Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence

An ingenious method for remedying this bottom-up skew is so subtle that people have no idea that their attention patterns are being rewired (just as they had no idea that wiring was going on as they acquired it in the first place). Called “cognitive bias modification,” or CBM, this invisible therapy has those suffering from severe social anxiety lo

But what’s little discussed (at least in academic circles, where it’s less apparent) is that once you are at work among a pool of colleagues who are about as smart as you are, your cognitive abilities alone do not make you outstanding—particularly as a leader. There’s a floor effect for IQ when everyone in the group is at the same high level.

Another bottom line: Anything we can do to increase children’s capacity for cognitive control will help them throughout life.

we need not just mindful leaders, but a mindful society, one where we bring a triple focus: to our own well-being, that of others, and the operations of the broader systems that shape our lives.

Mindfulness of others at the societal level, Sachs says, means paying attention to the suffering of the poor and to the social safety net, which is badly fraying in the United States and many other advanced economies. He argues that while now the poor are helped just enough to barely survive, that simply creates intergenerational poverty. What’s ne

“It takes a panoramic attention to appreciate system-level interactions,” says Richard Davidson. “You need to be attentionally flexible, so you can expand and contract your focus, like a zoom lens, to see elements big and small.” Why not teach children these basic skills in reading systems?

Our mind holds endless ideas, memories, and potential associations waiting to be made. But the likelihood of the right idea connecting with the right memory within the right context—and all that coming into the spotlight of attention—diminishes drastically when we are either hyperfocused or too gripped by an overload of distractions to notice the i

a scientist too determined to confirm his hypothesis risks ignoring findings that don’t fit his expectations—dismissing them as noise or error, not a doorway to new discoveries—and so misses what might become more fruitful theories. And the naysayer in the brainstorming session, the guy who always shoots down any new idea, throttles innovative insi

An organization that focuses inwardly may execute superbly. But if it has not attuned to the larger world in which it operates, that execution may end up in the service of a failed strategy.

One day in the future, some predict, brain training games will be a standard part of schooling, with the best ones gathering data about the players as they simultaneously fine-tune themselves into the exact game needed—an empathic cognitive tutor.