When you gasp in fright or brush away a tear at the movie, you’re doing exactly what the actors did. You have focused your attention so fully and particularly that your mind and body behave as if the imaginary world of the movie is real. The difference is that the actors did that as a matter of professional skill; you did it because the movie sucked you in. Alas work doesn’t always suck us in that way. Drawing on 30 years experience as an Equity actor, Lee adapts to your professional purposes some of the exercises actors use to develop this skill. You don’t need to know how to turn your nose red on cue, as Meryl Streep can; but you do need to get free of the distractions any environment puts in the way of efficient, productive, compelling work. Practicing these exercises in the low-stakes context of a workshop gives you the freedom you need to commit fully to new ideas, new actions. Although simple, these exercises are by no means easy. They take clock time to learn and calendar time to get good at. But when you do learn and practice them, you own a powerful practice that will increase your powers of concentration both at work and in your personal life.