We can work on avoiding our own subconscious pitfalls—such as perceptual filters—by bringing them into our consciousness, which happens as soon as we pay attention to them.

Every person and situation is unique. To treat them otherwise is to deceive them and ourselves.

improve our chances of finding “hidden” details, we need to keep our focus sharp and single-minded, paying attention solely to this task. In

“Any time you do a task—whether it’s visual, auditory or otherwise—it draws on a specific set of cognitive operations. The more tasks you perform, the more you draw from that limited pool of resources.”

Art of Perception program—I call them “the four As”—how to assess, analyze, articulate, and adapt.

Perception requires attention, so we need to actively seek out the details.

One way of combating it is to recognize that everything changes constantly, even if those changes are too small for us to observe in real

poor grades weren’t due to their lack of intelligence. Instead he realized their problem-solving deficiencies came from their difficulty focusing on an extended task and attending to details, both necessities when solving multiple-step mathematical problems.

“In many ways, your attention focuses you. You attend to one thing, and effectively your brain suppresses or filters out everything else.”