What miracle in our brains allows us to focus on one conversation while standing shoulder to shoulder in a room buzzing with voices, clinking glasses, and the beat of loud music, punctured by laughter?  It's a documented phenomenon, something researchers call the "cocktail party effect." And it doesn't just happen to us at social events. We employ "selective attention" all the time, according to an article in the New York Times.

My husband and I are in the middle of renovating in our 1941 home, gutting two bathrooms and transforming the basement into something cave-ish.  I went for man-cave but my husband says the white leather chair and white furry pillow make it woman-ish, so the room-naming jury is still out.

Perhaps you caught the nightly news story with a photo of a 49-year-old guy standing naked at a Portland Airport security checkpoint. If you saw it, you’ll wish you hadn't. Apparently, he told authorities that he "disrobed as a form of protest against TSA agents who were harassing him."

I was on a panel at the National Speakers Association where the moderator posed this question: "As a business owner, how do you allocate your time to be sure you are doing the right thing?" If you lead an organization of any size, that is THE question, isn't it?

So I am watching TV, I think it was ESPN, and they have hauled out an old 2010 interview with Bubba Watson, the improbable and irrepressible winner of this year's utterly unpredictable Masters Tournament. Bubba is smiling, hitting shots off the staged practice area, and telling a story about how he once demo'd a new golf club by playing an entire round with only that club. He shot a 77. "I figured after that it was worth putting in my bag," he joked. After all, for Bubba, golf is all about having fun.

The other day I was boarding a flight, one hand on the roller bag, the other on my iPhone, spinning down through my e-mail.  All I’d really hoped to do was cull out the junk and get a sense of what I'd missed and what needed a response.  After an all-day meeting when there was no time to duck out (conversations at lunch took priority) and a bumpy cab ride to the airport, I was definitely behind on my e-mail.  And while I'd hoped to review longer documents while at the airline club lounge on my iPad, where I could also type on a real keypad and send more meaningful responses, the hotspot on this allegedly "smart" device went dumb on me, rendering the entire day an e-mail black hole.  I wouldn't be home until 11:00 PM and had a meeting the following morning at 7:30 AM.

It's funny how a phrase that enters the business lexicon becomes hot, hot, hot, and then, as people jump on the proverbial bandwagon, the phrase loses its verve.  The more people adopt and adapt a phrase, the more it is pummeled and rendered meaningless. Overuse kills. The only thing we don't do is stop to declare it dead.     

Recently the Harvard Business Review reported that in a 55 hour work week, the average CEO has 6 hours to think. The survey by HBS and the London School of Economics did not mention thinking time reported by other corporate officers. I would guess it's less, not more.

One day years ago, when my daughter was about 20 months old, I was rushing like heck to get her dressed and out the door.  Cradling one of these cute little pink and white Keds-style tennies-for-toddlers in my hand, I tried every angle to get it on her foot.  It wouldn't go. I thought maybe she was curling her toes, playing a game.  Finally, I pulled back, looked at her foot, looked at the shoe, and realized...it was too small.  It should have occurred to me she was growing.  I just wasn't paying attention.

Sitting down to dinner with one of my favorite clients in a fancy Italian restaurant, I was really enjoying the conversation.  We'd just been served the first course; fresh, delicious endive salad for me, Caesar salad for her.  The only very minor complaint I could have made was that the table next to us (where a couple was celebrating their anniversary) was so close, a casual observer would have surely mistaken us for a party of four.