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

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.

Global economic data shows that once a country reaches a modest level of income—enough to meet basic needs—there is zero connection between happiness and wealth. Intangibles like warm connections with people we love and meaningful activities make people far happier than say, shopping or work.

The first movement to new territory entails disengaging from pleasing routine and fighting the inertia of ruts; this small act of attention demands what neuroscience calls “cognitive effort.” That effortful dab of executive control frees attention to roam widely and pursue fresh paths. What keeps people from making this small neural effort? For

Learning how to improve any skill requires top-down focus. Neuroplasticity, the strengthening of old brain circuits and building of new ones for a skill we are practicing, requires our paying attention: When practice occurs while we are focusing elsewhere, the brain does not rewire the relevant circuitry for that particular routine. Daydreaming

What we now diagnose as an attentional deficit may reflect a natural variation in focusing styles that had advantages in evolution—and so continues to be dispersed in our gene pool.

Open awareness creates a mental platform for creative breakthroughs and unexpected insights. In open awareness we have no devil’s advocate, no cynicism or judgment—just utter receptivity to whatever floats into the mind. But once we’ve hit upon a great creative insight, we need to capture the prize by switching to a keen focus on how to apply it.

The stronger the emotion, the greater our fixation. Hijacks are the superglue of attention. But the question is, How long does our focus stay captured? That depends, it turns out, on the power of the left prefrontal area to calm the aroused amygdala (there are two amygdalae, one in each brain hemisphere). That amygdala-prefrontal neuronal

Mindlessness, in the form of mind wandering, may be the single biggest waster of attention in the workplace. Focus on our experience in the here and now—like the task at hand, the conversation we’re having, or the building of consensus in a meeting—demands that we tune down the all-about-myself murmurs of mind stuff irrelevant to what’s going on