With three jobs, three children and a labradoodle, the behavioural scientist Zelana Montminy knows a lot about being pulled in all directions. What can her new book about finding focus teach the rest of us?Zelana Montminy once had a client who, when he finally looked up from his phone, found love. He was so absorbed in – or distracted by – his work that in his sessions with Montminy, he would often stop talking mid-sentence to check his phone. Montminy asked him to walk outside with her, and to put his phone in his pocket. His eyes darted around uneasily at the people on the busy sidewalk “as if he wasn’t sure what to make of the world”. But after this, while he waited at a crossing one morning, he said hello to the woman beside him. “Finally,” the woman said. “I’ve stood in this spot for two months and you’ve never looked up.”The anecdote serves Montminy’s purpose so well. She could have made it up, but she insists that not only did it happen, but her client and his fellow pedestrian went on to marry. Montminy is a behavioural scientist, author and speaker, whose recent corporate clients include American Express, Coca-Cola and Estée Lauder and whose portfolio of voluntary positions includes the Los Angeles Advisory Council of Common Sense Media. You don’t have to look further than the title of her new book to find the moral of this story: Finding Focus – Own Your Attention in an Age of Distraction. Continue reading...