[Music] one of my group's guiding principles is check out to check in and that means during our meetings they put their out of offices on they make sure everybody knows they're not in the office so that they can stay present and engaged in the meeting that day I think the same principle is really important when one is taking time off for Mark be it on the weekend with your family you're taking a short trip a day trip somewhere a long vacation it's really important to check out of your typical world so you can stay present focused and engaged with your vacation or your time off um what do we mean by this well I just recently went on a cruise with my family and I tried something I've never done before I've always been the person who would sneak looking at the emails and still kind of stayed connected even though I really shouldn't be and I wanted to be on vacation I just had to kind of stay in touch and check in back home this time I put Focus mode on all the apps that I typically get notifications on related to work or the specific email box I turned it off for the entire week so I couldn't see it I didn't get the notifications when they're happening until I turned it off when I came back home um and really was able to check out to check in and stay present and I got to be very present with my son and my husband while we were on vacation with the activities that we were doing I wasn't worrying about that email someone just sent me or thinking about oh how am I going to reply to that my head wasn't other places because I didn't have the distractions to make me think when you just check that email in the morning just for a minute and you have a sense of what's going back home well it's good because you know that things are now going well and okay so you can let go your brain's still there processing thinking about them maybe even being strategic and creative but not present in the moment where you are by turning all that noise off and staying in the moment you really refuel you truly relaxed and you truly check out um and it's very very different than if you were glancing at things or looking at them slightly um and you truly refuel um you give that energy to those you wanted to including yourself it's very hard to do that if you're still checking in so use that principle check out to check in use it to stay present at work and in meetings when you need to and use it to stay present in your vacations in the moment when you need to be somewhere else other than your work and get your work brain gone from your head so you can be focused on where you are [Music]