Name: Tara Carter, CAM, CPM

Title:Owner & Managing Member

Company: Luxe Residential, LLC

City: Richmond, Va.

1. Avoid Morning Emails. 

Don't check your email when you first arrive in the office. If you do, you allow others people's priorities to manage your day. Work on the most important item on your to-do list. Then check email.

2. Turn On and Off. 

Work in 25-minute increments, with five-minute breaks in between-and don't check your cell phone or email during that break. 

3. Just Breathe. 

Before moving from one task to another, take four deep breaths. Inhale for eight seconds, hold for four, exhale for eight. This will help reset your mind and prepare you for the next task. 

4. Minimize. 

Close your door, if necessary. Each interruption steals your attention; set boundaries and schedule short meetings if need be, but try to minimize the number of times people walk into your office and disrupt your attention. 

5. Sleep!

More specifically, seven to eight hours per night. A rested brain is a clear brain. Want to reduce mental fog? Sleep more.

6. Don't Skip Lunch.

When your blood sugar drops, your decision-making and attention span drops, too. And when possible, eat lunch away from your desk, which allows you to clear your mind.

7. Reduce Time With Vampires. 

You know who they are. They deplete good energy, and that impacts your interactions with others. Create barriers to reduce face time with them.

8. Declutter. 

Walk into your office tomorrow and remove five things that don't serve a purpose or that you don't use every day. If you have binders that you access infrequently, get them out of your visual spectrum. This goes for magazines, multiples piles or inboxes and anything else taking up space that is not necessary to do your job on a daily basis. Desk clutter creates mental clutter.9. 

9. Stay On Schedule. 

Create an agenda and set an end time for every meeting. Assign action items to those in attendance to ensure everyone knows what to do with the information discussed in the meeting. For those with whom you interact most, schedule recurring meetings to reduce the back-and-forth of scheduling and offer a predictable time each week you will be able to discuss operational issues.

10. Avoid Repeating Yourself. 

Record meetings so you don't have to personally recall every detail for those who weren't in attendance. Briefly recap the key points of the meeting and individual action items in an email or shared document.