The Impoverishment of Attention

To get the results we want in life, Goleman argues we need 3 kinds of focus: inner, other, outer.

Inner Focus = attunes us to our intuitions, guiding values, and better decisions.

Other Focus = smooths our connections to the people in our lives.

Outer Focus = focus lets us navigate in the larger world.

Who is tuned out of his internal world will be rudderless. One blind to the world of others will be clueless. Those indifferent to the larger systems within which they operate will be blindsided.

How we deploy attention shapes what we see. Or as Yoda says, “Your focus is your reality.”

Here is a telling story. I was in a coffee shop just the other day and I noticed that when two people were having a conversation they couldn’t go more than a few minutes without picking up their phone. Our inability to resist checking email, Facebook, and Twitter rather than focus on the here and now leads to a real-life out-of-office.

It feels like we’re going through life in a state of “continuous partial attention.”