Phone down. Three priorities up. The lessons learnt from the networking lunch with Moa Westman were about something we all know but rarely do: actually nurturing your attention as the limited resource it is. 

On 17 April, we hosted Moa Westman, founder and CEO of Mowes in Norrland, eXpression Umeå for a networking lunch on sustainability and creativity. During the lunch, she shared principles on how we as self-employed people can create better conditions for focus and perseverance in everyday life. Here are three of them. 

Nurture your attention
We take in huge amounts of information every second, and consciously we can handle a fraction of it. Notifications, open tabs and the phone on the table drain that capacity without us realising it. Ultimately, it's about having energy left when needed. 

How you start your day matters
How the morning starts sets the tone for the rest of the day. Waking up and going straight into emails and notifications means setting a high level of activation early on that goes with it. It doesn't have to be meditation or a one-hour routine - the point is to give the morning some space before the outside world takes over. 

Plan your recovery, not just your work
Recovery rarely happens by itself. It needs to be planned in the same way as meetings and deadlines - in the form of breaks, exercise or a conscious end to the working day. Ending on a positive note makes it easier to actually leave work mentally at the end of the day. 

The networking lunch was organised by eXpression Umeå within the framework of Kreativa Norrland, in collaboration with RISE and the Umeå region, co-funded by the European Union.