OK, so this is a special post, not the normally scheduled broadcast, but I caught a great article on LifeHack that struck a chord with me. As you may have read in many of my articles, posts or emails, I encourage a greater degree of attention on the world around you as an instigator of synchronicity. It’s not so much for me that it causes the synchronicity, but more so that it simply makes you more aware of the emerging patterns or messages going on around you all the time.
Well, I just read Dustin Wax’s article titled The Power of Intentional Attention and marvelled at his explanation of how this intentional attention enables you to catch value where you normally miss it.
What he’s talking about here is the problem of our reticular activation system, that selectively screens out everything we don’t find important to keep the load on our conscious brain at an even clip. The problem we most often have with it is quite simple, we allow our priorities to form a narrow channel of what is a much more vast “big picture.”
At any rate, I’d highly encourage you to go check it out and let me know what you think about it.
Have a great afternoon.
-Bill
Hey, thanks for the kind words. Glad you liked the article. I would add that the “boost” we get in attention when we go about prepared to capture things is part of why people who take notes find they don’t need to review them — while people who don’t take notes find they can’t remember the important stuff. The first group was simply paying closer attention!
January 21, 2009 @ 8:39 pm