Issue #2: The One Practice That Feels Like Doing Nothing — But Changes Everything"

Sharpen the Blade, Don’t Swing Harder

Picture yourself in a meeting where your laptop’s notifications won’t stop dinging, your boss is drumming their fingers, and you’re supposed to be contributing brilliant ideas. (And by brilliant, I mean anything better than Gary’s idea. Seriously, Gary?)

In The Business Buffet, I describe mindfulness as a measured pour — just enough attention on what actually matters, without letting everything else boil over.

You won’t find it on any performance dashboard or 10-K report. HR doesn’t measure it during annual reviews. If they did, half the org would be on a performance improvement plan for attention span alone.

But when mindfulness disappears, you feel it instantly — conversations get harder to follow, simple decisions feel monumental, and your best thinking never makes it to the table.

It shows up as the manager who can’t focus through a single slide deck or the team perpetually reacting instead of planning ahead. Everyone’s moving fast, but nothing’s moving forward.

"I can't maintain this speed without crashing."

Late in 2020, I was a few months into leading our Canadian operations during the pandemic. Crisis calls dominated my days — clients panicking, supply chains breaking, my team stretched thin. My inbox was a digital landfill I kept pretending was a system.

While my team vented frustrations and vendors created new emergencies hourly, one thought kept looping in my head:

I can’t maintain this speed without crashing.

Then a mentor cut through the noise with a single observation:

“A dull blade is dangerous — not because it can’t cut, but because it forces you to hack away instead of slicing cleanly. Your mind works the same way.”

Simple. Direct. Game-changing.

Mindfulness won’t make the pressure disappear — but it will keep it from destroying you.

Or worse, from you destroying you.

Reacting impulsively versus responding intentionally leads to completely different outcomes. One drains your reserves before lunch; the other keeps you sharp when it counts most.

People who understand that difference don’t grind harder — they operate smarter.

Mindfulness creates buffer space — that half-second before you snap at a colleague, agree to an impossible deadline, or let stress dictate your next move. In that pause lives your ability to lead effectively instead of just survive frantically.

And doesn’t that sound like a nice change of pace?

A Measured Pour

The transformation begins when you stop treating your attention like an unlimited resource.

And the actual commitment is minimal:

One minute of controlled breathing before checking email each morning

Stepping away from your desk between video calls — even just to the hallway and back

Recognizing when anxiety starts building and interrupting the spiral early... without the use of heavy narcotics

These aren’t revolutionary ideas, but their impact compounds daily.

Your internal dialogue shifts from “I’m completely overwhelmed” to “Let me separate what’s urgent from what’s noise.”

Executives often resist mindfulness because it sounds unproductive. They’d rather schedule a meeting about productivity than actually be productive. (We’ve all been in that meeting.)

But they’ve got it backwards. Protecting your mental capacity is the most productive thing you can do.

Build these habits into your workflow, and the struggle eases. Your judgment sharpens. Your words carry more weight. When everyone else hits empty, you’ve still got fuel.

Sustained excellence doesn’t come from working until you break — it comes from maintaining the edge that lets you perform reliably. Mindfulness provides that edge.

Why Mindfulness Works

When deadlines stack up, stopping can feel counterproductive. But research tells a different story — strategic pauses make everything else more efficient.

Mindfulness is the investment that prevents total system failure. (You know, that feeling you get around 3 p.m.)

• Focus Fortune — Only 2.5% of people can genuinely multitask. Everyone else just switches between tasks inefficiently, taking 50% longer and making 50% more mistakes. Aetna’s mindfulness training added an extra hour of productivity per employee per week — an 11-to-1 ROI.

• Stress Less — An eight-week program showed a 32% drop in stress, 30% less anxiety, and 29% less depression. Think of mindfulness as a release valve — it won’t erase pressure, but it prevents dangerous buildup.

• Breakthrough Brew — Mindfulness enhances divergent thinking — the creative mode that fuels innovation. Companies like Google, Intel, and Target report higher collaboration, creativity, and retention after integrating mindfulness into their culture.

Try a Bite This Week

Forget the meditation apps and weekend retreats. If sitting still on a mountain for three days sounds like your personal nightmare, good news — mindfulness works just as well at your desk.

Just acknowledge that your attention has limits and start respecting them.

Consistency beats intensity. Small daily actions trump occasional grand gestures.

🍴 The Morning Amuse-Bouche: Take 60 seconds before touching any device. Just breathe. Think of it like clearing the cache before running demanding programs.

🍴 The Pomodoro Mindfulness: Work 25 minutes focused, then pause 5 minutes mindful. During those five, check where you’re holding tension and consciously let it go.

🍴 The Tech Timeout: Block the first 30 minutes after waking and the last 30 before sleeping. No phone, no laptop. Let your brain process without constant pings.

When leaders model focused behavior, teams adopt it naturally. The culture shifts without formal announcements.

A Final Thought

A dull blade requires excessive force, creates unnecessary resistance, and produces inferior results. Taking time to sharpen it first seems like a delay — until you realize how much faster the real work goes.

Besides, it’s hard to look like a visionary leader when you’re flailing through problems like you’re auditioning for Chopped: Corporate Edition.

We all lose our edge sometimes — the trick is remembering to sharpen it before it’s too late.

If this resonated, forward it to someone who’s still hacking through their day instead of pausing to reset.

📖 Chapter 2 of The Business Buffet dives deeper into mindfulness as a leadership edge. Grab your copy anytime at TheBusinessBuffetBook.com

Until next time — lead well and stay curious. — MT