Attention Blog

This is part of a series that will explore what attention is, how we deal with it, and how it can be measured and focused. What is Attention?

Attention is a physical allotment of mental focus. Attention is limited as you only have so much; a zero sum game. Even attention you planned to use this weekend not doing anything is taken and not available for anything else.

Everyone uses and manipulates attention in their work, at play, in love and hate. You can push a co-worker’s button to get their cooperation. Procrastination is a lack of attention. Answering emails as they pop into your in-box diverts your attention from what you are doing, making it harder to re-focus your attention. Attention is everything you do; the filter or bottleneck to your mind.

Attention is made of three distinct types of focus:

Attractive/ Aversive: Is the product of applied attention good or bad? The carrot or stick part of ourselves. Are we focusing on something in hopes of reward or fear of the whip?

Front-of-the-mind/ Back-of-the-mind: Is this something that requires higher level brain processes? Like a hungry bear descending from above in a hang glider? You will pay attention to his rate of descent and trajectory. Or is it something that requires little mental capacity, like the level of force to apply to the accelerator at an intersection?

Voluntary/ Compulsory: Has someone given you something to do, or did you decide to do it yourself? A part of a social species, we depend on each other for everything. Your decision to do something today probably will force someone to pay attention to something they wouldn’t have otherwise tomorrow. The type of attention that deals with nagging your fellow man and guilty consciousnesses.