climbing a wall of disasters, all without complaining. Easy activities like fire-walking are for those feel-good camps—not Camp Buck-Up.

Everyone will spend the week without gossiping or complaining about anything or anybody. It's easier to moan and groan than it is to put our noses to the grindstone. But we'll straighten that out. Anyone heard gossiping or complaining will get a second week at Camp Buck-Up, at no additional charge.

I'm even thinking of creating my own line of camp T-shirts, with catchy phrases like: “Lead, follow, or get out of the way!” “We were all born crying—time for you to outgrow it.” And, “Whining and complaining are not competitive sports.”

At Camp Buck-Up, everyone will have at least one good belly laugh a day, and it won't be from schadenfreude; it'll be from the genuine pleasure of having fun working and laughing together.

We'll close each day with a sundowner of healthy red wine, thanking our lucky stars we're at Camp Buck-Up.

I haven't started mandatory Camp Buck-Up for my employees yet, but I'm thinking about it. I've already filled the guest list for my first Camp Buck-Up with people I think need it most. If you want to sign up, I'll be happy to put you on the waiting list; just let me know.

ENGAGE THE DETAILS

So often I'll hear someone ask, “Why is that woman successful? I'm just as talented, skilled, and inventive as she is, so why not me?”

Reality check: The vision is the easy part. The fun often lies in dreaming the dream, fleshing out the vision in your mind. Then come the late nights, early mornings and working weekends, getting your hands dirty with the details. That's when the casually engaged fall slack while the tenaciously persistent grab the prize and run.

Dreaming about my new business was easy. Engaging the thousand details to convert that vision into reality was tough. How many good ideas never get off the drawing board? Wicked success doesn't materialize from nothing, even when fueled by passionate vision. Wickedly successful women aren't focused on the rewards of success; they focus on engaging the details that collectively complete their vision.

When people ask me how I managed to get a major newspaper like the New York Times to write my story, my response is, “Two decades of engaging the details every day.”

One of my staff members, who confesses she's not the most detailed person, observes,

Wicked success starts with passionate vision, but engagement in a hundred thousand tiny details is the difference between wicked success and failure. That's what women who are wickedly successful know.

SHRUG OFF RESTRICTIONS

We all experience setbacks. While you can't simply ignore your weaknesses, you will get more value by focusing on your strengths. Improving every minor deficiency reaps little benefit. Focusing on weaknesses only creates mental restrictions. “I wasn't trained to do this. I've never done this before.”

Shrug off the restriction of pessimism. A study found that optimists are more successful than pessimists in their careers. Optimists succeed not because they're more competent or experienced, but because they're more likely to actively engage problems and positively reframe, rather than be restricted by, challenges. They don't expect issues to resolve themselves; they attack those issues with true grit.

Optimists disengage from courses of action that don't work and engage new strategies. Optimists are also more fun to be around. Wouldn't you rather hang with positive, happy people than someone for whom the sky is always falling? Is it truly a surprise that optimists are more successful? Not to me.

Some of the most optimistic people are Cirque du Soleil artists. I can never get enough of them. They do everything so exquisitely well—costumes, acrobatics, acts, clowns and music. I always come away awed.

One show has the biggest aerial acrobatics act these performers have ever done, and the distances they cover are some of the most difficult in the world. This act took place much higher in the air than I would ever willingly climb. Muscular men were swinging from hanging aerial platforms, launching themselves into space and landing either on a tiny center platform or being caught by the hands by another acrobat. The entire audience held their breath while the men were in the air and cheered and clapped at their daring.

The acrobats took our enthusiasm as a stimulus to challenge each other to attempt more and more daring feats of twisting, turning aerial acrobatics. Suddenly, one of the acrobats mistimed his jump and missed the outstretched hands of the man swinging to catch him. We all gasped as he fell into the safety net far below. He landed, leaped up (just like a guy) and was climbing back up the rope ladder as quickly as he could.

As this optimist climbed, the audience erupted into louder shouts and cheers, not just for the audacity of what he attempted, but also for the fact that he went right back up to do it again. Restrictions? What's that to a Cirque du Soleil aerialist?

In life and career, just like in acrobatics, there's no 100 percent success rate. Wickedly successful women know they can't let a weakness or setback restrict them. The more you're wired for getting right back up after you stumble or fall, the more tenaciously you will engage.

DON'T BE A COMMITMENT QUEEN

Women are queens of commitment. In fact, I'm cautious when speaking to women about engagement, because they tend to overengage. We can also be tenacious about overcommitting to the wrong people and the wrong goals. We martyr ourselves beyond reasonable engagement.

When I first started my seminars, I engaged to the point of exhaustion. I taught all day, and I always had lunch with the students. At day's end, they invited me to dinner, and I'd go, which was not a relaxing affair because I was still the teacher and they wanted to pick my brain. Finally, my sister Karen asked me, “Vickie, why don't you say no, take some time for yourself and relax a little?” Eureka! I started setting boundaries. At first, I felt guilty, but I soon learned that people are usually okay with them.

No wonder women are so exhausted. Your boss wants it yesterday, your kids want it today and your spouse wants it tonight. What's interesting is that once I set the dinner boundary, people stopped inviting me to dinner. It was as if I had sent a subliminal message. They got it. They easily accepted it.

Stop being a commitment queen and martyring yourself beyond reasonable engagement. Shed the guilt. Stop committing your energy to every person or situation that demands it. You need to set your own expectations of what you want to accomplish. Don't let your career or life take a backseat to everyone else's. Yes, you have responsibilities to others. You've also got a responsibility to yourself.

Just Say No

“If I don't do it, nobody else will” is the most insidious myth women are brainwashed to believe. Learn to say no. It's the most powerful word in the dictionary. Practice saying no to this request and that request, people who drain you and any other cause that distracts you from your passionate vision. And the tough one: You have to say no to the people you love most, no to doing all the laundry, all the housework and all the errands.

The reality today is that even as women are building incredible careers they're still battling the stereotypical roles of traditional wife and mother. When you walk in the door after a long day of work, do you grab the remote or play on Facebook while your husband makes dinner, watches the kids and cleans the house?

Women still do more housework than their husbands. One study reported that having a husband adds an additional seven hours to a woman's weekly housework load. Stop the insanity. Women are exhausted by the battle of repeatedly asking and reminding their husbands to pitch in. Rather than rock the boat, for some women it's easier to do it themselves; but that's a trap. It leads to generations of exhausted women while men reap the rewards of extra leisure time and career advancement.

When Edie's husband told her “I don't do laundry,” she replied “That's okay, neither do I.” Today he helps with the laundry, all because Edie knows how to use the no word.

It's okay for your husband and kids to do some of the housework or wash the dishes. It's not going to kill them; but it is going to kill you if you keep doing it all. Everyone benefits—especially your significant other, since you'll be a much happier person when you join him in bed at night.

Draw your man in. Ask him to take a walk and tell him how much you appreciate him. Then explain you're feeling overloaded. Discuss the long list of all your responsibilities. Together, decide on joint responsibilities and all the ways you can handle them—dinnertime, for example: cook, eat out, eat prepared foods and so on. Invite your husband to offer his own solutions, and be open to his ideas.

If that doesn't work, stand up for yourself. Don't say yes by default. Only say yes when it works within the balance of your career, family and passionate vision. By refusing to commit to every person or cause that comes along, you gain a new freedom to achieve your goals, not everyone else's.

Camille, a very successful sports medicine doctor, says, “I'm a fantastic mother, wife and doctor, but I don't cook, I don't bake cookies and I don't decorate the house. I'm totally fine with not being able to and not wanting to do it all.”

Engagement doesn't require giving up yourself and subordinating your dreams to help friends and family achieve theirs. We all need to set boundaries on our willingness to engage.

It's no mystery that successful women engage big. The more success you have, the more success you will have. Winners want to hang out and engage with winners. This is the secret that wickedly successful women know.