Focusing
Focusing is the innate human ability to concentrate attention on a specific stimulus while filtering out irrelevant information, a trait shared with other animals that enhances survival and enables complex tasks.
THE IDEA
Focusing
We humans are focusers by nature. It is a trait deeply imbedded in our mental makeup, one we share with every other warm-blooded creature on this planet. (In fact, all living organisms are prone to focus “mentally,” but we’ll save that discussion for another day.) Consider, for example, the playful, skittish squirrel. While scampering about the ground, foraging for food, the squirrel suddenly freezes in an upright posture. Some movement or sound has caught its attention. The animal holds perfectly still, watching, waiting, ready to dash up a tree to safety at the first sign of danger. While the animal remains in this stock-still position, its “mind” and all of its senses are totally focused on the potential threat. All other interests of the squirrel are in abeyance. Focusing is, indeed, not a uniquely human trait.
In A Second Way of Knowing, Edmund Bolles says the following about “attention” (a synonym for “focus”):
We shift attention from sensation to sensation, watching only part of the visual field, listening to only some sounds around us, savoring certain flavors amid many. Our capacity to select and “impart intensity”* to sensations prevents us from being slaves to the physical world around us.
Reality is a jumble of sensations and details. Attention enables us to combine separate sensations into unified objects and lets us examine objects closely to be sure of their identity.
While all of our mental proclivities have contributed to our survival as a species, none has played a greater role than our instinctive ability to focus our thoughts. Our species could not have survived very long if our distant ancestors had been a bunch of congenital airheads, incapable of focusing their thoughts, wandering aimlessly in the savanna, easy prey for any predator. Today, as eons ago, this instinct enables us to carry on a conversation over dinner in a noisy restaurant. Through neural processes that cognitive science does not yet fully understand, our brain filters out all of the background noise of clattering dishes, loud music, and chattering people, permitting us to hear and comprehend what our dinner partners are saying. Focusing enables us to communicate, to drive a car, to eat, to read this book, to do everything.
When to use it
Reading a book in a busy café by blocking out ambient noise and concentrating on the text.
Participating in a meeting while ignoring side conversations and phone notifications to follow the discussion.
Playing tennis by focusing exclusively on the ball and the opponent's movements, disregarding crowd noise.
Completing a complex work task by breaking it down and ignoring email alerts and other interruptions.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Studying in a noisy library
By focusing on the textbook, a student filters out conversations and background music to comprehend the material despite the noise.
Driving in traffic
A driver focuses on the road, signs, and other vehicles while ignoring billboards and passengers' chatter to navigate safely.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
When was the last time you found it difficult to focus? What were the distractions, and how did you overcome them?
How does the concept of focusing apply to your daily decision-making? Can you think of a situation where focusing on one aspect helped you ignore irrelevant information?
In what ways might over-focusing (tunnel vision) be detrimental? Can you recall an instance where you missed important details because you were too focused on one thing?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- The Thinkers Toolkit by Morgan D Jones