Attention!
“We were the first generation to grow up prisoners of our smartphones,” I was told by some thirty-somethings the other day. “We got hooked when we were just becoming teenagers and still check our phones all the time.”
We were reflecting on the seductiveness of our digital worlds, and how our attention gets constantly captured by our fascinations with it: Tik Tok, X, the likes (or dislikes) of ‘friends’, and on and on.
Our attention has become a commodity to be entrapped, metered, monetized. Platforms devise ingenious ways to draw our attention and keep it for as long as possible – the better to attract advertisers.
Our “eyeballs” are pawns in a larger game. How can we break free?
Take Back Control Over Our Own Attention
Focus is a key to emotional intelligence. Our attention is a mental muscle – those who monetize it hope we will keep flabby, passively letting what lures us draw our attention.
The alternative, though, is a muscular attention, one that lets us decide where and when we will put our focus.
Through Michael Stern, Senior Facilitator of the Daniel Goleman EI Courses, we asked recent grads what they felt the benefits for them had been of strengthening focus: Some grads found that better control of their focus through a simple breathing exercise helped better manage their rocky emotions, like anxiety.
“Whenever emotions felt overwhelming, I used breathing to reconnect. It’s truly powerful—using breath to master the mind enhances focus like nothing else,” one grad reported.
Said another:
“I became more mindful of how emotions—like stress or excitement—impacted my focus. For instance, when I was anxious about an upcoming task, I noticed my thoughts racing and intentionally slowed down my breathing to regain control.”
Others found a benefit of this attention-training was better focus and less mind-wandering:
“When reading or having a conversation, I caught myself drifting off and gently redirected my attention,” and “Better awareness of distractions…: I was able to concentrate better.” In short, “Even just a few seconds of focused breathing here and there had a grounding and pleasant effect on me.”
When it comes to keeping your focus where you want it:
“I am very distracted by the open tabs in my laptop – WhatsApp and emails especially …I feel some little anxiety every time I see a notification in a tab, and this distracts me from my current task. As my attention and energy is limited, I acknowledge that these distractions are limiting my capacity to focus.”
And some noticed how focus can help with other high-performance abilities, like achieving the goals that matter to you:
“I can better focus on the bigger picture and filter irrelevant information. I noticed myself trying to focus more on things that demand attention this week. For example, this morning I managed to increase my selective attention and achieve by the end of the day a result that 5 months ago would have taken me a week.”
All these testimonies corroborate a mounting body of research evidence that training attention does, in fact, allow the brain to better handle upsetting emotions like anxiety, to stay concentrated and ignore distractions, and let us stay focused on what matters most to us.
And given the forces that want to capture our attention for their own benefit, this is good news.
Author:
Daniel Goleman
Director of Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence Online Courses and Senior Consultant at Goleman Consulting Group
