{"id":371,"date":"2011-04-04T11:00:36","date_gmt":"2011-04-04T15:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/?p=371"},"modified":"2013-04-01T18:36:31","modified_gmt":"2013-04-01T22:36:31","slug":"focus-focus-focus-what-did-i-just-miss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/?p=371","title":{"rendered":"Focus, Focus, Focus&#8230;What Did I Just Miss?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-376\" title=\"An Elephant Rider\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Steering-the-Elephant11-150x150.png\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/>Our ability to concentrate on one thing to the exclusion of others can be practical and efficient. It is also a coping mechanism.<a title=\"Selective Attention Definition\" href=\"http:\/\/encarta.msn.com\/dictionary_1861715792\/selective_attention.html\"> Selective attention<\/a> provides a way for us to navigate through the maze of data that comes our way every second of the day.<\/p>\n<p>We can:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tune our ears \u2013 <em>a mother reacting to a baby\u2019s crying in the middle of the night,<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Focus our vision <em>\u2013 finding your child\u2019s face in a large crowd<\/em>,<\/li>\n<li>Train our noses \u2013 <em>some people learn to love the smell of brussels sprouts<\/em>,<\/li>\n<li>Latch onto an idea to the exclusion of others \u2013 <em>this is the best way to get this done.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>By selectively attending we can get a number of things done.<\/p>\n<p>We can also miss a lot of things, too.\u00a0 Take a look at the following from <a title=\"The Invisible Gorilla\" href=\"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/\">Christopher Chabris and Daniel J. Simons<\/a>.\u00a0 Focus on counting the number of passes between team members with white shirts.\u00a0 Bounce passes count, too.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IGQmdoK_ZfY?rel=0\" height=\"286\" width=\"470\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Well, how did you do? What did you attend to and what did you disregard or minimize?<\/p>\n<p>In some cases selective attention is not only helpful, but required.\u00a0 On the other hand, selective attention can have negative effects.\u00a0 On October 21, 2009, two pilots on <a title=\"FlightAware Tracking Map - Zoom in on Minneapolis\" href=\"http:\/\/flightaware.com\/live\/flight\/NWA188\/history\/20091021\/2135Z\/KSAN\/KMSP\">Northwest Airlines Flight 188 overshot their airport destination<\/a> by 150 miles because they were having a deep discussion about what they were viewing on their personal laptops.\u00a0 They later said that they could hear voices on their cockpit radios but ignored them.\u00a0 Those voices were from ground controllers trying to get the pilots\u2019 attention to find out if they were alright. <a title=\"F.A.A. Revokes Licenses of Pilots Who Missed Airport\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/10\/28\/us\/28plane.html\">The pilots&#8217; licenses were revoked<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It has become popular today to take pride in one\u2019s ability to multitask. \u00a0The brain does not really multitask when concentrating. It task switches and then attends to that task to the exclusion of others until you task switch again.\u00a0 Task switching is a form of selective attention.\u00a0 The pilots of Flight 188 thought they were multitasking.\u00a0 They were not.\u00a0 Instead of flying the plane, they task switched, becoming two more passengers on Flight 188.<\/p>\n<p>So what do you do to minimize the negative effects of selective attention?<\/p>\n<p>Before starting something:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Fight slipping into automatic behavior by visualizing what you are about to do,<\/li>\n<li>Avoid task switching activities that are not directly related to the task at hand \u2013\u00a0 i.e. while you are driving \u2013 <em>no texting, putting on make-up, eating your breakfast, reading the newspaper, shaving, or paying more than scant attention to that gift from God in the back seat in the safety restraint<\/em>,<\/li>\n<li>Use soft eyes \u2013 <em>focus as much on the general as the specific<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our ability to concentrate on one thing to the exclusion of others can be practical and efficient. It is also a coping mechanism. Selective attention provides a way for us to navigate through the maze of data that comes our way every second of the day. We can: Tune our ears \u2013 a mother reacting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-organizational-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=371"}],"version-history":[{"count":53,"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":681,"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions\/681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}