Fight off distractions. Train yourself to listen carefully despite such external distractions as a ringing telephone, passersby, or outside noises. Focus on words, ideas, feelings, and the underlying intent of others.

Do not trust your memory. Take notes, when appropriate. However, keep your notes brief, because listening ability is impaired while you are writing. All you need to write down is something to jog your memory later so that you can recall the complete content of the message.

Use feedback. Constantly try to check your understanding of what you hear. Do not hear only what you want to hear. In addition, consistently check to see if the other person wants to comment or respond to what you have previously said.

Relax. When your people are speaking to you, try to put them at ease by creating a relaxed and accepting environment. Do not give the impression you want to jump right in and speak.

Listen attentively. Face others straight on, with uncrossed arms and legs, and lean slightly forward. Establish good eye contact. Nod affirmatively and use appropriate facial expressions when called for, but do not overdo it.

Create a positive listening environment. Try to ensure an atmosphere of privacy away from sources of distraction. Do not violate the other person’s “personal space.” Take great effort to make sure that the environment is conducive to effective listening.

Ask questions. Ask open-ended questions to allow others to express their feelings and thoughts. The effective use of questions shows them that you are interested and that you are listening, and it allows you to contribute to the conversation.

Be motivated to listen. Without the proper attitude, all the previous suggestions for effective listening are for naught. Try to keep in mind that there is no such thing as an uninteresting speaker — there are only disinterested listeners.

If you otherwise make a great first impression, yet allow yourself to be pushed over the edge to rant and rave and to say and do things that you later regret, that is the “you” that will be remembered. Your hard-won image of positiveness or enthusiasm can be shattered in an instant. It will take much damage control to undo even one such outburst.

One executive, whom I’ll call Harry, seeks to project himself as fair, sensitive, highly knowledgeable, a good listener, and, above all, tranquil under fire. However, his volcanic temper is never far from exploding. Moreover, when it does erupt in an outpouring of vitriol, no one is safe. After his emotional eruptions, no one looks him squarely in the eye for quite some time as he tries to resume his role as good ol’ Harry, the wise, imperturbable leader.

What Harry needs is what I call pausitiveness: the ability to pause and refrain from giving immediate feedback. Many an argument can be avoided if one side refuses to be defensive. That is because feedback, while generally a good idea, can be like throwing gasoline on a fire if you misunderstand the intent of the other person’s message.

Another example: I once was at the home of some friends and was chatting with the wife when her husband, who was running a little late, burst into the room in an apparent huff. Pointing at his shirt collar, he demanded loudly, harshly, “Where did you get this shirt cleaned?” Many spouses, fearing a rebuke, might have counterattacked. However, this woman, in a calm voice without disturbing body language, just named the dry cleaner and said evenly, “Why do you ask?” The husband said it was the first time any cleaner had done his shirt properly and he would like all his shirts done there from now on.

Therefore, clearly, there are times when it is best just to pause, bite your tongue, and restrain your body language and gestures in the face of an implied threat or criticism until the smoke has cleared. Maybe, as it sometimes turns out, there is no crisis at all, or perhaps you wrongly inferred that the other person was being critical. In any event, by remaining calm, you may defuse the situation and, at the very worst, you will not aggravate it.

Remember: People will always believe that what you say in your worst moments is closer to your true beliefs than what you more carefully tailor for their consumption in calmer times.

* Dr. David Schwartz, author of The Magic of Thinking Big, was my doctoral dissertation chairman and was the impetus and the motivation to finish my PhD in Marketing and to enter the world of public speaking as a profession.

* Bill Gove, the first president of the National Speakers Association, mentored me to speak from my own style – a NYC Italian – rather than a stiffer, more professorial style. The results were dramatic and my speaking career and success moved into hyper-speed.

* Jim Cathcart, my close friend, confidante, and former business partner, taught me how to structure and prepare for speeches. His unsurpassed business ethics served as my guiding light in my business dealings.

- But, most of all, my main mentor was my mother, who taught me to always strive to be the best — to always constantly improve myself and my abilities. My mother gave me the drive to succeed.

Some basic rules I’ve learned about mentors:

* The best mentors are successful people in your own field. Their behaviors are directly translatable to your life and will have more meaning to you.

* Be suspicious of any mentors who seek to make you dependent on them. It is better to have them teach you how to fish than to have them catch the fish for you. That way, you will remain in control.

* Turn your mentors into role models by examining their positive traits. Write down their virtues, without identifying to whom they belong. When you are with these mentors, look for even more behaviors that reflect their success. Use these virtues as guidelines for achieving excellence in your field.

Additional advice: Don Hutson, CEO of U. S. Learning in Memphis, TN, and fellow member of Speakers Roundtable, offers these additional mentoring tips:

* Select people to be your mentors who have the highest ethical standards and a genuine willingness to help others.

* Choose mentors who have and will share superb personal development habits with you and will encourage you to follow suit.

* Incorporate activities into your mentor relationship that will enable your mentor to introduce you to people of influence or helpfulness. (Ask your mentor if you can join him/her at their next conference or networking event.)

* Insist that your mentor be diligent about monitoring your progress with accountability functions. (Make it a point to schedule progress “check-up” meetings once a month or every two months — whatever is most convenient for your mentor.)

* Each party — mentor and protégé — should commit to confidentiality, when appropriate, due to the closeness of the relationship. (This goes without saying, but never reveal personal information about your mentor to coworkers or friends.)

* Encourage your mentor to make you an independent, competent, fully functioning, productive individual. (In other words, give them full permission to be brutally honest about what you need to change.)

Questions to ask. Acquiring good habits from others will accelerate you towards achieving your goals. Ask yourself these questions to get the most out of your role-model/mentors:

1. What would they do in my situation?

2. What do they do every day to encourage growth and to move closer to a goal?

3. How do they think in general? In specific situations?

4. Do they have other facets of life in balance? What effect does that have on their well-being?

5. How do their traits apply to me?

6. Which traits are worth working on first? Later?

A final word: Under the right circumstances mentors make excellent role models. The one-to-one setting is highly conducive to learning as well as to friendship. But the same cautions hold true here as for any role model. It is better to adapt their philosophies to your life than to adopt them.

For my first sale, I sold a friend our “Golden Opportunity” package. Not only did she get pots and pans, but she also plunked down several hundred dollars extra to get some china, crystal, flatware and cutlery. These were all nice items, but she did not really want so much stuff. She just did not have the power to say “No.” My offer and my close were too strong for her to resist. Sounds good, right? Not so fast. Let’s look deeper.

When I delivered the cookware, I asked her to get out her address book. I wanted a list of referrals from this satisfied customer. Wrong! She refused. “Why not?” I asked. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t want you to do to my friends what you did to me,” she replied.

“What’s that?”

She looked at me and said, “Tony, you sold me.”

The statement made me feel terrible. It was a crushing blow.

Sure, I had made the sale. However, I paid the ultimate price: my short-term victory was my long-term loss. I made the sale, but lost the customer. I paid for this mistake emotionally, financially, and – worst of all – spiritually. Though it did not happen all at once, my sales eventually began dropping off.

I also did not feel so hot about the way my customers saw me. I used to practically pray that I would not see my customers at the store, walking downtown, or standing in line at the movies.

However, I continue to sell today. I have come a long way since those early years selling door-to-door. Since the late ’80s, I have consistently generated seven-figure sales. Please understand: I am not telling you this to brag; I think it is important for you to know I am not just talking theory here. I have used both methods – the “hard sell” and the “Non-Manipulative Sell” – and I have experienced the difference firsthand. Using the hard sell, you struggle to pay the bills. Using Non-Manipulative selling, you live on the ocean in California and have more time to be with your family. I prefer the latter, and I would bet you do, too.

It’s is a set of strategies and techniques that allow you to become partners with you customers and spend more time building a strong foundation where you get yourself customers for life, which breeds long-term success, not just short-term victories. I believe that is the way you should lead your entire life, not just your business life. It will bring much more personal fulfillment and happiness, not just to you, but also to everyone around you.

People who live their life in competition with everyone – and we all know people like that – might get admired for their achievements, but they don’t get the freely given attention and support of others. People who exude the message: “I’m smarter, or prettier, or richer, or more committed than you are” don’t garner people’s trust. That’s because the message is clearly about “Me first.”

A willingness to be flexible means that occasionally you’re not number one. You may need to take a backseat to a colleague who’s trying something innovative. It may mean that you’ll need to compromise in a negotiation. Maybe the fact that you’re the best salesperson of the month every month prevents other people from even trying.

Does your level of competitiveness get in the way of relationships? If you play a one-on-one sport such as tennis or racquetball, do you always play to beat the other person? If you play board games or video games with your children, is it more important to win than to have fun?

On the one hand, it seems as though we’re being pushed to be more competitive. Many of us work for companies that are in fierce marketing battles with global competitors. There are fewer tax dollars to go around; fewer jobs in many industries. Yet, the paradox is the solutions we’re finding to those problems involve not more competition, but more collaboration.

I just have one tip for you if you have a streak of competitiveness that gets in the way of your relationships – stop seeing the other person as an opponent. Reframe the relationship as a mentoring one, as a friendship, as a chance to do something together that neither of you could do alone. Look directly into that person’s eyes and see a fellow human being who doesn’t want to be beaten or made into a loser any more than you do. People who are always out to win may collect a lot of marbles, but they lose a lot of friends. And I’d trade a bag of marbles for a good friend any day.

Procrastination is like a virus. It creeps up on you slowly, drains you of energy, and is difficult to get rid of if your resistance is low. Procrastination is a close relative of incompetence and a first cousin to inefficiency, which is why their marriage is taboo. These suggestions will help you conquer the virus:

1. Give yourself deadlines. In moderation, pressure motivates. Extreme pressure debilitates. Set appointments, make commitments, write out your goals, and otherwise develop the determination to succeed.

2. Don’t duck the difficult problems. Every day we are faced with both difficult and easy tasks. Tackle the difficult ones first so that you can look forward to the easy ones. If you work on the easy ones first, you might expand the time that they take in order to avoid the difficult ones waiting for you.

Many people put off difficult or large tasks because they appear too huge to tackle in a reasonable period. They feel that if they start and complete the “large” task at one sitting, it will prevent them from accomplishing any of the other tasks they have to do on that day. The answer to this problem is to break all large or difficult tasks into their smaller subparts. Then, you can do each of the subparts of the larger project over a series of days, if appropriate.

3. Don’t let perfectionism paralyze you. This is a problem that many writers have when writing articles or books. They sit with pad and pen in hand waiting for the “right” words to come out. What they are doing is avoiding the process of writing. Be prolific in your activities. You can always go back later and polish those things you are unhappy with. Better yet, you can delegate the polishing to someone else.

Because humans are so susceptible to procrastination, you must work at building up your immunity to it. Effective action is the best medicine.

Here are my suggestions for improving your sense of humor: First, find out what your strong suit is, humor-wise. Ask a friend who will be honest with you. Second, know who you are talking with. Not everybody thinks the same things are funny — and there are a few people who do not think anything is funny, or at least nothing that has been discovered yet. Third, work on your timing. Try out your best lines on your family and your friends — and test bad puns on your enemies! Finally, remember that the best target for humor is yourself. A little self-deprecating humor can go a long way toward making people feel at ease with you.

In short, humor is much more than an icebreaker. When things are good, it can keep egos from becoming inflated. Moreover, when the going is tough, it can be an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of your faith in ultimate success.

The Athenian Greek philosopher Socrates, who lived in the fifth century BC, was able to accomplish his genius by opening his perception to the truth – and you can do the same.

Not much is known about Socrates’ early life, but he seems to have been quite an interesting fellow – interesting, but not exactly likable to the majority of people. He enjoyed calling people’s ideas into question. He enjoyed poking holes in their assumptions. He liked to make waves – and in the end, he paid for it with his life.

After Socrates served in the war between Athens and the rival city-state of Sparta, Socrates worked as a stonemason. He had also inherited a modest fortune from his father, from which he gained freedom to wander the city getting into discussions and arguments.

One of the formative events in Socrates’ life as a philosopher was his visit to the sacred oracle at the city of Delphi. The oracle was actually a priestess of the god Apollo. For a slight fee, the oracle would give advice and answer questions on any topic or problem. The only trouble was, like most fortune-tellers, the oracle would never give a straight yes or no answer. Often the questioner was more confused after consulting with the oracle than before, because of the riddles that the oracle passed of as answers.

In any case, there came a day when Socrates visited the oracle at Delphi. Maybe he paused a moment to look up at the motto that was carved above the door of the oracle’s temple: it read, “Know thyself.” This was certainly the basis of Socrates’ philosophy – and it may even have been the basis of the question that he addressed to the oracle that day. Maybe he said something like, “I want to know myself – but who am I, anyway?”

The exact question that Socrates put to the oracle is not known, but the oracle’s answer to him is very famous. Socrates himself was very shocked to hear it – because the oracle told him, “You are the wisest man in Athens.”

Socrates’ reaction to this is very interesting, and it was really the basis of his method as a philosopher. When the oracle told him he was the wisest man in Athens, Socrates simply did not believe it. Not only was he in disbelief about being the wisest man, but he did not even really believe he knew anything. He saw himself as a kind of blank slate, someone who had a lot of questions, but no real answers.

On the other hand, the oracle was the oracle. This was a god speaking, and when it said something – especially when it said something that seemed fairly straightforward for once – some attention should be paid. Therefore, Socrates decided to take action. He thought about the oracle’s pronouncement in a logical way. He realized that if he was not the wisest man, it must be because there were wiser men than him. So he started thinking of who some of these people might be, and he started dropping in on some of them and getting into some thought-provoking discussions.

On one occasion, for example, Socrates was talking with a very important and successful citizen of Athens, a man renowned for his good deeds and his responsible behavior in all areas of life. So Socrates said to him, “I’m trying to understand what it really means to be a good person, and I thought you might be able to help me out. Do you by any chance consider yourself a good person?” And the man said, “Yes, as a matter of fact I do.” So Socrates said, “Well, why exactly do you think that? What is it that makes you a good person?”

At this point, the man hesitated for a second – because he was not really used to answering these very direct questions about his virtue. So he thought for a minute, and then he said, “Well, I served in the army, and I pay my taxes.”

When Socrates heard this, he was completely stunned. He could not believe what he was hearing. This man was saying that he was a good person because he had been in the army and he paid his taxes – and this person was supposed to be one of the most accomplished citizens of Athens. His heart could be filled with hatred, he could be sneaking around at night setting fires or looking into peoples windows – yet he said he was a good person because he was in the army and he paid his taxes. Obviously, this was someone who had not given much thought to the meaning of good, or maybe even to the meaning of person. However, he seemed quite confident in what he said. He gave the impression that he knew what he was talking about. Yet it was clear to Socrates that he did not know anything. Even more importantly, he did not know that he did not know.

This was the kind of experience that Socrates had repeatedly as he talked to people about important questions and ideas. Repeatedly he found that supposedly smart people were actually quite ignorant – and they were ignorant without even realizing it. And gradually, as if by default, Socrates began to wonder if maybe he really was the wisest man in Athens after all – not because he had a lot of wisdom, which he did not, but because he was at least aware of his ignorance.

Socrates was always quick to question people’s assumptions and to reveal the “sacred cows” in their thinking. He kept this up to the point that the rulers of the city of Athens viewed him as a threat. Eventually he was brought to trial on some trumped up charges and was sentenced to death. Socrates accepted this judgment with complete calm. After all, the rulers were just doing what they usually did, just like he was. As it was written at the temple of Delphi, Socrates knew himself – even if nobody else could honestly say the same.

Let me play the role of Socrates with you for a moment. First, let me play the role of the Delphic oracle. Suppose I was to tell you that you have much, much greater capabilities than you think you have. What would be your response? Would it be genuine disbelief like Socrates? Alternatively, would it be denial – maybe in order to not get out of your comfort zone? You need to move past your assumptions and your inhibitions and maybe you will re-think your own limitations. You have created them yourself, you know – or at least that is what Socrates would tell you.

It can be as simple as noticing when someone is getting bored, or tired, or stressed. It is recognizing the right and wrong moments for introducing new ideas. It knows when to speak and not to speak, when to act and not to act. Attentiveness is also the ability to tune into a problem and come up with its essential components. “What’s really going wrong here?” That insight provides the basis for envisioning something that will truly work better.

Attentiveness means you are open to more information coming in through your eyes, your ears, and your sense of touch — as well as your kinesthetic sense. It is better known as intuition, or gut feelings. It is how your muscles and the organs of your body react. Empathy is putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. Intuition gives you access to a person’s feelings when they are mirrored in your own body. For some reason this is especially useful with negative emotions such as fear, sadness, or doubt.

Effective communicators and leaders are good people-watchers. They look for the little signals that reveal what others are thinking or feeling. An especially important key to people watching is eye contact. It may not be a startling revelation, but people’s willingness to make eye contact says a lot about how comfortable they are with themselves and with you.

As you become an educated observer of what is going on around you, you will be able to evaluate your gut reactions from a more informed perspective. You will be able to know the world around you because you know yourself extremely well.

How do you know whether your intuition is right or wrong? Well, if you are often mistaken in your intuitive judgments, it is probably because you are being overly safe and overly protective. It is largely a matter of practice, because fears, wishes, negative thoughts, and ego needs can masquerade as intuition. When your ego is involved, it cancels out the gut. Your intuition will often point out possible problems, but your ego just adds to your problems.

A good way to develop you intuition is to start keeping track of your hunches. Write them down and then see what happens. By monitoring which come true and which do not, you will not only see what your record of accomplishment is, you will learn to recognize how true intuition feels. With practice, you will begin to see how genuinely intuitive feelings carry the most power and conviction. You will learn to recognize your fears and wishes, so you will not confuse them with your actually sixth sense.

There’s a story about a very educated English gentleman visiting a great Buddhist master. The holy man poured a cup of tea for the Englishman and kept pouring and pouring until there was tea all over the floor.

Finally, the Englishman could not sit silently any longer and asked: “Why are you overfilling the cup?” The Buddhist master replied: “This cup is like your head. It is so full of your own thoughts that nothing else will go into it. You must empty yourself first in order to learn anything new from me.”

Attentiveness is a lot like that. In order to be attentive, we need to empty ourselves of other thoughts and set ways of seeing things. When we use our senses to take in all we can about other people, we can much more accurately adjust our behavior to the needs of others. When we are attentive to situations, we have the power to make positive changes for others and ourselves.

Define your goal. Your first task is to work out the factors of your goal, then write your goal down, as clearly as possible, and keep it in a prominent location.

Examine obstacles that stand in your way. This is a time to guard against negative assumptions and other self-defeating thoughts. Remember the definition of realistic. An obstacle blocks you only if you let it. You should also write down your innovative ways of overcoming obstacles with your goal.

W.I.I.F.M. What’s in it for me? Why do you want to achieve the goal? What kind of payoff is motivating you?

Plan your action. You need to carefully list the steps you will take to bring you closer to your goal. The smaller the increments the easier they will be to accomplish. There is a German proverb that says, “He who begins too much accomplishes little.” As the American Dental Association is fond of saying, “Don’t bite off more than you can chew.”

Project a target date for your goal. State your deadline range, such as, “between March 15 and April 1.” Think carefully about the amount of time you need. Too little time will increase the pressure and frustrate you. Too much time may reduce your drive.

Know how you’ll measure your success. Goals should be described in terms of the final outcome of an activity rather than as the activity. This is part of being specific. Instead of saying “I will be running more in four to six months,” you could say “I’ll be running three miles instead of two miles in four to six months.” How will you measure this? Probably by having one-third more blisters on your feet.

1. Where the next meeting will take place
2. When it will happen
3. The theme of the meeting

Quite by accident, your group consists of one Relater, one Thinker, one Director, and one Socializer who all believe in practicing The Golden Rule. Do you think they’ll get the job done? Perhaps, or perhaps not, depending on how each responds to one another in handling the simple task. Let’s see why this may not work out.

As they walk into the room, the Director typically speaks first. “Here’s my plan…

The Socializer says, “Hey! Who died and left you boss?”

The Thinker says, “You know there seems to be more here than meets the eye. We might want to consider some other relevant issues and break into sub-committees to explore them.”

The Relater smiles and says, “We may not get this done if we don’t work as a team like we have before.”

If you think that I’m stacking the deck, consider putting all four of one behavioral type into the room to make those decisions. They’d get the job done, wouldn’t they? Not if they follow the Golden Rule verbatim!

What do you call it when you send four Directors into the same room? War!

Or four Thinkers? Paralysis by analysis!

And four Relaters? Nothing! They sit around smiling at each other: “You go first.” “No, why don’t you go first. By the way, how’s the family?”

When four Socializers walk out, try asking them if they’ve gotten the job done. “Get what done?” They’ve had a party and instead come out with 10 new jokes and stories.

I may be exaggerating to make a point, but in some cases, not by much. Directors tend to have the assertiveness and leadership initiative to get tasks started. They may then delegate to others for follow-through, enabling the Dominant Directors to start still other new projects that interest them more.

Thinkers typically are motivated by their planning and organizational tendencies. If we want a task done precisely, find a Thinker. Of the four types, they’re the most motivated to be correct — the quality-control experts.

Relaters have persistence and people-to-people strengths — patience, follow-through, and responsiveness. When we have a problem, we may choose to go to a sympathetic-appearing Steady Relater because he or she listens, empathizes, and reacts to our feelings.

Socializers are natural entertainers who thrive on involvement with people. They also love to start things, but often don’t finish them. In fact, they may pick up three balls; throw them in the air, and yell, “Catch!” Emotional, enthusiastic, optimistic, and friendly, Socializers usually pep up an otherwise dull environment.

Being enthusiastic isn’t merely talking energetically and gesturing wildly about your passion. It can take a quieter path. Maybe your enthusiasm is revealed by the earnestness and persistence with which you seek to get others involved. Maybe it’s shown by your strength of commitment, your refusal to become discouraged. Maybe it’s that spark in your eye, or that warm smile, and the unmistakable genuineness that emanates from you as you explain, again and again, your mission.

Can you remember when you first learned how to drive a car? Before you learned how, you were in the Ignorance stage. You didn’t know how to drive the car and you didn’t even know why you didn’t know how to drive it.

When you first went out with an instructor to learn how to drive, you arrived at the Phase 2: Awareness. You still couldn’t drive, but because of your new awareness of the automobile and its parts, you were consciously aware of why you couldn’t drive. You may have felt overwhelmed by the tasks before you, but when these tasks were broken down one by one, they weren’t so awesome after all. They became attainable. Step by step, familiarity replaced fear.

With some additional practice and guidance, you were able to become competent in driving the car through recognition of what you had to do. However, you had to be consciously aware of what you were doing with all of the mechanical aspects of the car as well as with your body. You had to be consciously aware of turning on your blinker signals well before you executed a turn. You had to remember to monitor the traffic behind you in your rearview mirror. You kept both hands on the wheel and noted your car’s position relative to the centerline road divider. You were consciously aware of all of these things as you competently drove. This third phase is the hardest stage – the one in which your people may want to give up. This is the Practice stage. People tend to feel uncomfortable when they goof, but this is an integral part of Phase 3. Human beings experience stress when they implement new behaviors, especially when they perform them imperfectly.

In Phase 3, you must realize that you’ll want to revert to the older, more comfortable behaviors, even if those behaviors are less productive. At this phase, you must realize it’s alright to make mistakes. In fact, it’s necessary so you can improve through practice, practice and more practice.

Returning to the car example, think of the last time that you drove. Were you consciously aware of all of the actions that I just mentioned above? Of course not! Most of us, after driving awhile, progress to a level of Habitual Performance. This is the level where we can do something well and don’t even have to think about the steps. They come “naturally” because they’ve been so well practiced that they’ve shifted to automatic pilot. This final stage, Phase 4, is when practice results in assimilation and habitual performance; where your productivity increases beyond its previous level and reaches a new and higher plateau.

This four-phase model for success can help you break out of the rut most of us dig for ourselves. By experiencing success and encouragement at each level, change can be exciting instead of intimidating. The bottom line is this: skills and attitudes will both improve by taking one step at a time.

To make this clear, and to help you connect with the creative elements in your own character , which you may or may not have recognized in the past , our focus in this session is on a true genius who really exemplified the times in which he lived. Leonardo da Vinci, along with Michelangelo, is generally recognized as the quintessential artist of the Renaissance.

Here at the start of the 21st century, we are getting rid of the idea that a creative person is someone who wears a beret and lives in a garret. The model of the isolated artist will not work anymore. In this sense, Leonardo is probably much more relevant to the circumstance of your life than you might think.

Leonardo was born in the small Italian town of Vinci, in the year 1452. He began life with certain obvious advantages, and some disadvantages. His father was a rather wealthy country gentleman. His mother, however, was a servant girl whom his father had no intention of marrying. In later life, he would describe himself as a “man with no education.”

When he was about 14 years old, Leonardo was sent to Florence to become an apprentice in the studio of a prominent artist. The artist’s name was Andrea del Verrocchio, and he was both a painter and a sculptor. Leonardo learned a lot from this first master. And around 1470, after being with Verrocchio for about four years, Leonardo got a big break. He was assigned to paint an angel in the corner of one of Verrocchio’s major commissioned works. According to legend, when Verrocchio saw the angel he realized it was infinitely better than the rest of the painting. In fact, it was so much better than anything Verrocchio had ever done that he gave up painting forever, right then and there. This legend may or may not be true, but the young artist from the countryside was definitely on his way.

Right now, as the most basic element of modeling artistic genius, I would like you to recognize exactly what artistic genius is. It is simply taking a picture that is in your heart and using some medium to move it into the hearts of other people. It does not matter what that picture is, and — at least initially — it does not matter how technically adept you are with the medium you have chosen.

Leonardo had incredible technical skill. His ability for drawing and sculpture was truly superhuman, and he was extremely adept at the mechanical and engineering tasks demanded by large-scale creative work.

Your artistic genius does not have to be in the fields of drawing of sculpting; it does not even have to be technical. Your skill is in whatever attracts you, whatever moves you to express your creativity, even if it is just another form of personal expression that you do not intend to show anyone else.

Here are some techniques for striking a balance:

- The telephone, Alec Mackenzie suggests, is one of the biggest time-wasters. He gives several strategies for dealing with interrupting phone calls, such as call screening, voice mail, and the like. However, perhaps the simplest solution is to put a three-minute egg timer on your desk. When the sand runs out, you know to halt diplomatically all but the most critical of calls.

- An open-door policy is fine, but it can destroy your efficiency if taken too far. Roger Dawson, in 13 Secrets of Power Performance, offers numerous ways to lessen drop-in visitors. One, arrange your office so you are not readily visible and thus a target for people passing by with time on their hands. Another, set a block of time — usually early in the workday or near the end — when employees do a lot of socializing, and make that your official “closed-door” period when you can hole up and not feel guilty.

- Go to lunch at an odd hour; say 11 a.m. or 1 p.m. Not only, Dawson believes, will you get a better table and service at the restaurant, you will be working when everyone else is out to lunch, and will therefore minimize distractions. Thus, your productivity will soar.