Attention: The Basics
This Section Includes:
Managing Attention
Types of Attention
Attention is Vulnerable
Attention Can Be Trained
Harnessing The Power Of Attention
The Power of Attention: Your Brain’s Flashlight
Imagine your attention as a powerful flashlight in a dark room. Wherever you point it, that spot lights up—revealing details, guiding your actions, and shaping your experience. This is how your brain decides what matters most, filtering out the noise and focusing on what helps you reach your goals.
Why Attention Matters
Goal Achievement: Attention keeps you on track and helps you stay aligned with your priorities.
Distraction Defense: It shields you from distractions that pull you away from what’s important.
Brain Power: The more you focus on something, the stronger the neural connections become. Your brain literally rewires itself based on what you pay attention to. When we focus on aspects of the environment that help us accomplish our goals, we enter a state of readiness or flow. This is when we perform at our best.
How Attention Works
Selective Spotlight: Like a vacuum cleaner, your attention “sucks in” the information you focus on, giving it a competitive edge in your brain’s activity.
Flow State: When you focus on what matters, you enter a state of readiness—performing at your best
Take Control
If you don’t direct your attention with intention, it will be hijacked by whatever is most interesting or distracting. But when you deliberately shine your flashlight, you empower yourself to live out your goals and values.
Would you like tips or exercises to help strengthen your attention skills? This is important because whatever we pay attention to is gathered up and amplified by the brain. Otherwise, your attention goes to the highest bidder, and you will be on the hook for whatever hijacks your attentional system.
Pictured: A figure shines a flashlight on the word "Attention"
“Attention determines the decisions we make, the actions we take, how we interact with others, what we perceive and remember, how steady or reactive we are and ultimately our sense of fulfillment and accomplishments.” Dr. Amishi Jha
Types of Attention
Pictured: A list of some types of attention. Selective Attention, Vigilance, Allocating Attention, Goal Focus, and Meta-Awareness.
Attention can be directed inside or outside. These two types of attention activate different cognitive networks. Shifting attention outside of yourself involves intentionally noticing your environment and the people you’re around. This might involve small behaviors such as noticing people you encounter every day in a more friendly or attentive way calling to check on a friend, or going to see someone who is having difficulty in some way.
Dr. Jha describes Three systems of attention.
The “Flashlight” system is narrow and focused. Where you point the flashlight becomes brighter and information not in the beam is suppressed. This is also called alerting or focusing attention on specific information.
A second type of attention is the “Floodlight” which is broad and open like being on alert and looking for something, but you may not be sure what you are looking for. This is also known as orienting or deciding what is important amid a background of distractions or possibilities.
The third system of attention is the “Juggler”. This type of attention oversees and directs executive functions, which involve managing multiple skills in pursuit of goals. This third sub-system of attention helps us restrain ourselves from responding to distractions and helps us monitor how well we are staying on track. Executive skills include prioritizing, decision-making, working memory, and self-regulation along with allocation and management of all three types of attention.
Dr. Jah has developed strategies for strengthening different types of attention which involves training people in specific types of meditation to strengthen each type of attention.
Visit our Attention Strategies section for more information about this.
Now that you know about the basics of attention, let's learn more about how to improve it over time.
Attention is Vulnerable
Attention is powerful and amplifies whatever we pay attention to, but it is also very fragile and can be rapidly depleted by stress, threats, or poor mood (Dr. Amishi Jha). When your attentional resources are spent, you can’t perform well, and you must take a break and replenish them. Trying to push through when your attentional resources are low can lead to poor or weaker-than-usual performance, lower self-esteem, loss of confidence, anxiety, or depression.
Attention Can Be Trained
Attention is selected as a top five skill because attention is trainable. The neural circuits that sub-serve attention exhibit plasticity, which can be strengthened with practice. Studies using fMRI and other measures have demonstrated that significant changes occur in the brain's architecture and function when people practice skills like mindfulness, which strengthens attention. Observable and measurable changes can occur within as little as eight to twelve weeks of daily practice. To be mindful of attention is to notice where your attention is being allocated and to direct it mindfully toward the information or skills that help us accomplish our goals or purpose in life.
Studies have shown that the average person only pays attention to what they do around 50% of the time. This means that we are absent or not fully present for about half our lives. The rest of the time we are mind wandering or daydreaming. Mind-wandering is not the absence of attention but a pattern of attending to random and often irrelevant thoughts or emotions. The more you engage in mind-wandering, the more likely it is to continue. This means that we may be physically present but not fully there for important events like birthday parties, meals together, family time, time with friends, or even for our job or business decisions. This obviously can be very costly to relationships as well as business affairs.
Even if we get our priorities straightened out, we still struggle to stay on track with our goals and intentions. Getting distracted or not paying attention carries real-life issues of poor performance, getting hurt, breaking things, and getting into trouble. Once we master the basic skills of safety, protection, and staying out of trouble, we still must learn through observation and experience how to prioritize our attention to be happy and successful in life.
With the distractions of today, it can be challenging to resist the natural pulls of attention. The brain automatically responds to exciting, stimulating, engaging, threatening information, or anything it perceives as important. It is essential to override these natural pulls of attention and direct our attention wherever we choose. The skill is to notice where your attention is being allocated without fighting the natural pulls on your attention.
Dr. Amishi Jha speaking at the Pentagon Introduced by General Walter Piatt
