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THE BIG IDEAS Focus

Yoda Says
The Hidden Driver of Excellence
Your focus is your reality. BY DANIEL GOLEMAN · HARPER PAPERBACKS © 2015 · 320 PAGES

Fruitless Rumination
vs. Productive reflection.

Resting
Your mental muscle. “In very recent years the science of attention has blossomed far beyond vigilance.
That science tells us these skills determine how well we perform any task. If they
Willpower
It’s 3 types of focus. are stunted, we do poorly; if muscular, we can excel. Our very nimbleness in life
Smart Practice depends on this subtle faculty. While the link between attention and excellence
To reach your Peak. remains hidden most of the time, it ripples through almost everything we seek to
Mental Gym accomplish.
Hit it!
This supple tool embeds within countless mental operations. A short list of some
Largest Focus Lens
Let’s see beyond the self.
basics includes comprehension, memory, learning, sensing how we feel and why,
reading emotions in other people and interacting smoothly. Surfacing this invisible
factor in effectiveness lets us better see the benefits of improving this mental
faculty, and better understand just how to do that.

Through an optical illusion of the mind we typically register the end products of
attention—our ideas good and bad, a telling wink or inviting smile, the whiff of
morning coffee—without noticing the beam of awareness itself.

Though it matters enormously for how we navigate life, attention in all its varieties
represents a little-noticed and underrated mental asset. My goal here is to spotlight
this elusive and underappreciated mental faculty in the mind’s operations and its
role in living a fulfilling life.”

~ Daniel Goleman from Focus

“Attention works much like
Daniel Goleman is a former New York Times science writer and author of the uber-bestselling
a muscle—use it poorly and
book Emotional Intelligence.
it can wither; work it well
In Focus, we look at the underlying neuroscience of attention.
and it grows. We’ll see how
smart practice can further We need to start by realizing that the strength (or weakness) of our attention is at the core of
develop and refine the muscle E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. we do.
of our attention, even rehab
Everything!
focus-starved brains.”
Which is why Goleman calls it “the hidden driver of excellence.”
~ Daniel Goleman
(It’s also why protecting and cultivating Emerson’s attention is one of the absolute top priorities
Alexandra and I have as we seek to bring forth (aka parent) the best within him.)

The good news is that our focus is like a muscle—although if we use it poorly it will wither, if we
work it out wisely it gets stronger. Goleman walks us through the neuroscience of the various
facets of our focus. I’m going to focus on practical stuff we can apply TODAY.

As you’d expect, this book is packed with Big Ideas. (Get a copy here.) I’m excited to share a
handful of my favorites so let’s jump straight in!

1 PhilosophersNotes | Focus

“The power to disengage our
attention from one thing
and move it to another is
essential for well-being.”
~ Daniel Goleman
“Emotional resilience comes
down to how quickly we
recover from upsets. People
who are highly resilient—who
bounce back right away—can
have as much as thirty times
more activation in the left
prefrontal area than those
who are less resilient. The
good news: we can increase
the strength of the amygdala-
calming left prefrontal
circuitry. ”
~ Daniel Goleman
2 PhilosophersNotes | Focus
YOUR FOCUS IS YOUR REALITY
“Attention, from the Latin attendere, to reach toward, connects us with the world, shaping
and defining our experience. ‘Attention,’ cognitive neuroscientists Michael Posner and Mary
Rothbart write, provides the mechanisms ‘that underlie our awareness of the world and
voluntary regulation of our thoughts and feelings.’
Ann Treisman, a dean of this research area, notes that how we deploy our attention determines
what we see. Or as Yoda says, ‘Your focus is your reality.’”
Attention.
It comes from the Latin attendere. It literally means to reach or stretch toward.
Remember: How we deploy our attention literally determines what we see.
As Yoda says: Your focus is your reality.
FRUITLESS RUMINATION VS. PRODUCTIVE REFLECTION
“The biggest challenge for even the most focused, though, comes from the emotional turmoil of
our lives, like a recent blowup in a close relationship that keeps intruding into your thoughts.
Such thoughts barge in for a good reason: to get us to think through what to do about what’s
upsetting us. The dividing line between fruitless rumination and productive reflection lies
in whether or not we come up with some tentative solution or insight and then can let those
distressing thoughts go—or if, on the other hand, we just keep obsessing over the same loop of
worry.”
Fruitless rumination vs. productive reflection.
What’s the difference?
When we ruminate, the same thought enters our minds again and again and again—we get all
stressed out but make no progress on a solution. (Remember: The word ruminate comes from
what a COW does with its cud—chewing it, swallowing it, regurgitating it and repeating that
process! <— Not quite a model of how we want to show up psychologically. :0)
With productive reflection, on the other hand, we make progress on actually SOLVING the issue.
We figure out what we can do about our challenges.
Jason Selk, one of the world’s leading mental toughness coaches, talks a lot about what he calls
“Relentless Solution Focus.” Here’s how he puts it in Organize Tomorrow Today: “Strong,
resilient people have what we call a ‘Relentless Solution Focus,’ or RSF. If a person with a
great RSF was in the same situation and lost that big client, he or she wouldn’t be some kind
of emotionless robot—the loss would sting. But the immediate, laser-sharp focus would be on
finding the solution path, and doing it in less than sixty seconds.
We say ‘solution path’ because many, many problems aren’t solved with one lightning strike
of an idea, obviously. A solution is a process, and there are steps to that process. In RSF, your
goal when presented with a problem is to identify one step within sixty seconds that you can
take that will make the situation better—even if only by a small increment of improvement.
RSF is not about finding the ‘perfect’ solution but, rather, about just identifying some kind of
improvement. It’s called the ‘+1 solution,’ because any improvement whatsoever to the current
situation is part of a solution. The +1 concept has been credited numerous times with making
the previously deemed impossible actually possible.”
Anything stressing you out these days?
Are you ruminating about it or productively reflecting?

“All of this was foreseen
way back in 1977 by the
Nobel-winning economist
Herbert Simon. Writing about
the coming information-
rich world, he warned that
what information consumes
is ‘the attention of its
recipients. Hence a wealth of
information creates a poverty
of attention.’”
~ Daniel Goleman
PhilosophersNotes | Focus
How about using your attention wisely to cultivate a Relentless Solution Focus?
Let’s find a little +1 solution to your challenge right now...
What’s ONE little thing you can do to make the situation just a little better?
Identify it. And do it. (And, repeat THAT process rather than the regurgitation. :)
RESTING YOUR MENTAL MUSCLES
“Tightly focused attention gets fatigued—much like an overworked muscle—when we push to the
point of cognitive exhaustion. The signs of mental fatigue, such as a drop in effectiveness and a
rise in distractedness and irritability, signify that the mental effort needed to sustain focus has
depleted the glucose that feeds neural energy.
The antidote to attention fatigue is the same as for the physical kind: take a rest. But what rests a
muscle?
Try switching from the effort of top-down control to more passive bottom-up activities, taking a
relaxing break in a restful setting. The most restful settings are in nature, argues Stephen Kaplan
at the University of Michigan, who proposes what he calls ‘attention restoration theory.’
Such restoration occurs when we switch from effortful attention, where the mind needs to
suppress distractions, to letting go and allowing our attention to be captured by whatever
presents itself. But only certain kinds of bottom-up focus act to restore energy for focused
attention. Surfing the Web, playing video games, or answering email does not.”
Two things here.
First: The top-down, voluntary, active ability to FOCUS our attention is (of course) ESSENTIAL
to excellence. But, so is the ability to turn that part of our minds OFF and allow for a more
bottom-up, open awareness.
If we’re constantly (!) ON—doing our Deep Work and then filling up the rest of our time
responding to the never-ending onslaught of emails, texts, and push notifications—we’re never
going to give ourselves the chance to fully recuperate.
Seneca talked about the same challenge 2,000 years ago. Here’s how he puts it in On the
Shortness of Life: “The mind should not be kept continuously at the same pitch of concentration,
but given amusing diversions. ...
Our minds must relax: they will rise better and keener after a rest. Just as you must not force
fertile farmland, as uninterrupted productivity will soon exhaust it, so constant effort will
sap our mental vigour, while a short period of rest and relaxation will restore our powers.
Unremitting effort leads to a kind of mental dullness and lethargy.”
I just did a mid-year (June 2016) optimizing audit on my life. A key insight was doing a better
job of deliberately training my recovery. That passage from Seneca came to mind.
Seneca talks abut how the Roman senate (and some of Rome’s leading thinkers) would not take
on new issues after the “tenth hour.” They’d turn their minds off from the big stuff and give it a
chance to rest so they could show up the next day ready to rock.
For those following along (see Notes on Take a Nap, Change Your Life) you may recall that the
word “siesta” is derived from the Roman’s word for their sixth hour “sexta”—which corresponds
with our noon and was, in their masterpiece day calendar, the time for rest.
So, our tenth hour is 4:00 P.M. That’s my new “shut-down complete” time—no more dopamine-
hits online, no more focused thinking. A walk, some qi gong, a hike. Whatever. Time for some
recovery/open thinking.
3
 That’s part 1. We need to turn off our focused brains.

Part 2? According to some compelling research on “attention restoration theory” out of the
University of Michigan (which we talk about in Creativity on Demand), the best way to rest is to
get outside into NATURE.

Remember: We will NOT experience the deep recovery we need by checking email, surfing the
Web, playing video games and otherwise jacking ourselves up with more dopamine! :0

So, how about you? How can you optimize here a little more?

P.S. Goleman makes the point that oscillating active + open focus is also key to CREATIVITY!

MARSHMALLOWS, 3 TYPES OF FOCUS & WILLPOWER

“Another bottom line:
“How we focus holds the key to willpower, says [Walter] Mischel. His hundreds of hours of
observation of little kids fighting off temptation reveals ‘the strategic allocation of attention,’
Anything we can do to
as he puts it, to be the crucial skill. The kids who waited out the full fifteen minutes did it by
increase children’s capacity
distracting themselves with tactics like pretend play, singing songs, or covering their eyes. If a
for cognitive control will help
kid just stared at the marshmallows, he was a goner (or more precisely, the marshmallow was).
them throughout life.”
At least three sub-varieties of attention, all aspects of the executive, are at play when we put self-
~ Daniel Goleman
restraint against instant gratification. The first is the ability to voluntarily disengage our focus
from an object of desire that powerfully grabs our attention. The second, resisting distraction,
lets us keep our focus elsewhere—say, on fantasy play—rather than gravitating back to that
juicy whatever. And the third allows us to keep our focus on a goal in the future, like the two
marshmallows later. All that adds up to willpower.”

That’s from a section called “Willpower Is Destiny.”

Walter Mischel is the brilliant researcher who spent 40+ years studying willpower and brought
us The Marshmallow Test in which preschool kids were offered one marshmallow now or two if
they could wait twenty minutes.

As we discuss in the Notes on that great book + extensively in Willpower 101, whether or not a
preschooler was able to delay gratification predicted their SAT scores a decade later and their
body mass index DECADES later. (Crazy.)

The trick was to be able to COOL the immediate impulse. Kids who were good at that, got the
bonus, those who weren’t, didn’t.

As Goleman tells us, the ability to demonstrate this precocious willpower relied on their ability
to wisely FOCUS.

• Step 1. Take your attention off the temptation.

• Step 2. Keep your focus elsewhere.

• Step 3. Stay focused on your goal in the future.

Focus. Focus. Focus.

It’s the heart of willpower—which is the engine to reaching your destiny.

SMART PRACTICE
“Anders Ericsson, the Florida State University psychologist whose research on expertise
spawned the 10,000-hour rule of thumb, told me, ‘You don’t get benefits from mechanical
repetition, but by adjusting your execution over and over to get closer to your goal.’

‘You have to tweak the system by pushing,’ he adds, ‘allowing for more errors at first as you
increase your limits.’

4 PhilosophersNotes | Focus

“And positivity, in turn,
has great payoffs for
performance, energizing us so
we can focus better, think
more flexibly, and persevere.
Here’s a question: If
everything worked out
perfectly in your life, what
would you be doing in ten
years? That query invites us
to dream a little, to consider
what really matters to us
and how we might guide our
lives.”
~ Daniel Goleman
“Directing attention toward
where it needs to go is a
primal task of leadership.
Talent here lies in the ability
to shift attention to the
right place at the right
time, sensing trends and
emerging realities and seizing
opportunities.”
~ Daniel Goleman
PhilosophersNotes | Focus
Apart from sports like basketball or football that favor physical traits such as height and body
size... almost anyone can achieve the highest levels of performance with smart practice.”
That’s from a section on “Smart Practice.”
As you know, I love Anders Ericsson and his research on what makes experts so great.
In our Notes + Interview on Peak, we chat about the fact that simple repetition is NOT enough to
reach the highest levels of our potential.
We need to engage in purposeful practice which has four key attributes:
1. Goal: We need to know how we’d like to be able to perform on a very high level AND we
need a specific goal for that training session.
2. Focus: We need to be super focused during our practice. If we’re distracted rather than
intensely focusing, we’re not getting better.
3. Feedback: We need to get immediate feedback on whether or not we’re hitting our goal so
we can adjust our performance as necessary.
4. Exit Comfort Zone: All growth occurs OUTSIDE our comfort zone. That’s the only place
our body can adapt to the stress of leaving homeostasis and build a new set of skills. Period.
And... Before we even try to get better we need to know we CAN get better. That requires us to
see that we *all* have “The Gift”—the gift to deliberately train our capacities to perform at an
extraordinarily high level. <— Let’s do that.
P.S. In my interview with Anders, we chatted about the fact that you can’t sustain that type of
focus for more than 4 hours a day. Hence, our prior idea to bake in recovery. He tells us that the
best are REALLY good at that.
TIME TO HIT THE MENTAL GYM
“Think of attention as a mental muscle that we can strengthen by a workout. Memorization
works that muscle, as does concentration. The mental analog of lifting a free weight over and
over is noticing when our mind wanders and bring it back to target. ...
As in any workout, the more reps the stronger the muscle becomes. More-experienced
meditators, one study found, were able to deactivate their medial strip more rapidly after
noticing mind wandering; as their thoughts become less ‘sticky’ with practice, it becomes easier
to drop thoughts and return to their breath. There was more neural connectivity between the
region for mind wandering and those that disengage attention. The increased connectivity in the
brains of long-term meditators, this study suggests, are analogous to those competitive weight
lifters with the perfect pecs.”
Our attention is like a muscle.
Lie around on the mental couch while nibbling on click-bait all day long and your attention will
get flabby. Go out and hit the mental gym and watch your attention get all ripped up. :)
As Goleman tells us “Concentration on one point of focus is the best attention builder.” We can
do this throughout our days. Notice when our mind gets distracted, and bring it back.
Of course, research says that the best way to build that capacity is to meditate. Meditators have
actually built up the “muscle” that allows them to focus their attention at will.
Is your mind all ripped up like a body builder or kinda sorta flabby?
Let’s hit the mental gym! :)
5

“The more you care
about someone, the more
attention you pay—and the
more attention you pay, the
more you care. Attention
interweaves with love.”
~ Daniel Goleman
If you liked this Note,
you’ll probably like…
Emotional Intelligence
Mindsight
The Shallows
The Marshmallow Test
Wherever You Go There
You Are
Mindfulness - Langer
Peak
Deep Work
6 PhilosophersNotes | Focus
THE LARGEST LENS FOR OUR FOCUS
“‘We have the capacity to think several centuries into the future,’ the Dalai Lama said. ‘Start the
task even if it will not be fulfilled within your lifetime. This generation has a responsibility to
reshape the world. If we make an effort, it may be possible to achieve. Even if it seems hopeless
now, never give up. Offer a positive vision, with enthusiasm and joy, and an optimistic outlook.’
... We must ask ourselves: in the service of what exactly are we using whatever talents we may
have? If our focus serves only our personal ends—self-interest, immediate reward, and our own
small group—then in the long run all of us, as a species, are doomed.
The largest lens for our focus encompasses global systems; considers the needs of everyone,
including the powerless and poor; and peers far ahead in time. No matter what we are doing
or what decisions we are making, the Dalai Lama suggests these self-queries for checking our
motivation:
Is it just for me, or for others?
For the benefit of the few, or the many?
For now, or for the future?”
Those are the final words of the book.
Where’s your motivational focus? Is it just for you, or for others? For the benefit of the few, or
the many? For now, or for the future?
Let’s optimize our ability to focus and then widen our lens so we can serve as profoundly as we
possibly can!
Brian Johnson,
Chief Philosopher
About the Author of “Focus”
DANIEL GOLEMAN
Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., author of the New York Times bestseller Emotional
Intelligence and Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships.
Dr. Goleman is an internationally known psychologist who lectures frequently to
professional groups, business audiences, and on college campuses. Working as a
science journalist, Goleman reported on the brain and behavioral sciences for The
New York Times for many years. His 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence (Bantam
Books) was on The New York Times bestseller list for a year-and-a-half; with
more than 5,000,000 copies in print worldwide in 40 languages, and has been a
best seller in many countries. Connect: danielgoleman.info.
About the Author of This Note
BRIAN JOHNSON
Brian Johnson loves helping people optimize their lives as he studies, embodies
and teaches the fundamentals of optimal living—integrating ancient wisdom
+ modern science + common sense + virtue + mastery + fun. Learn more and
optimize your life at brianjohnson.me.