In the close-down, we move from ant-doing to eagle-perspective. We’ve stepped back, yet we have stayed connected to the task. This slightly detached middle ground is a valuable place to cultivate. From here, we can more clearly perceive what’s happening and gather good information to help us decide what to do next.

During the heartbeat challenge, participants often lock onto a heartbeat rhythm that’s close to theirs.

It’s important to acknowledge how long it takes—not what we hope, or expect, or wish, or imagine it takes, but how long it actually takes. We need to get comfortable with reality as it is,

We talk to the visitor, answer the e-mail, and pick up the phone. Sometimes, we do all three at once!

shame about the conditions of life on Earth, about our needs for sleep, society, love, exercise, and everything else that humans need and computers don’t.

Before computers, it took at least a week for a business communication to come full circle—several days to dictate, draft, edit, produce, and post a letter; several days for it to arrive; and several days to dictate, draft, edit, produce, and post a reply.

At that very moment, you take literally only a few seconds to jot down a word or fix an image in your mind. You might also take a mental “snapshot” of the physical position of your body or the particular pen that’s in your hand before you respond to the person. With each of these conscious acts, you press your internal Pause button to stop the

Since work can happen any time, any place, one day becomes like the next. No longer are there special times when the stores close and families gather around the table. When we go on vacation, we stay “plugged in”

Next, look to the future. Write down the very next step (it might be “ask colleague for input;