I recently held a workshop at the Stanford GSB one-year reunion for the Class of 2016, drawing on material from my course, The Art of Self-Coaching. I focused on the topic of Attention, which is the theme of a new class session that I added to the course this past year. My slides are above, and a condensed summary of my remarks is below (covering the entire workshop would have doubled the length of this post.) Thanks to the Class of 2016 for inviting me to speak—it was a pleasure.
Introduction
The topic of Attention is deeply interwoven with the process of self-coaching, and it’s foundational to my course at Stanford. Following the session on Attention, the next three classes address topics that draw upon this foundation in a number of ways:
- Emotion: As I’ve noted before, emotions are attention magnets. A core function served by emotions is to interrupt conscious thought, capture our attention, and orient us toward some development in our environment or ourselves that may be an opportunity or a threat.
- Happiness: One of the most important findings from positive psychology is that what we pay attention to can have a demonstrable impact on our level of happiness and fulfillment.
- Resilience: Directing our attention toward a desired object of focus (or away from undesirable distractions) is hard enough in ordinary circumstances, but it’s even more difficult when under stress or facing adversity.
A fundamental premise of this workshop, my course, and my coaching practice is that your attention is your most precious resource. What we pay attention to matters, and this is particularly true for leaders. We have an impact through the directed focus of our attention. We often conflate attention with time, but it’s very easy to spend substantial amounts of time with other people or engaged in a task and yet fail to have a meaningful impact because of a lack of focused attention.
Your effectiveness as a leader will increasingly be contingent upon your ability to choose where to focus your attention, as well as what (and who) to ignore. This is a fundamental leadership skill that gets more difficult under stress, and it will only get harder as you become more senior, not only because you’ll have more freedom to determine what’s important, but also because more people will be clamoring for your attention. People will want you to attend their meeting, they’ll want you to vet their idea, they’ll want your feedback—all because the leader’s attention matters. Bear in mind that they will not care about the difficulty you will experience in making these choices or the cost to you of depleting your attention—and not because they are uncaring people, but because it is profoundly difficult to empathize up. So the only person who can manage this process is you.
System 1 and System 2
This is a way of “thinking about how we think,” a conceptual model of how the brain operates, first developed by psychologists Keith Stanovich and Richard West, and later popularized by Nobel-winner Daniel Kahneman. It’s important to note that these “systems” refer to different modes of operating and mental processing, not to literal brain structures. (We often employ mechanical or computational models to describe the brain, assigning functions to specific neural structures, and while those metaphors have value as teaching tools, they also have their limitations. We do not fully understand how the brain works, and many of our early conceptual frameworks have proven wrong.)
With that caveat, it’s evident that the brain has different modes of operating that we employ for various purposes. System 1 is fast and automatic, characterized by little or no effort, and with no sense of voluntary control. At nearly all times we experience a steady stream of thoughts and feelings generated by our System 1 in response to environmental stimuli or arising spontaneously. Because it is outside of our voluntary control, we can perceive System 1 as distinct from or even external to our personal identity. These automatic thoughts and feelings clearly emanate from an aspect of our inner selves, and yet their source remains inaccessible to conscious thought and examination.
In contrast, System 2 is slow and even laborious, characterized by effortful concentration and a sense of agency and deliberate choice. Rather than operating on an ongoing basis, System 2 processing is triggered by a combination of environmental stimuli and our System 1 responses. Because it is more fully within our conscious control, we associate System 2 with our personal identity and sense of self. When we say to ourselves, “I’m thinking,” we’re referring to our System 2.
An iceberg, with the majority of its mass invisible below the surface, is an appropriate metaphor for these two systems. Most of our mental processing is comprised of System 1 activity, occurring automatically and beyond the realm of consciousness. Our System 1 is constantly registering sensory signals and absorbing information, assessing and judging, setting goals, making decisions, and spurring us to action. Conscious, effortful thought—what we generally understand as “thinking”—is merely the tip of the iceberg.
Here’s an illustration: When we see the equations “2 x 2” or “4 x 4,” we’re automatically aware that the answers are 4 and 16. When we see the equation “16 x 16,” some people are automatically aware that the answer is 256, but not everyone. And when we see the equation “256 x 256,” only a very small number of people are automatically aware that the answer is 65,536, but almost all of us have to pause and think. What we experience in that progression is the shift from System 1 thinking—fast, effortless, and involuntary—to System 2 thinking—slow, effortful, and voluntary.
When considering System 1 and System 2, we may well ask: Who’s in charge? Because of our conscious identification with System 2, we’d like to believe that it’s in charge, but that not necessarily the case. Think about the many people who suffer from a fear of flying. They know, intellectually, that the risk of dying in a car is far greater than the risk of dying in a plane, and yet this cognitive awareness is insufficient to overcome their fear. As Kahneman notes, the relationship between the two systems is complex and dynamic. Most of the time System 2 is merely an “acquiescent monitor,” attending to the endless stream of thoughts and feelings from System 1 but taking no action in response to them. But at times System 2 becomes “actively resistant” and takes charge, such as when we’re confronted by a task System 1 is incapable of addressing, such as calculating the sum of 256 x 256, or when we realize that our fear of flying is irrational, and we need to get on the plane in spite of it. And at still other times System 2 is “an endorser, not an enforcer,” and it adopts thoughts and feelings from System 1 with gusto, such as when we’re in the midst of a passionate debate—or a hostile fight—and we marry logical argument with emotional appeals.
Attention Budgets, Ego Depletion and the Law of Least Effort
So why does all this matter? What are the implications of these concepts for our daily lives? First, it’s important to recognize that System 2 processing, which we require to address complex tasks, is a form of attention, and both our capacity for System 2 processing and our ability to consciously direct that processing power are finite. We operate with what Kahneman calls an “attention budget,” and, he writes, “If you try to go beyond your budget, you will fail.” For example, people are being killed and injured in record numbers because drivers can’t stay off their phones while behind the wheel. This epidemic of distracted driving is an example of people exceeding their attention budget, with tragic consequences. EMTs, pilots, combat soldiers, and even some financial traders operate in environments that are potential “attention black holes,” and they receive intensive training that helps them stay within their attention budget in order to remain focused on the things that matter most. This applies both in the moment and over the course of the day. Like a distracted driver, we can exceed our attention budget in any given moment, become overwhelmed, and lose our ability to focus. But we also deplete our ability to direct our attention over the course of each day, so that by the end of the workday and late at night, we’ve typically exceeded our attention budget for that period of time and often find it difficult to make good decisions about where to direct our attention.
This latter dynamic is also related to a concept known as “ego depletion.” Early psychological research on the subject suggested that varying levels of glucose in the bloodstream had an impact on our capacity for attention management, including decision-making and effortful concentration. This conclusion has not been supported by more recent studies, indicating that it’s a much more complex process than originally conceived. But while the underlying neurological mechanisms are still being explored, we do know that that sustained efforts at self-control—including consciously directing our attention—consume substantial amounts of our finite System 2 processing, which we typically experience as unpleasant. In general this is a good thing, because it prevents us from wasting such a powerful and limited resource on unimportant tasks. But as a consequence we sometimes have to overcome a certain amount of reluctance in order to truly focus our attention, and our ability to maintain this effort diminishes over time, along with our capacity to resist distraction.
Finally, Kahneman notes, we operate according to a “law of least effort”: We’re cognitively lazy, and we habitually seek mental shortcuts. A more charitable way to put it is that we’re efficient or economical, and System 2 processing is inherently inefficient and expensive. System 1 is capable of operating in parallel, generating vast numbers of thoughts and feelings simultaneously. In contrast, System 2 can truly focus on just one object at a time, which allows it to address highly detailed and complex issues, but which also makes it quite slow. As a result, we tend to conserve System 2 resources and rely on System 1 whenever possible, and, again, this is generally to our advantage, because we’re more likely to have this processing power available when we truly need it. But a consequence is that we’re prone to cognitive biases and systematic errors in our thinking. One example is the power of first impressions. We typically assess people on a number of dimensions, such as the degree to which we feel close to them or whether they’re a potential threat, within seconds of meeting, a System 1 process. This is highly efficient, allowing us to interact safely with large numbers of strangers we’ve never met before while consuming relatively little System 2 processing power. But it’s also error-prone, and the stereotypes that contribute to our first impressions can also be the source of pernicious prejudices.
Plugging Leaks
So what can we do? How can we stay within our limited attention budget, combat ego depletion, and resist the law of least effort? How can we better manage our attention? One way is to plug leaks: To recognize that our attention—our most precious resource—is constantly leaking away and being spent on unproductive activities that serve other people’s interests but not ours. And one of the best places to start plugging leaks is your phone. Consider all the possible ways that your phone is capable of interrupting you: alerts, badges, banners, sounds. Take a moment and actually list them out—call it an Interruption Inventory. And ask yourself:
- Which ones did I choose?
- Which ones were chosen for me?
- How useful or necessary are they?
Now identify all the people who can seize your attention via your phone and the means by which they do so: email, text, apps, voice. Again, take a moment and list them out—call it a Hierarchy of Disruption. And ask yourself:
- Why do they have this power?
- What do they do with it?
- How have I given them this power and enabled this process?
Consider these two lists and ask yourself:
- How might I use these tools differently?
- What could I make less prominent?
- What could I ignore entirely?
As useful as our phones can be, it’s essential to realize that on the other side of the screen are tens of thousands of people spending billions of dollars with one goal in mind: To capture your attention. You are not the user—you’re the product.
Conclusion
Your attention is your most precious resource--and it's hard to direct and easy to waste. We can't rely on mere willpower to insure that we're making effective use of our attention. Environmental factors--including tools and devices designed to capture our attention--and mental training (such as meditation or other mindfulness practices) are key.
The effort required to focus your attention on what's most important will only get harder as you become more senior. Everyone wants the leader's attention, because attention is such a powerful force, and what the leader pays attention to has an impact throughout the organization. People will want you in their meeting, they'll want you to vet their idea, and they'll want your feedback--all potential objects of your attention. But they won't care about the cost to you, not out of maliciousness, but simply because it's so difficult to empathize up. As a consequence, you're the only person who will be in a position to insure that you're focusing your attention on what's truly important, and not just urgent. So start treating your attention like a resource now.
