Joseph Cardillo - The 12 Rules of Attention: How to Avoid Screw-Ups, Free Up Headspace, Do More and Be More At Work

First published in the United States of America in 2020 by Nicholas Brealey Publishing

An Hachette company

Copyright Joseph Cardillo 2020

The right of Joseph Cardillo to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Author photo courtesy of Siobhan Connally Photography

Notepad icon courtesy of Shutterfly

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020933362

U.S. eBook ISBN 9781529362022

U.K. eBook ISBN 9781529362015

Disclaimer

The case examples in this book are drawn from media accounts or are composite examples based upon behaviors encountered in the authors own professional experiences. None of the individuals described was a client. The names and details have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.

This publication does not claim medical advice. This book is not and should not be used as a substitute for the business advice of authorized employment consultants and/or human resource advisers. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of such healthcare and/or business professionals.

Before engaging in any business, physical, psychological, or spiritual training programs, you should always check with your own professional business and employment advisers as well as physicians and professional healthcare providers to be sure that they are right for you.

www.nbuspublishing.com

Keep a Little Soul could be a subtitle for this beautiful book, The 12 Rules of Attention, by Joseph Cardillo, PhD. The myriad of ways to successfully develop attention and focus are artfully and skillfully advanced in a stepwise approach. Join in the good humor and fun to develop your better brain while you keep a little soul.

Ernest Rossi, PhD, and Kathryn Rossi, PhD,
authors of the 16 volumes of The Collected

Works of Milton H. Erickson, MD

The Statue of Liberty says, Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses Dr. Cardillo says, Give me your tired, your distracted, your wandering mind He has clearly defined ways to clean out your cluttered thinking and improve your attention span. We all need that. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is involved in self-improvement or who wants to advance in the workplace.

Irene Conlan, MSN, PhD, The Self Improvement Blog

Interesting, mind expanding concept. So many of the key ingredients to health, fitness & wellbeing are in our thoughts but we have to pay attentiongot to be aware that were aware! Dr. Cardillo, former guest on The Sports Doctor, hits a mindfulness home run with The 12 Rules of Attention!

Dr. Bob Weil, Sports Podiatrist, Host of
The Sports Doctor Radio Show, 2019 Inductee

National Fitness Hall of Fame

Amazing! Josephs latest work on attention, an outstanding feat based on his longtime scientific research and practical experience, seems magical. You can realize its magic immediately as you put its 12 Rules into practice. There will be quite unexpected positive turns in your career.

Shintaro Yukawa, PhD, Professor at Hakuoh University,
Chairperson of Japan Society for Research on Emotions,

Translator of Japanese version of Be Like Water

For my wife, Elaine,
and our daughters, Isabella and Veronica,
whom we loved before they were born,
and to my father and mother,
Alfio and Josephine Cardillo

That doesnt even cover the full extent of the inattention problem to organizations. As far as organizations are concerned, employees with high-quality attention skills have become a commodity. The 12 Rules of Attention is prescriptive and written specifically for entry-level to mid-management businesspeople. To this end, this book will help you train your attention to sharp, accurate, and high definition and keep it there. But I promise you, this attention story doesnt stop with just avoiding workplace flub-ups.

The other side of the attention picture is youdo you feel like youre crushing it? How productive, happy, and fulfilled do you feel each day at the workplace? You might ask what attention has to do with it. This is a legitimate question. The answer may help clear up and fix a wide range of ongoing personal workplace concernsincluding and well beyond work error. Simply put, attention is connected to every single thing you think, feel, and do at work and elsewhere. Its almost impossible to imagine, but by the end of this book I hope that you not only understand how this is so but also are enjoying getting into your minds attentional machine and regulating it to your highest advantage. Consider this fact: you are either regulating this mental faculty yourself or it is regulating you.

Perhaps at this point you are wondering, Then why isnt everyone out learning all they can about training their attention? Heres the thing: whether you walk around work all day feeling like a zombie or like you have the energy of a nuclear reactor, whether you glide through your day or have a day that feels straight out of Dantes Inferno, most of what goes on in your brain as you attend to things is happening under your radarsubconsciously. This is the dark, cavernous place where your brains attentional network lives and sparks. When our workday is going great, most of us, no matter how smart we are, ignore all this incredible activity going on in our skull. IQ doesnt have much to do with it either. Furthermore, we seldom ask, What could I have done to make things turn out better? Its not until endeavors start really messing up that an alarm goes off in our head and we start wondering, Whats going on? and What was I thinking? and What can I do to get back on track?

TRY THIS!

Take a moment and have some fun with this little activity. For each question below, rapidly say aloud the first thing that comes to mind. Keep goingrapidlyuntil you finish.

What color is a cotton ball?

What color is a piece of typing paper?

What color are marshmallows?

What color is a wedding dress?

What color is snow?

What do cows drink for breakfast?

Eight out of 10 people answer milk to the last question and find themselves chuckling at their answer as soon as they say it. There are quite a few different versions of this game. The point, however, is the same: the riddle is designed to help you literally feel how your mind decides things when you are not attending to them. In the world of work, another example is when you say yes too soon to a coworker when you already know you are taking on too much work or when you suddenly divulge more information than you should. The fact is, such decisions are made for you without your input all day long. Most people arent aware of just how much is determined this way. For example, your brains attentional system can determine whether you feel depressed or spirited; how you experience others (and how they experience you); the depth, frequency, and accuracy of your insights (or whether you have any insights at all); as well as your frequency of workplace error, successes, and development. Cumulatively these determine your workplace happiness and ability to grow professionally. The question is, Are you controlling them, or are they controlling you? If I have learned anything in the last two decades of attention research, its that we can at least gain control of important moments in living. Learning this skill and putting it into practice will make a big difference in your daily successes.