Jargogled Impressions.

Three categories of focus areas:

• • Inner: heeding your git feeling, values, and decision-making abilities
  • Other: how you relate to and connect with other people;
  • Outer: how you get by in the larger world
• Selective attention is the ability to focus on one task despite the numerous sensory and emotional distractions
  • Sensory distractions: things that are visually attractive (shapes, colors, and sounds) and diverts your attention
  • Emotional distraction: your emotional state of being that bleeds into how much you can focus into your tasks; if you’re upset, it’s difficult to perform the task; if you hear your name called in the middle of a café, you get distracted
  • Focus is not just selecting the right thing, but also saying no to the wrong ones
  • The brain’s pre-frontal region is responsible for selective attention; your ability to compartmentalize; the more you can direct your focus on one thing the more can you improve your performance
  • If you stay on target, you get the hormonal boost you need to continue giving attention to the work you are doing; it curtails emotional interference and lets you stay cool under pressures of work, time, or people
  • Controlling your attention on one thing before you move on to the next indicates healthy mental state of being and is a prime driver behind the rise in modern day meditation; on the flip side, jumping from one thing to the next exacerbates helplessness and anxious performance pressures
  • Mind often wanders more to feelings of worry and of anxiety than it does to pleasant thoughts or fantasy
• “Flow” state of being:
  • In the zone or the “flow” is a result of being in a state where you feel inspired, rewarded, stimulated, and intellectually uplifting
  • Repetitive tasks on the other hand can feel boring and indifferent and will restrict the feeling of being in the flow, unless the mechanical tasks let you feel rewarded because of work getting done
• Human brain system:
  • Lower brain (involuntary activities, reflexive, fast): massive computing power operates just below consciousness, rising to the forefront only when something unexpected pulls you out; during these times the bottom brain in the sub-cortical circuitry communicates with the top brain; bottom brain is constantly active and handles rote behavior (based on learned experiences and default reactions to stimuli); it is constantly learning and adjusts the perceptions, gets swayed by emotions
  • Top brain: this part of the brain is under our conscious control and is the center of voluntary and directed focus; this part of the brain gets on when you are intellectually stimulated and trying to learn a new task
  • The bottom and the top brain work synchronously to optimize the brain processing – when you learn driving the bottom brain takes over once you have learnt the basics of driving and have had multiple practice sessions under your belt and performing the tasks become instinctive
  • Mid-brain notices things at a neural level – call it your little spider sense brain. This is the part where the brain’s amygdala scans your surrounding for threats and coordinates with the top brain to process and respond to any dangers
  • Gut feelings are messages from the brain’s insula – part in the frontal lobes that act as the brain’s nerve center for our internal organs; people in sync with their internal emotions have high functioning insulae and a strong inner voice
  • No single area of the brain deals exclusively with system recognition and comprehension, but the parietal cortex helps recognize patterns
  • “Tuned out” as a state is dangerous because it forces people to stumble socially sometimes but can also prevent them from knowing if they have acted inappropriately;
• Wandering mind is your default state of being, especially when you are not engaged in any activity; this state is generally used for self-reflection, future thinking, ideation, and reaching back to memories. Setting aside regular time for self-reflection in our daily, weekly, and monthly schedules can help us counter the drifting sensation of letting the day drive your actions as opposed to you taking control; taking control lets you drive focus because you feel more in grasp of the things that you need to do and are stimulated therein; spending some time on reviewing your hours and reflection can be extremely helpful in letting you drive control
  • When mind wanders, the sensory system dims; doing activities that do not require focus lets the mind to drift automatically
  • Sustaining attention can be mentally draining – feeling relaxed and taking intermittent breaks can help with replenishing the mental drain that extreme attention can have
• Self-awareness and self-control: come from recognizing internal cues and interpreting them accurately; self-awareness works as an internal compass
  • The famous marshmallow test demonstrated the connection between self-awareness, self-control, restraint, and the ability to delay gratification by concentrating attention on a “directed distraction” which is more willful and allows for self-control
• Attention as a capability grows with use, exercise, and practice
  • Using meditation as a practice to focus makes you use your attention capabilities
• Focused empathy:
  • Cognitive empathy: enables you to look at things from another person’s point of view and understand their thoughts, feelings, and emotional state
  • Emotional empathy: when your emotions align with someone else and have the same response, you feel emotional empathy with the person
  • Empathic concern: when you have cognitive and emotional empathy with the person, you can take helpful actions through the empathic concern
  • Peoples social skills lie across the spectrum from socially oblivious to highly intuitive; there is a strong correlation between power and attention; the higher you are in the social hierarchy the more confident you feel of reading social cues and the more directed attention you can provide to people
  • The ability to read and navigate systems is a learned process and is separate from self-mastery and empathy; system navigation is performed through mental models and by absorbing distributed knowledge (e.g., for global warming)
• Modern generation is attuned to devices than to people – device notifications, pings, messages have different impact on focus than when it’s people you are interacting with; the expanse of internet, applications, streaming, etc. have made achieving focus much more difficult
• 10,000-hour rule is misleading; mastering a particular domain requires much more than spending dedicated time on the learning; peak performers conduct practice in a “smart way” by focusing the time on adjusting, improving, and iterating on their learning objectives; this requires attention during practice commonly referred to as “directed focus”; productive practice requires constant feedback;
  • For writers, directing active attention on editing your writing, making it concise, and seeking feedback from friends and family can be extremely helpful in picking up the skill
  • Directing attention where it needs to go requires active understanding and re-evaluation of your position and coordinates and demonstrates leadership in people; leaders who succeed manage to selective focus on the things that are impactful and highly strategic; this ties to the golden management rule of being effective as opposed to being available
  • Professional athletes, experts and high performers constantly work towards counteracting the brain’s natural tendency to make routines automatic and transfer them to the bottom mind; they fight the natural inclination of the brain to optimize and to take the easiest route possible for conducting an exercise; they use focus, skill development, unlocking the next level (premium mediocrity), and positivity to strengthen the brain circuitry
  • Feeling upbeat is a critical requirement for productive practice; positive feelings ignite the brain’s prefrontal area which makes people motivated, aware, and energized
  • Mindfulness is the practice of paying “attention to attention”; being aware of the idea of being attentive and in the moment and being present always through learning about every breath you take
    • Mind wanders -> you notice it wandering -> you shift your attention to breath and keep it there -> mind wanders again
  • Attention works like a muscle; you use it constantly and it grows in strength; you practice and train it, it becomes a natural capability
  • As a leader:
    • Inner focus: heeding your behaviors and the effects of your actions
    • Other focus: developing a team strategy to provide a road-map of issues and goals that require attention
    • Outer focus: absorbing the big picture, bringing a system mindset, and foreseeing how your decisions will play out in the future