I sat at my job wracking my brain, trying to cobble together enough focus to finish my quota for the day.
The next day was my most productive ever.
Managing focus and attention is not an easy feat by any means, but it means the difference between floundering in a high-stress scenario and remaining calm and solving the problem.
Mental Models and Attention
Smarter, Faster, Better says that people who build mental models in their heads are better at directing their attention.
A nurse in a neonatal intensive care unit was making her rounds checking on the babies. She paused at one crib. Something struck her as off about this baby’s condition. She called for a doctor and ordered immediate intensive care, though she didn’t know why.
Turns out, the baby had a blood infection. One that, if the nurse hadn’t caught it right then, would almost certainly have killed the child.
And reason she stopped at that baby? It didn’t look the way she expected a healthy baby to look.
This nurse had a mental model of what healthy babies look like, and she kept on imagining that in her mind. When this baby didn’t look like she expected, her attention latched onto that.
An airline pilot once successfully landed a jumbo jet missing half a wing and an engine by imagining the whole thing as a tiny Cessna aircraft. If it wouldn’t work on the Cessna, it wouldn’t work on the big plane.
Telling Yourself Stories
We focus our attention by telling ourselves stories. We tell ourselves how our day will go before it happens.
As I drove to work that day, I turned off my audiobooks, turned down the radio, and imagined what my day was going to be like. I imagined sitting down at my desk, preparing for the day, how I was going to write my assigned blogs.
When I got there, I knew what I had to do. My attention was drawn to the pain points I had imagined. I didn’t need to first search for what I should be doing before doing it. I already knew what needed to happen.
Whatever your career or vocation, start making mental pictures and stories and models about how you expect things to go. Imagine what you will focus on and what obstacles you will face. Imagine how you will overcome those obstacles.
If you do this, you’ll find more mental energy focused where it’s needed. You’ll be more productive, and ultimately, more satisfied with how your work has gone. I know I have.
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