in: Behavior, Character, Featured

Brett & Kate McKay • January 29, 2014 • Last updated: September 25, 2021

Become the Supreme

Commander of Your
Mind: How to Effectively
Manage Your Attention

In our last post we provided a big picture overview of what

attention is and how it works. We explored the fact that while
many people only think of attention in terms of the ability to
focus on a single task, there are in fact several different types,
each with their distinctive benefits and drawbacks.

Attention mastery, then, is actually all about attention

management. Attention is a precious resource. We only have
so much. To get the most out of life we must learn to utilize
and allocate our attention effectively.

Thus mastering your powers of concentration requires

becoming the supreme commander of your mind’s armed
forces – budgeting your resources, knowing your divisions’
strengths and weaknesses, placing a particular unit at the
battlefront at certain times, and moving it to the rear for rest at
others.

Are you ready to win the war on distraction? Here’s your

battle plan.

Your Focus is Your

Reality: How to Manage
the Big Picture
Attention is more than just focusing on completing a task. We
use our attention to shape and frame life’s big picture as well.
You can tell what a man truly values by observing what he
pays attention to the most. And as countless spiritual teachers
have warned, what a man pays attention to ends up molding
his soul and character.

Your focus truly is your reality. For that reason, attention

mastery must begin at the most macro level, with directing
your attention away from that which distracts from your life’s
purpose and towards what’s really important. As supreme
commander of your mind, you need to know why you’re
fighting this war and have an overarching plan for how you’re
going to attain victory. Here’s how you draw up a strategy and
stick with it:

Make sure your principles and goals are crystal-clear.

When a man lacks guiding principles, his attention
mindlessly pivots to whatever the world tells him is
important, and typically what the world tells him is
important is corrosive to a truly flourishing life. Knowing
your core values and having a blueprint for your goals
creates focusing lenses that help direct your attention to
what matters most, while cropping out the superfluous and
distracting.
Use the Eisenhower Decision Matrix to get your
priorities in line. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and
unfortunately, seemingly urgent tasks make the most noisy
grabs for our attention, even though they may not actually
be important. Assigning your tasks to the different
quadrants of the Eisenhower Decision Matrix can help you
concentrate on what really needs to get done, instead of
using up your attention in putting out little fires.
Plan out your day and week. While we typically think of
planning as time management, at its core, planning is
attention management. Every time you sit down to plan
out your day you’re essentially deciding what you’re going
to pay attention to that day. Without planning, you end up
 spending your attention on whatever unforeseen
distractions pop up and make a play for it.
Conduct an audit to see how you currently spend your
time. Even if you say you know what’s important to you,
do you really put your “money” where your mouth is?
Paying attention takes time — figure out how you spend
the latter, and you’ll know how you’re directing the former.
Generously embed moral reminders into your life.
Moral reminders are things like posters or personal
manifestos that contain or symbolize your values and
goals. Whenever you see these prompts, your drifting
attention will be brought to heel.

How to Manage Your

Voluntary and
Involuntary Attention
Our involuntary attention is unconsciously activated by stimuli
in our environment – it comes online when we hear a dog
bark or see an email land in our inbox.

Voluntary attention is consciously controlled – we use it when

we deliberately try to ignore these competing stimuli in order
to concentrate on a single task.

Distractions are like guerilla warriors that attack your

voluntary attention units on the way to the battlefront,
weakening the troops and diverting resources before they can
be put to work where they’re really needed. The trick then, is
learning to protect your voluntary attention so it’s at full
strength and ready to fight, as well as giving these troops
ample rest once they’ve seen combat, so they can be
returned to the frontlines ready for action.

Know your attention’s “circadian rhythms.” Attention —

like its closely related brother, willpower — ebbs and flows
throughout the day in ways that are unique to each individual.
I tend to have a more focused, sustained attention level at the
beginning of the day. That’s why I try to do my narrow-focused
attention work (like writing) first thing in the morning.

As the day progresses, my ability for narrow-focused attention

wanes so I shift my attention to tasks that require a more
open focus like research, podcasting, brainstorming ideas, or
answering email.

Everyone’s attentional circadian rhythm is different. Find

yours and plan your day around it.
Take attention breaks. Your voluntary attention is much like
a muscle. It needs breaks every now and then after a
sustained focus session. How often should you take an
attention break? Well, that’s hard to say. Several lifehack and
productivity blogs say that it’s best to work in 45-minute
focused sessions and then take a 15-minute break, but I
wasn’t able to find any research that backs up those specific
numbers. Experiment and see what works for you.

Get out into nature for an attention reset. Sometimes just

taking a break to goof off on the internet or chat by the water
cooler isn’t enough to completely refresh our attention.
Instead, we need to get in touch with our inner wild man by
getting out into nature.

In a 2008 study, participants were divided into two groups and

both performed a 35-minute task that fatigued their focus. The
two groups then went for a 50-minute walk — one group in a
park, another in a busy city. When they returned, the
participants had the strength of their voluntary attention
tested. The group who took a walk in the park performed
much better than the group who took a walk in an urban
environment.

The city-walkers’ involuntary attention was bombarded by

stimuli (honking cars, billboards, people talking), and this in
turn taxed their voluntary attention, which had to decide which
of the stimuli to pay attention to and which to ignore. The
involuntary attention of those who took a stroll in the woods,
on the other hand, encountered only very mild stimulation
(“Oh look, a squirrel.”), and this gave their voluntary attention
a real rest, so that it was ready for another round of cognitive
challenges back at the lab.

Mildly activating your involuntary attention with soothing

stimuli while giving your voluntary attention a breather allows
us to enter a state of “soft fascination” that truly feels great. I
find it interesting that giving your voluntary attention a little
something to feed on works better for refreshing your mind
than, say, just sitting in a completely empty and quiet room. I
think you can compare it to the idea of taking an “active rest”
day after a hard workout that’s left you sore; lying on the
couch all day to recover leaves you tight, while doing a little
light activity like walking or swimming actually loosens you up.

Remove distractions. Unlike the mild stimulation of nature,

noises in our everyday life – television, smartphone pings,
crying babies – make a more “violent” grab at our involuntary
attention; if you’re passing a flashing billboard along the road,
you’re much more likely to instinctively turn to look at it than
you are a stately oak.
Working to ignore these plays for your involuntary attention in
order to focus on the task at hand fatigues your voluntary
attention, leaving you feeling scatter-brained, frazzled, and
distracted.

Instead of forcing your voluntary attention to battle an

onslaught of distracting invaders, beat them back with
minimal effort by building a fort around your involuntary
attention. Remove distractions from your environment: work in
a quiet setting, don’t leave the TV on in the background, and
turn off your smartphone notifications. If the limitless
possibilities of the internet are ever attempting to scale your
attention’s walls, dump pots of hot oil on them by
implementing the distraction-destroying tips in this post.
What About Background Music
and White Noise?

If the mild stimulation of nature

can be beneficial to our attention,
but many everyday distractions
can be detrimental to it, what
about forms of stimulation that fall
somewhere in-between, like
background music?

Many folks (myself included) use

background music while they
work to help them focus. But the
research is split on whether it
actually helps your attention span
or hinders it.

Researchers in Taiwan found that

when we listen to music while
working, the music drains our
attention. In the study, volunteers
who performed a reading
comprehension test in complete
silence scored better than those
listening to background music.
The researchers concluded that
the music listeners performed
worse because they had to ignore
the music to focus on the test.
The researchers suggest that
working in silence is best for
focus, but that if you’re going to
listen to music anyway, choose
something that’s not “intense” or
distracting like hip-hop or rock
 distracting like hip hop or rock
Quit multitasking. Related to removing distractions is to stop
music.
multi-tasking. When you multi-task, you’re not actually doing
several things at the same time. You’re just shifting your
Other
voluntary research
attention suggests
back and forth between that
different tasks.
And every time you toggle your attention, you use up a tiny bit
listening to certain kinds of music
of your voluntary attention’s finite fuel. If you spend your
can
mornings prime
juggling yourthe brain
attention for sustained
between your Twitter feed,

focus
RSS feeds, and
email, andthat complete
the work silence
you’re actually supposed to
be doing, don’t be surprised if your brain feels frazzled and
can actually be distracting.  What
you don’t have enough attention juice to plough through an
kindinofthemusic
assignment boosts
afternoon. your
Take aattention? Lyric-free
nap. One of the and soothing
myriad of wonders and benefits of the
nap is music that
its ability to plays
refresh at 60 beats
our voluntary attentionper
by giving our
working memory a break.
minute seems to be the sweet
Take technology fasts to reset your attention. “Fast” from
spot. The web app company
your technology by taking a complete break from it for a day
focus@will
or more. No computer, has developed
smartphone, an I wasn’t
or television.
able toambient music
find scientific studies and sound
to back this ideaapp
up, but it
certainly makes intuitive sense, and I’ve personally had
that uses this research to create
success with trying it. After a day or two without checking my
playlists
computer thatI supposedly
or cell phone, put you
just feel more focused. I usually
combine my tech fasts with getting out into nature, for a
in an attentive state. I’ve used
double dose of attention refreshment.
focus@will a few times and think
How to about
it helps Manage the sameYour
as
Mind Wandering
listening to classical music.

Sometimes your voluntary and involuntary attentional modes

To find out what works best for
need some R&R, and the cognitive equivalent of the USO is a
you, experiment
good old-fashioned withsession.
mind wandering working in
complete silence or while listening
While mind wandering (or daydreaming) can boost creativity
toussomething
and help with aproblems,
untangle unresolved calm vibe.
it can also distract
us at inopportune times and lead us to ruminate on negative
Asand
thoughts faremotions.
as simple white
Thus while noise goes,
daydreaming may seem
the ultimate in creative spontaneity, to maximize its benefits
research suggests that when
and minimize its drawbacks, it’s best to actively manage your
used insessions:
mind wandering a moderately noisy
environment like a coffee shop or
Intentionally set a time to let your mind wander. Instead of
limitingstudent union tobuilding,
your daydreaming it can help
those few abbreviated pockets
between when your mind unintentionally drifts away from the
boost your concentration. If you’re
task at hand and when you yank it back to work, find times
working
throughout inwhere
your day a quiet environment,
you deliberately give youritbrain
permission to wander at will. Some great thinkers and leaders
won’t have an effect; ditto for
have made it a habit to block out chunks in their day where
using
they don’t whiteexcept
do anything noiseletin a mind
their really loud
freely ramble.

environment.
Besides blocking off specific time in your schedule for mind
wandering, give your brain permission to wander when you’re
doing low-cognition activities like cleaning, whittling, or
showering. A bit of habitual stimulation really seems to free
the mind up to receive inspiration. If you find yourself stuck on
a problem, instead of sitting there trying to force the solution
from your cranium, take a break and the answer may very
well come to you in the shower.

Decide what kind of mind wandering session you want to

have. When we daydream, our mind has a tendency to drift
towards negative thoughts and emotions. It does this in order
to direct our attention to unresolved problems in our lives.
This can be beneficial, so it’s good to intentionally set aside
times when you give yourself permission to be a worrywart.
Make a list of everything that you’re worried about. Next to
each worry, write down a “next step” – something tangible you
can do, however small, to begin resolving that issue. If there’s
truly nothing you can do about something for the time being,
make a conscious note of that and imagine tabling the issue
for another session.

Sometimes though, we don’t want our cognitive rambles to

drift over to the dark side and be such a downer. Instead,
we’re hoping our daydreams can generate a bit of inspiration
or creativity. In that case, actively focus on positive thoughts
as your mind wanders. If it starts to drift towards more
negative things, nudge it back on course. It may help to keep
a mental drawer of positive subject file folders you can leaf
through – fond childhood memories, things you love about
your girlfriend, the last vacation you took, and so on.

How to Manage Your

Narrow and Broad Focus
Attention
As we discussed in our previous post, our voluntary attention
comes in two flavors: broad and narrow. Broad focus attention
is great for getting your bearings, understanding the “big
picture,” and comprehending complex systems and
relationships. Narrow focus attention allows us to be efficient,
productive, and meticulous.

To be effective supreme commanders of the mind, we need to

know when to use one and when to use the other; sometimes
you want to be holed up in your war room, poring over plans
and maps, and sometimes you need to go out to the frontlines
to see exactly what is going on on the ground.
Knowing when to use a broad or narrow focus attention is
more art than science – it’s something you have to learn from
experience; however, there’s actually a science to how you
shift into those different attentional foci. Below we provide a
few researched-backed tips:

Narrow Your Focus

Use lists, outlines, and categories. When we categorize,

use lists, or create outlines, our attention narrows in order to
pinpoint any missing information. If you’re working on a task
in which getting details right is vital, write out all the steps or
even use a checklist.

Focus on a goal. The fact that having a clear goal can

narrow one’s focus is perfectly displayed in the Invisible
Gorilla Experiment. When the experiment’s participants were
told to watch a video and given a goal to count how many
times a basketball was passed around, they became so
narrowly focused on the ball that they failed to see a man
dressed in a gorilla suit stroll casually among the players and
dance in the middle of the court.

While a goal is an effective attention narrower, there’s a risk of

suffering tunnel vision and missing out on more rewarding
opportunities. Always employ your practical wisdom.

Take it slow. When you think, read, or observe your

surroundings slowly, your attention narrows. You’ll spend
more time homing in on and examining the objects in your
environment that catch your involuntary attention and use
your voluntary attention to ponder and analyze single words
and sentences within a large piece of literature.

Broaden Your Focus

Stay optimistic. Research has shown that positive emotions

give us a more open attention. When we’re optimistic, we’re
relaxed and thus more likely to see new connections and
opportunities. This is one reason why it’s so important that
leaders remain upbeat; a sense of realistic optimism is
essential in crafting and maintaining a strategic big-picture
vision.

Focus on others. Another way to broaden your attention is to

shift your focus from yourself and onto others. Studies show
that being “other directed” or thinking in terms of “we” and not
“me” opens up attention. The best way to make that shift is to
simply help another person with a problem. You can also try
doing some “compassionate meditation.”
Scan. When we quickly scan our environment (or even a
book), our attention widens in order to take in as much
information as possible, which in turn allows us to get a quick
and dirty overview of the situation or text.

Gather contrary evidence. Once we decide that someone

has an inherent flaw and we label them with it – they’re
stupid, crazy, useless, selfish, immature, bitchy, evil, lazy, etc.
– a narrow focus tends to set in. You experience the
Velcro/Teflon effect: you notice everything the person does
that confirms your conclusion, but overlook any conflicting
evidence.

If you find yourself only being able to see a loved one through
the lens of a negative label, it can help to actively look for
things they do that run contrary to it, and even write those
things down. While lists can narrow your focus in some cases,
they can also be used to produce a broader, more balanced
picture in others. Think for example of keeping a gratitude
journal; if you find yourself narrowly attuned to what’s wrong
with your life, making a list of the good things can greatly
broaden your perspective.

Conclusion
If you want to win the war on distraction and build an empire
of personal progress, you need to be a wise supreme
commander that knows how to best utilize his units.
Sometimes you want to send one type of your attention to the
frontlines, and sometimes you want to send another to the
rear for rest. By deftly maneuvering your resources and
effectively deploying your troops, you can make the most of
your invaluable attention.

Of course the pure strength of your fighting force matters

greatly too. Single-minded focus may be only one element of
your attention, but it’s still vital one. But since this article has
been so long and meaty, and your voluntary attention is now
all tuckered out, it’s time to let it get a hot meal and a shower.
For instructions on how to strengthen your powers of
concentration, return to the briefing room tomorrow at 1900
hours.

Read the Entire Series

I: What Every Man Ought to Know About Focus
III: 11 Exercises That Will Strengthen Your Attention

______________

Sources:
Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life

Distracted: Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age

Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence

Can I Have Your Attention?

 
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