What Attention Is — A precise definition and why attention matters
Let me tell you something I learned sleeping in a subway bathroom with my five-year-old son: attention is everything. Not money, not connections, not even talent. Attention.
When you're homeless, when you got nothing but the clothes on your back and a little boy asking why you can't go home, you discover something most people never have to learn. Your attention - where you place it, how you hold it, what you choose to focus on - that's the difference between survival and surrender.
Attention isn't just noticing things. It's not just paying attention in school or listening when your boss talks. Attention is the most powerful tool you possess, and most people give it away without even realizing what they're losing.
Think of attention as a spotlight in a dark room. Whatever that spotlight hits becomes real for you. Everything else disappears into shadow. The person who controls that spotlight controls your reality. The question is: who's holding your spotlight?
During those months when Christopher and I were moving from shelter to shelter, I had a choice every single morning. I could point my attention spotlight at everything that was wrong - no home, no money, no stability, people looking at us like we didn't belong. Or I could aim it somewhere else.
I chose to aim it at the stockbrokers walking into that building on Montgomery Street. Men in suits carrying themselves like they owned the world. I watched them. I studied them. I made them the object of my attention, not my circumstances.
That choice - that decision about where to place my attention - changed everything. Because what you pay attention to literally becomes your reality. Your brain can't tell the difference between what you're focusing on and what's actually happening to you right now.
Scientists call this selective attention, but I call it survival. Your mind processes millions of pieces of information every second, but you can only consciously focus on a tiny fraction. The fraction you choose determines the life you live.
Most people let their attention get pulled around like a dog on a leash. Their boss jerks it one way, their phone jerks it another, their fears and worries yank it in every direction except the one that actually matters. They become prisoners of whatever grabs their attention loudest.
But when you understand that attention is a choice - not something that just happens to you, but something you actively direct - you discover you have more power than you ever imagined.
I remember standing outside Dean Witter Reynolds & Co., watching those brokers through the glass. My son was tugging on my jacket, asking when we could eat. We hadn't had a real meal in two days. Every reasonable voice in my head was screaming at me to point my attention toward finding food, finding shelter, finding some kind of immediate relief.
Instead, I kept my attention locked on those men in suits. I watched how they moved, how they talked, how they carried themselves. I was studying success while living in failure, and that choice of attention made all the difference.
Because here's what they don't teach you in school: where you place your attention today determines where you'll be tomorrow. Not where you are today. Not what happened to you yesterday. Where you choose to focus your mental spotlight right now, in this moment.
Attention is the gatekeeper to your mind. It decides what gets in and what stays out. It determines what you remember and what you forget. It shapes what you believe is possible and what you think is impossible.
When I finally walked into that internship interview, I wasn't just a homeless man asking for a chance. In my mind, I was someone who belonged there, because that's where I'd been placing my attention for months. I'd been mentally living in that world, studying it, preparing for it, focusing on it.
The interviewer saw someone who looked homeless. I was someone who had been training my attention on success every single day.
That's the power of understanding what attention really is. It's not passive. It's active. It's a choice. And it's the most important choice you'll ever make.
Spotlight & Peripheral — Differences between focused and ambient attention
Picture this: you're walking down a busy street with your child, looking for something to eat. Your focused attention - that tight spotlight I was talking about - is locked onto restaurant signs, prices, anything that might solve your immediate problem. But there's another kind of attention working at the same time, something broader, wider, taking in everything else around you.
This peripheral attention - what some folks call ambient awareness - is like having eyes in the back of your head. It's not focused on any one thing, but it's sensing everything. The rhythm of the crowd, the energy of the street, the opportunities that might not be obvious but are still there.
Most people think attention is just that focused spotlight - concentrate hard on one thing and ignore everything else. But that's only half the picture. The most successful people I've met, they know how to use both kinds of attention like a jazz musician uses different instruments.
Let me tell you about the day that changed my life. I was focused - laser-focused - on finding work, any kind of work. Walking through the Financial District with my son, that tight spotlight of attention scanning for "Help Wanted" signs, anything that could put food on the table.
But my peripheral attention was doing something else entirely. It was picking up patterns, sensing the flow of the environment, noticing things my focused attention was too busy to see.
That's when I spotted him - a man in an expensive suit getting out of a red Ferrari. Now, my focused attention should have kept looking for those job signs. But my peripheral attention had caught something interesting, something that didn't fit the usual pattern of the street.
I made a choice in that moment. I expanded my attention from that narrow spotlight to a wider beam. Instead of just hunting for immediate solutions, I started sensing for bigger opportunities.
I walked up to that man and asked him two questions: "Excuse me, sir. I have two questions for you: What do you do? And how do you do it?"
Focused attention would have never let me do that. Focused attention was busy looking for immediate survival solutions. But peripheral attention had sensed something bigger - an opportunity that wasn't obvious, wasn't posted on any sign, wasn't being advertised.
That man was a stockbroker. That conversation led to everything that followed.
See, focused attention is like a flashlight. It illuminates exactly what you point it at, but it creates shadows everywhere else. You see clearly in one small area, but you miss the bigger picture.
Peripheral attention is like being in a room where the lights are dimmed but not off. You can't see any one thing as clearly, but you can sense the whole space, feel the energy, pick up on patterns and possibilities that focused attention would miss entirely.
Most people get stuck in focused attention mode when they're struggling. They narrow down to immediate problems, immediate needs, immediate fears. Tunnel vision kicks in. They lose the ability to sense opportunities that aren't directly in front of them.
But peripheral attention - that broad, sensing awareness - that's where breakthroughs come from. That's where you pick up on the opportunities that everyone else is missing because they're too focused on the obvious stuff.
Think of it like this: focused attention helps you read the map, but peripheral attention helps you sense the territory. Focused attention helps you solve the problem in front of you, but peripheral attention helps you find problems worth solving.
During those months of homelessness, I had to use both. Focused attention to handle the immediate crisis - where to sleep tonight, how to keep my son safe, what we were going to eat. But peripheral attention to sense for the bigger opportunities, the patterns, the possibilities that could change our entire situation.
The people who stay stuck, they get trapped in focused attention. All survival mode, all immediate problems, all tunnel vision. They can't see the forest for the trees.
The people who break through, they learn to dance between both kinds of attention. They can focus when they need to focus, but they can also expand their awareness when they need to sense for opportunities that aren't obvious.
It's like having two different settings on your mental camera. Sometimes you need the zoom lens - tight focus, crystal clear detail, everything else blurred out. Sometimes you need the wide-angle lens - taking in the whole scene, sensing the patterns, feeling the energy of the entire environment.
The mistake most people make is thinking they have to choose one or the other. Focus OR awareness. Narrow attention OR broad attention. But success requires both, and knowing when to use which.
When I was studying those stockbrokers through the window, I was using focused attention. Learning their habits, their language, their way of moving through the world. But when I was walking the streets looking for opportunities, I was using peripheral attention - sensing for possibilities that weren't advertised, weren't obvious, weren't being competed for by everyone else.
The combination of both - that's where the magic happens. That's where you find opportunities that other people miss because they're either too narrowly focused or too broadly scattered to see what's really there.
Habits of Habitual Attention — How daily routines train attention
Every morning, you wake up and make a thousand tiny decisions about where to place your attention. Most people don't realize they're making these decisions at all. They think attention just happens to them, like the weather or traffic jams. But I learned something during those months when every day was a fight for survival: your daily routines are training your attention whether you know it or not.
And if you don't take control of that training, it'll control you.
When Christopher and I were homeless, we had a morning routine out of necessity. First thing, check if we still had our belongings. Second, figure out where the nearest bathroom was. Third, find somewhere to clean up so I could look presentable for job hunting. Fourth, get something in my son's stomach before anything else.
That routine was training my attention every single day. It was teaching my mind to focus on immediate survival, immediate problems, immediate needs. And while that kept us alive, it was also creating a mental habit that could keep us trapped.
See, attention is like a muscle. Whatever you exercise it on, it gets stronger at. If you spend your days focused on problems, your attention gets really good at finding problems. If you spend your days focused on what's missing, your attention becomes an expert at spotting everything you don't have.
But here's what most people don't understand: you can retrain that muscle. You can change what your attention gets strong at.
I started adding something to our morning routine. After we took care of the survival basics, I would spend ten minutes - just ten minutes - looking at those buildings where successful people worked. Not looking for immediate solutions, not hunting for quick fixes, but training my attention to focus on where I wanted to be instead of where I was.
That might sound like a luxury when you're homeless, like time you can't afford to waste. But it was the most important investment I could make, because it was literally rewiring how my brain worked.
Most people's daily routines train their attention to be scattered, reactive, and weak. They wake up and immediately check their phone - training their attention to be pulled around by whatever other people want them to focus on. They watch the news - training their attention to focus on problems they can't solve. They scroll through social media - training their attention to jump from one thing to another without ever going deep.
By the end of the day, their attention is like a muscle that's been doing random exercises with no plan. Scattered, unfocused, easily distracted, and too weak to concentrate on what actually matters.
But successful people - and I learned this by watching them - they have routines that train their attention like a professional athlete trains their body. Deliberately. Systematically. With a clear purpose in mind.
I started studying not just what successful people did, but how they structured their days to support focused attention. They didn't just randomly hope they'd be able to concentrate when it mattered. They built systems that made concentration easier and distraction harder.
Simple things. They had specific times for checking messages instead of being interrupted all day. They had physical spaces set up for focused work. They had routines that helped them transition from scattered attention to focused attention.
Most importantly, they had daily practices that trained their attention to focus on opportunities instead of problems, possibilities instead of limitations, solutions instead of complaints.
During my internship at Dean Witter, I noticed that the most successful brokers had morning routines that weren't just about getting ready for work. They were about getting their attention ready for work. They had rituals that helped them focus, habits that cleared their mental space, practices that prepared their mind for the kind of concentrated effort that success requires.
The guys who struggled, they showed up scattered. Their attention was already pulled in ten different directions before they even sat down at their desk. They'd spend the whole day fighting distractions instead of focusing on what mattered.
Your current daily routine is training your attention right now. The question is: what's it training your attention to be good at?
If you wake up and immediately start thinking about everything that's wrong, you're training your attention to be an expert problem-finder. If you spend your commute worrying about work, you're training your attention to focus on anxiety. If you end each day scrolling through social media, you're training your attention to be satisfied with mental junk food instead of demanding real nourishment.
But you can change that training starting today. Not by completely overhauling your life, but by making small, intentional adjustments to how you direct your attention throughout your existing routine.
Add two minutes of focusing on something you're grateful for. Train your attention to find what's working instead of what's broken. Add five minutes of visualizing where you want to be instead of dwelling on where you are. Train your attention to focus on possibilities instead of just problems.
Replace checking your phone first thing in the morning with checking in with your own thoughts and goals. Train your attention to be guided by your own priorities instead of everyone else's demands.
These might seem like tiny changes, but remember: attention is a muscle. Small, consistent training creates dramatic changes over time. The same way doing push-ups every day will eventually give you strong arms, directing your attention intentionally every day will eventually give you a strong, focused mind.
And a strong, focused mind - that's what changes everything. That's what takes you from wherever you are to wherever you want to be. But it starts with understanding that your daily routine is already training your attention. The only question is whether you're training it intentionally or just letting it happen by accident.
Attention Economies — Why modern life competes for your focus
Here's something I figured out the hard way: in a world where everyone's fighting for your attention, the person who controls your focus controls your life. And if you don't realize there's a fight happening, you've already lost.
When I was homeless, I thought my biggest problem was not having money. But I learned something that changed everything: my biggest problem was not understanding that my attention was more valuable than money. Because attention is what creates money. Attention is what creates opportunities. Attention is what creates the life you want.
And there are billion-dollar industries built around taking your attention away from what matters and selling it to the highest bidder.
Let me break this down for you. Every app on your phone, every website you visit, every advertisement you see - they're all designed by teams of psychologists and engineers whose job is to capture your attention and hold it as long as possible. Not to help you. Not to make your life better. To extract your attention and convert it into profit for someone else.
They study how your brain works. They figure out exactly what triggers will make you look, what will make you click, what will make you keep scrolling. They design systems that are literally more addictive than slot machines, and they're competing with your dreams for control of your mental spotlight.
Think about it: how many times a day does your phone interrupt your thoughts? How many times does a notification pull your attention away from whatever you were working on? How many hours do you spend each day focused on other people's priorities instead of your own?
Every time you check social media, you're training your attention to be satisfied with superficial content instead of demanding depth. Every time you watch the news, you're training your attention to focus on problems you can't solve instead of opportunities you can create. Every time you let someone else's emergency become your priority, you're training your attention to be reactive instead of proactive.
During my internship, I watched guys who were smarter than me, more educated than me, more experienced than me - and they were struggling. Not because they didn't have good ideas, but because their attention was scattered across so many different things that they couldn't focus long enough to execute any one idea well.
They'd start working on something important, then get distracted by an email. Then get pulled into a conversation. Then see something on their computer screen that triggered another thought. By the end of the day, they'd been busy for eight hours but hadn't moved any closer to their goals.
Meanwhile, I was treating my attention like the most precious resource I had - because it was. I couldn't afford to waste it on distractions. I couldn't afford to let other people set my agenda. I had to learn to say no to everything that wasn't directly connected to getting that permanent position.
That meant no social media during work hours. No random conversations that weren't about learning something useful. No letting my mind wander to problems I couldn't solve while I was supposed to be focused on problems I could solve.
It wasn't easy. These attention-grabbing systems are designed to be hard to resist. They tap into the same brain circuits that helped our ancestors survive by constantly scanning for threats and opportunities. But in the modern world, those same circuits can trap you in cycles of distraction that keep you busy but not productive, engaged but not effective.
The companies that profit from your attention know this. They know that if they can fragment your focus, they can control your behavior. If they can keep you in a state of constant partial attention - always a little bit distracted, always a little bit scattered - you'll be too unfocused to create anything that competes with what they're selling.
But here's what they don't want you to figure out: when you reclaim control of your attention, you reclaim control of your life. When you decide where your focus goes instead of letting other people decide for you, you become dangerous. Not dangerous to other people, but dangerous to the systems that depend on keeping you distracted.
I started thinking of my attention like a bank account. Every time I let something unimportant interrupt my focus, I was making a withdrawal. Every time I spent my mental energy on someone else's priorities, I was making a payment to them instead of investing in my own future.
The most successful people I met understood this instinctively. They protected their attention like they protected their money - carefully, deliberately, with clear boundaries about who could access it and when.
They didn't check email constantly throughout the day. They had specific times for communication and specific times for focused work. They didn't let other people's urgent problems become their emergency. They understood the difference between being responsive and being reactive.
Most importantly, they invested their attention in activities that paid compound interest - learning new skills, building relationships, creating value, solving meaningful problems. Instead of spending their attention on entertainment that left them exactly where they started, they invested it in activities that moved them forward.
This isn't about never relaxing or never having fun. It's about being intentional with your attention instead of letting it get hijacked by systems designed to extract value from you.
Because here's the truth: your attention is your life. Where you place your attention determines what you think about. What you think about determines how you feel. How you feel determines what you do. What you do determines what you become.
If you let other people control your attention, they control your life. If you control your own attention, you control your own destiny.
The choice is yours. But you have to recognize that it is a choice, and that there are powerful forces working very hard to make sure you don't realize you have that choice.
Attention and Value — What you value is what you look at
Let me tell you something that might sound backwards at first: you don't look at what you value. You value what you look at.
Most people think it works the other way around - that they pay attention to things because those things are important to them. But I learned during the hardest period of my life that it's actually the opposite. The things you spend your time looking at, thinking about, focusing on - those become the things your brain decides are valuable.
When I was sleeping in subway stations with my son, I could have spent all my mental energy focused on what we'd lost - the apartment, the stability, the normal life that seemed to be slipping away. And believe me, there were plenty of days when that's exactly where my attention went.
But I started to notice something: the more I focused on what was wrong, the more wrong things I found to focus on. The more I looked at our problems, the bigger and more overwhelming those problems became. Not because the problems were actually getting worse, but because my brain was getting better at spotting everything that was broken.
That's when I realized something that changed everything: my attention wasn't just observing my reality. It was creating it.
Think about this: if you spend your days looking at celebrity gossip, your brain starts to believe that celebrity gossip is important. If you spend your time focused on political arguments on social media, your brain starts to believe that arguing with strangers is a valuable use of your time. If you spend your mental energy worrying about things you can't control, your brain starts to believe that worry is productive.
Your attention is like a vote you cast every moment of every day. You're voting for what deserves to be important in your life. And whatever gets the most votes becomes your reality.
During those months when everything seemed hopeless, I made a decision that probably saved my life: I was going to vote with my attention for the life I wanted, not the life I had.
Instead of staring at our empty refrigerator, I started looking at successful people. Instead of focusing on the money we didn't have, I started focusing on the skills I could develop. Instead of looking at all the doors that had closed, I started looking for the doors that might open.
It wasn't easy. When you're struggling, there's something almost magnetic about problems. They demand attention. They seem urgent. They feel like the most important thing to focus on because they're causing you pain right now.
But here's what I discovered: problems that get attention grow stronger. Solutions that get attention grow stronger too.
When I started my internship at Dean Witter, I was competing against guys who went to Harvard and Stanford, guys whose parents had connections, guys who understood the financial world in ways I never would. If I focused my attention on those disadvantages, they would become the most important facts about my situation.
Instead, I focused my attention on what I could control. How hard I could work. How much I could learn. How well I could serve my clients. How professionally I could present myself.
And something interesting started happening: the things I focused on started becoming the things that defined me. Not just in my own mind, but in other people's minds too.
The partners at the firm didn't see me as the homeless guy who was lucky to get an internship. They saw me as the guy who was always prepared, always learning, always finding solutions instead of making excuses. Because that's what I had trained my attention to focus on, and what you focus on is what becomes real for you and everyone around you.
This principle works in reverse too. I watched other interns who were focusing their attention on office politics, on what was unfair about the competition, on how hard the work was, on what they didn't like about the system. And the more they focused on those things, the more those became their reality.
They weren't wrong about any of those things. There was politics. The competition was intense. The work was hard. The system wasn't always fair. But by focusing their attention on those aspects of the situation, they were voting for those things to be the most important parts of their experience.
Your attention is the most powerful creative force you have. It doesn't just observe what's happening - it participates in creating what happens next.
If you focus on opportunities, you start seeing more opportunities. If you focus on problems, you start seeing more problems. If you focus on what's possible, you start creating more possibilities. If you focus on what's impossible, you start creating more limitations.
This isn't positive thinking or wishful thinking or pretending problems don't exist. This is understanding that your brain is constantly making decisions about what deserves your mental resources, and those decisions shape what you're able to see, think about, and act on.
The people who build extraordinary lives understand this instinctively. They don't ignore problems, but they don't give problems more attention than solutions. They don't pretend obstacles don't exist, but they focus more mental energy on finding ways around obstacles than on complaining about them.
They understand that attention is like fertilizer - whatever you pour it on grows bigger and stronger. So they're very careful about what they fertilize with their focus.
Look at your own life right now. What are you giving most of your attention to? What are you looking at, thinking about, talking about most often? Because whatever that is, that's what you're voting to be important. That's what you're training your brain to value. That's what you're feeding with the most powerful creative force you possess.
And if you don't like what's growing in your life, maybe it's time to change where you're pointing that spotlight.
Filters & Frames — The unseen frames attention uses
Every single thing you pay attention to comes through a filter. You can't see anything - and I mean anything - without your mind putting it through some kind of frame that tells you what it means, whether it's important, and how you should feel about it.
Most people don't realize these filters exist. They think they're seeing reality directly, objectively, the way it really is. But that's impossible. Your brain is constantly interpreting, categorizing, and making sense of everything that comes through your attention. And those interpretations - those frames - they determine what you see and what you miss.
Let me give you an example from my own life that shows you how powerful these invisible frames really are.
When I first started walking through the Financial District, looking at all those successful businessmen, my mind had a very specific frame for what I was seeing. The frame was: "These are successful people, and I am not one of them." That frame determined everything about how I experienced those interactions.
Through that frame, every expensive suit was a reminder of what I couldn't afford. Every confident conversation was evidence of knowledge I didn't have. Every easy laugh was proof that I didn't belong in their world. The frame was creating my reality, not the actual facts of the situation.
But then something happened that changed everything. I met that stockbroker with the red Ferrari, and he treated me like I was worth talking to. Not like I was homeless. Not like I was beneath him. Just like I was another human being with legitimate questions.
That interaction cracked my frame. Suddenly, I started seeing the same businessmen through a different lens. Instead of "These are successful people, and I am not one of them," the frame became "These are people who have learned something I want to learn."
Same people. Same suits. Same conversations. Completely different reality, because I was using a different frame to interpret what I was seeing.
The scary thing about these frames is how invisible they are. You don't wake up in the morning and consciously choose which frame to use when you look at your job, your relationships, your possibilities. These frames get installed by your experiences, your culture, your family, your fears - and then they operate automatically, filtering everything you see without you even knowing it's happening.
If you grew up poor, you might have a frame that says "Rich people are different from me" or "Money is hard to come by" or "Success requires things I don't have." If you grew up in a family where no one went to college, you might have a frame that says "Higher education isn't for people like us."
These frames aren't necessarily wrong. They're based on real experiences. But they're also not necessarily permanent. They're just one way of interpreting reality, not the only way.
During my internship, I watched guys who were struggling, and I started to see how their frames were creating their problems. One guy had a frame that said "The stock market is basically gambling." With that frame, he couldn't see patterns, couldn't build confidence, couldn't develop the kind of long-term thinking that success required.
Another guy had a frame that said "Clients are trying to take advantage of you." Through that frame, every interaction felt like a battle, every conversation felt suspicious, every relationship felt transactional. He couldn't build the trust and rapport that made other brokers successful.
But here's what I discovered: you can change your frames. It's not easy, because they feel like reality itself. But they're just interpretations, and interpretations can be updated.
I started deliberately experimenting with different frames for the same situations. Instead of "I'm behind everyone else," I tried "I'm learning faster than everyone else because I have more motivation." Instead of "I don't have the right background," I tried "My different background gives me a unique perspective."
Not because those frames were more "true" than the old ones, but because they were more useful. They helped me see opportunities instead of just obstacles. They helped me focus on what I could control instead of what I couldn't.
The most successful people I observed had frames that served their success. They looked at rejection through a frame that said "This is information that will help me improve." They looked at competition through a frame that said "This pushes me to do my best work." They looked at challenges through a frame that said "This is how I grow."
Were those frames more "accurate" than frames that said "Rejection means I'm not good enough" or "Competition is threatening" or "Challenges are problems"? Maybe, maybe not. But they were definitely more empowering.
Here's the key insight: you can't eliminate frames - your brain needs them to make sense of the overwhelming amount of information coming at you every second. But you can become aware of the frames you're using, and you can consciously choose frames that help you instead of hurt you.
Start paying attention to the automatic interpretations your mind applies to situations. When something happens, notice the story your brain immediately tells you about what it means. Notice the frame that determines whether you see something as an opportunity or a threat, as evidence of possibility or evidence of limitation.
Then ask yourself: is this frame serving me? Is it helping me see clearly and act effectively? Or is it filtering out possibilities that might actually be there?
Because the reality is this: the world is much bigger and much more full of possibilities than any single frame can show you. But you'll only see the possibilities that your current frames allow through.
Change your frames, and you change what you can see. Change what you can see, and you change what becomes possible.
Multitasking Myth — The cognitive cost of spreading attention thin
Let me tell you about the biggest lie I believed when I was struggling to get my life together: that I could do more by doing everything at once.
When you're desperate, when every day feels like a crisis, when you've got a hundred urgent problems demanding your attention, multitasking seems like the only logical solution. If you can just juggle enough balls at once, surely you can solve everything faster.
I tried to job hunt while taking care of my son while figuring out where we'd sleep while studying for my internship while keeping up with all the administrative paperwork that comes with being homeless. I thought I was being efficient. I thought I was maximizing my limited time.
What I was actually doing was guaranteeing that I would do everything poorly.
Here's what nobody tells you about multitasking: your brain can't actually do it. What feels like doing multiple things simultaneously is actually your attention rapidly switching back and forth between tasks. And every time it switches, there's a cost.
Think of it like this: imagine you're reading a book, and every few sentences, someone interrupts you to ask about something completely different. Then you try to go back to reading, but you've lost your place. You have to spend time finding where you were, getting back into the flow of the story, remembering what was happening before the interruption.
That's what multitasking does to your brain, except it's happening dozens or hundreds of times throughout your day. Every switch costs you time, energy, and mental clarity.
During my internship at Dean Witter, I started paying attention to how the most successful brokers worked. And I noticed something interesting: they weren't multitasking. They were doing the opposite.
When they were on the phone with a client, they were completely present on that call. Not checking email, not thinking about the next appointment, not trying to organize their desk at the same time. Just focused, completely focused, on that one conversation.
When they were researching a stock, they were research mode. Not fielding phone calls, not responding to messages, not letting their attention get pulled in ten different directions.
The guys who were struggling? They were constantly multitasking. Taking calls while trying to read reports. Checking messages while talking to clients. Thinking about their personal problems while trying to analyze market data.
And the quality of everything they did suffered because of it.
I decided to run an experiment on myself. For one week, I would try to do only one thing at a time. Not because I had the luxury of single-tasking - I still had all the same pressures, all the same urgent demands on my time. But because I wanted to see what would happen if I gave each task my complete attention instead of my divided attention.
The results were dramatic. Tasks that used to take me an hour because I was constantly getting distracted took thirty minutes when I focused completely. Phone calls that used to feel scattered and unproductive became efficient and effective. Studying that used to require hours of fighting distraction became intense and focused.
I was getting more done in less time, and the quality of my work was higher, all because I stopped trying to do everything at once.
But here's the deeper insight: multitasking isn't just inefficient. It's training your brain to be satisfied with shallow thinking instead of demanding depth.
When you're constantly switching between tasks, you never go deep enough on any one task to develop real expertise, real insight, real mastery. You stay on the surface of everything, which means you never develop the kind of deep knowledge that creates real value in the world.
The most valuable skill in any field is the ability to think deeply about complex problems. But deep thinking requires sustained attention. It requires the ability to hold a complex set of ideas in your mind long enough to see the patterns, make the connections, find the solutions that aren't obvious on the surface.
Multitasking is the enemy of deep thinking. It trains your brain to be comfortable with superficial engagement, quick switches, partial attention. It makes you good at being busy but bad at being productive.
I started thinking of attention like a flashlight beam. When you spread it wide, you can see a lot of different things, but you can't see any of them clearly. When you focus that beam into a tight spotlight, you can see much less total area, but what you can see, you can see with perfect clarity.
Most people are walking around with their attention spread so wide that they can't see anything clearly enough to understand it, solve it, or master it. They're trying to illuminate everything at once, which means they're illuminating nothing effectively.
Success requires the opposite approach. It requires the discipline to narrow your attention to a tight beam, illuminate one thing at a time with perfect clarity, and resist the temptation to spread that beam wide just because there are other things you could be looking at.
This doesn't mean you can't handle multiple responsibilities. It means you handle them sequentially instead of simultaneously. You give each responsibility your complete attention when it's time to work on it, then you shift your complete attention to the next responsibility when it's time to work on that.
The difference might seem small, but the results are enormous. Sequential single-tasking.