How Focus and Attention Powers Your Mind

…you’re going to find out why you’re missing 50% of your life to fractured attention and distraction and what it’s doing to your brain.

Podcast guest Amishi Jha, Ph.D., a neuroscientist and professor of psychology at the University of Miami, researches how people pay attention. She co-founded the Contemplative Neuroscience for the Mindfulness Research and Practice Initiative at the University of Miami and serves as its director. For more than 25 years, she’s researched the science of attention through intensive work with the U.S. Military, first responders, medical professionals, business leaders, and elite sports teams.

She’s found that attention Is both your superpower and your kryptonite. 

As a superpower, attention allows you to time-travel in your mind (future and past), highlights what’s important, helps you problem solve, and shuts out distractions, she explains in her book, “Peak Mind: Find Your Focus, Own your Attention, Invest 12 Minutes a Day.”

When attention is compromised, it’s your kryptonite because it impacts your cognitive function, social engagement, and emotional balance, she points out. The three main forces that degrade attention include, 1) the amount of stress you’re under (and how you’re managing it); 2) being in a crappy mood; and 3) threats real or imagined.

And when your attention gets fractured, you often default to tactics that fail to pull it back together. Amishi’s got great insights in her book that allow you to understand why this happening. Knowing what’s going on makes it easier to find your focus. For example:

• Load Theory:  Attention isn’t a gas tank that runs out. The amount you have remains the same—it just gets used differently, and not always in the way you want.
• The Vigilance Decrement: Your performance decreases over time not because your brain gets tired, but because your mind wanders more. (More on mind wandering in this episode!)