[[Doing]] people:: #people/lisafeldmanbarrett Lon Setnik dates:: 2022-11-13 *What I pay attention to is what my life is.* This reminds me of [[Forming Habits]] and [[default mode]], it's hard in the moment to figure out what your priorities are. It's much easier to [[Design my life to live]] to create [[environmental cues]] because [[our environment shapes our behavior]]. It's kind of like [[emotion changes the world we are in]] because emotion is a whole brain state, so since I want to live as a happy fun person, how do I pay attention to the positives? [[Theory of constructed emotion]] The idea [[focus attention]] is an idea that we are in a dynamic of different states of attention, between deeply perceptual moments called "focus" moments, and lower moments of arousal and perception, when our challenge is low, or our engagement is low The phrase [[focus attention]] is a mindset that time and attention are **the** limited resource of our lives, so we should make sure that we are paying attention to the things that are connected to our [[Developing Values]], and the way to do that is to implement personal leadership. Since [[management is doing things right, leadership is doing the right things]], it takes leadership to create an environment that: - gets rid of barriers to doing the right things at the right time - puts [[Good Friction]] in the way of straying from my goals This matters because will power is over-rated as a plan. "Do better" is unlikely by the same person in the same circumstances. ### What would the opposite argument be? One of the amazing things about attention is that it can be diverted. The brain can work on more than one thing at a time. Allowing for creativity by letting the brain wander is an important part of creation. %% tags: #note/statement | #on/attention | #on/productivity | #on/habit | #on/identity | #on/thinking %% ## Sources: > **attention** is the behavioral and cognitive process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, whether considered subjective or objective, while ignoring other perceivable information. William James (1890) wrote that "Attention is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence." Attention has also been described as the allocation of limited cognitive processing resources. Attention is manifested by an attentional bottleneck, in terms of the amount of data the brain can process each second; for example, in human vision, only less than 1% of the visual input data (at around one megabyte per second) can enter the bottleneck, leading to inattentional blindness. Attention remains a crucial area of investigation within education, psychology, neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and neuropsychology. Areas of active investigation involve determining the source of the sensory cues and signals that generate attention, the effects of these sensory cues and signals on the tuning properties of sensory neurons, and the relationship between attention and other behavioral and cognitive processes, which may include working memory and psychological vigilance. A relatively new body of research, which expands upon earlier research within psychopathology, is investigating the diagnostic symptoms associated with traumatic brain injury and its effects on attention. Attention also varies across cultures.The relationships between attention and consciousness are complex enough that they have warranted perennial philosophical exploration. Such exploration is both ancient and continually relevant, as it can have effects in fields ranging from mental health and the study of disorders of consciousness to artificial intelligence and its domains of research. > > [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention) Barrett, L. F. (2016). The theory of constructed emotion: An active inference account of interoception and categorization. _Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience_, nsw154. [https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsw154](https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsw154) [[Attention Span]] Chapter 3