Attentional Focus

To help remember the four categories of cognitive readiness, we use ACES. This is not only a good way to remember but a good way to understand as one category feeds into the next particularly well, in this order. The A and first category is Attentional Focus.

Attentional focus is the focus of an individual’s attention at a particular moment. This focus may be internal (cognitive, emotional, pain cues) or external (environmental, cultural, societal cues). Where we place our attention determines what we learn and how we understand situations. This is the basis for our intelligence and ability to move through the world.

Hence why it comes first. So, the following are a few topics that make up Attentional Focus used to improve this skill.

Now, let's dive in.

How our mind works:

What we focus on is what we remember.

Multitasking literally hijacks your brain’s frontal lobe; it inhibits information. It’s a myth that destroys your thought process and memory formation. So stop.

Block out distractions.

For example, have you ever forgotten where you put your keys? You came home, dropped your stuff, and moved on to saying hi to your loved ones. Later on, you’re ready to leave, but you can’t find your keys. They are exactly where you left them. You can’t remember because your attention was not focused on where you put them down.

This is the reason why attentional focus is vitally important, so we need to know what to pay attention to, when to pay attention to it, and how to pay attention.

Mindfulness:

Mindfulness is the easiest and simplest way to improve your attentional focus.

It’s the awareness of one’s internal states and surroundings by learning to observe their thoughts, emotions, and other present-moment experiences without judging or reacting to them.

This can be done with anything at anytime - and should be. Practice with your morning coffee. Focus on the taste, how is the temperature, what about the texture of the mug, and what emotions are you feeling.

This sounds crazy to most of you, it’s just coffee, but you won’t get better insulting the practice.

(And yes, you will definitely transition to better tasting coffee very quickly.)

This concept has been applied to various therapeutic interventions to help people avoid destructive or automatic habits and responses. And that’s the key - automatic - work to be mindful of all your actions throughout the day, don’t allow them to be automatic during your practice.

Through mindfulness you can audit your thoughts and activities, remove those not serving you and others, and then go back to making the important ones automatic.

Situational Awareness:

Situational awareness allows individuals and organizations to be more alert and informed and to make better decisions.

This is about knowing where you are and what is going on around you. For organizations, this includes awareness about personnel location and assigned duties, the industry, and any potential risks; conscious knowledge of the immediate environment and the events that are occurring in it.

Situational awareness involves perception of the elements in the environment, comprehension of what they mean and how they relate to one another, and projection of their future states. Situational awareness is influenced by a number of factors, including stress; it may be impaired by tunneling.

Have you ever watched a spy movie where the character sits down at dinner with someone and rattles off what everyone is wearing and eating all while continuing to have a conversation with the other person? That’s situational awareness on steroids.

But it makes a sound point. If you want to improve this skill, practice paying attention to all that’s around you. Go to a park and people watch or head out to lunch at a crowded cafe. Pay attention to what’s going on, make predictions, and circle back around to see if your predictions were correct.

Use these skills back at work in meetings, hallways, and break rooms. Pay attention to how everyone, in the meeting, is reacting to the content, and see how that effects their comments and actions. Make predictions about their deliverables and review what actually occurs.

Metacognition:

Metacognition is understanding how you think and process.

This often involves a conscious attempt to control. This is a really important aspect of attentional focus and will be useful for the other cognitive readiness categories. The better you understand how you think and process within the other categories, the better you’ll be at controlling them and in turn improving and adjusting your thoughts and processes.

Start small with just one thought process. For example, what are you thinking and how do you react to criticism? Are you open minded and embracing or are you closed off and embarrassed? Putting words to your thoughts and feelings will help you understand them so you can adjust them.

The Path Forward:

Practice.

I can’t emphasize this enough - you must practice. Too many people are guilty of learning new information and moving on, back to their lives, without adding the skills they learned. This mostly comes down to practice and not doing it.

All of these skills mentioned can be worked on, consistently, throughout the day, with small 15 second events. Yep, seconds.

The more you practice the more they become ‘muscle memory’, and when they do, everything becomes easier. Push through the painful first few days.

Attentional focus is vital for the next three cognitive readiness categories. So if you’re serious about this, you need to take practice serious.

Transforming your leadership:

Attentional awareness, by itself, is one of those skills that will transform your life.

A bold statement for sure, but one that I and all who I work with know from experience.

And we’re just getting started. Make sure you’re subscribed and following along as we still have three more categories to discuss on cognitive readiness.

So between now and then, practice your attentional focus so you are ready for the next category - cognitive intelligence.