The war for our attention and the power of mindset
This article is the longer version of Mickey A. Feher’s article that originally appeared on Psychology Today in March, 2022.
We live in a time when our attention has become our most valuable asset for which multiple stakeholders are competing. Political parties, media outlets, companies, and individuals want a share of it, and if they can have it, they want it all. As a result, remaining in charge of our mind has become a daily challenge as various messages, emails, notifications from multiple apps, and social media bombard our radar.
Our attention defines our experience, which sets the mindset in our minds.
Like William James, the famous 19th-century psychologist, said, "My experience is what I agree to attend to." We all know the feeling of allowing our attention to focus on one thing and one thing only, such as the news on Ukraine and Russia these days. What starts as reading the current events for a few seconds can become an obsessive habit of checking for new information every 20 minutes, which defines our thinking. Repeated thought patterns of hopelessness generate anxiety and other negative feelings, which after a while, turn into a "mood," like "Something terrible is about to happen to me," or to take it down one level, "Humanity is hopelessly doomed."
We are thinking about how little control we have over what is happening and how easily things could spiral out of control. With our mind's eyes, we are seeing a little internal movie or images of all the scary things that are likely to happen to us and to those we love.
We obsess. What can I do - or should I do - for those suffering?
We worry. What's the impact of rising costs on my business?
We speculate. What if the stock market collapses?
We fear. What if a third world war erupts?
Minutes turn into hours and sleepless nights. A mood can elevate or "ruin" an entire day, a week, or a month. Once a "kind of thinking" associated with certain feelings becomes a regular mood pattern, it becomes an inner habit that switches on as soon as we have stimuli from social media or other sources.
Before we know it, this habit constitutes the basis of our inner attitude or our mindset. It becomes part of our identity, and we are "depressed or anxious" people.
My point is not that we shouldn't feel concerned, have compassion, and take action to help.
The message is that if we lose ourselves in overwhelmingly negative feelings, it won't help the situation.
But we don't need extraordinary events like these to steal our attention.
We can keep mindlessly swiping up on an app from video to video, ad to ad, and news to news to check one more post or tweet before we realize that we have a relationship with our phone instead of the person to whom we are superficially talking. We lose ourselves in the pseudo virtual processes of browsing, swiping, and scanning until we forget who we are and what we want in the moment and in general.
"Our life is the creation of our mind," said the Buddha. So I tell you that our mind makes itself present through our mindset.
How does science define mindset?
According to Meier & Kropp, "A mindset is a mental attitude. It shapes our actions and our thoughts."[i]
According to Gollwitzer, it is "The sum total of the activated cognitive procedures."[ii] In this sense, "mindset" refers to a set of beliefs (or attitudes) relative to some topic or object.
Most discussions and books about mindsets concern a specific attitude object like Carol Dweck's growth mindset.[iii] Researchers believe that mindset is a set of beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, feelings, and emotions that one keeps in their mind regarding a specific issue at a particular time. In turn, our mindset shapes our thinking, feelings, behavior, and, ultimately, our outcomes.
According to our research with Robert B. Dilts[iv], our inner state, beliefs, attitude, and thinking processes make up our mindsets. So then, our mindsets are the primary engines behind our actions.
We have found that there are three distinctly different levels of what we refer to as mindset:
1. The meta mindset level is our big-picture clarity about life. It encompasses our fundamental inner attitude toward our world, the work we do, and how we see our roles and goals.
2. The macro mindset level relates to the inner attitude necessary to put mental disciplines and practices in place. The macro mindset focuses on the big picture and an ecological way of putting our personal and business vision into action.
3. The micro mindset level is a set of beliefs and inner attitudes. It produces the specific actions necessary to build a sustainable path for our venture, project, or team.
One of our key findings is that those specific elements of the meta, macro, and micro mindset layers are necessary to achieve the core outcomes for personal and business success. Our discovery has led us to create an online tool called Success MindsetMap™ Inventory to visualize them and help leaders work with these mindset patterns.
I have recently discovered an interesting connection between what we understand about the way attention works and what we found out about mindset.
James Williams, a former Google employee turned digital academic and ethicist, talks[v] about the three-layers of attention.
"Spotlight" is your first layer of awareness. We use it for conducting everyday, immediate actions. It works like a spotlight as it helps to narrow down your focus for something close. We have found that our so-called micro mindset guides our attention, which produces immediate and daily priorities that carry us forward to our outcomes. However, if your spotlight gets distracted or is on autopilot due to a lack of awareness, you might not be able to carry out the actions you want to focus on in the near term.
Williams refers to the second layer as the "starlight." Starlight relates to the focus one applies to long-term desires and goals. Starlight works like the stars in the sky. If you feel lost, you can look up, and they help you find your way. In our methodology, we find that the starlight comes from a combination of several activities. These activities include establishing a focus or what we call forming meta goals. Meta goals enable you to prioritize the multiple courses of action available to you. Our so-called macro mindset allows us to keep going even if things get tough. How can you tell that someone has a strong macro mindset? First, you will likely notice their observable habits that create a sustainable path to their long-term goals. These include practices of recharging, getting high-quality feedback, reframing criticism, and balancing in an ongoing manner.
The third layer of attention Williams called "daylight." Daylight has to do with our sense-making ability, the mental space to create a story of who we are and why we do what we do. Daylight serves as our dashboard, indicating our direction provides a compelling vision and a sense of purpose and mission. It provides the necessary clarity and visibility of daylight to set our longer-term goals and desires. Without regular and sustained periods of reflection and deep thought, it is impossible to see clearly like "during the day" instead, our mind is in a constant state of foggy dawn or dusk… where everything is obscure. The trick is to get your daylight attention right. You first need to slow down, carve out time and build your "vision board" and dashboard.
Unfortunately, leaders are reluctant to do so in many organizations, as they are frightened to lose time. As a result, they lose their clarity and pay their dues in the forms of misalignment, ambiguity, chaos, and, ultimately, delays. Unfortunately for them, when people on a team are distracted, they cannot keep their connection to whom they want to be. As team members lose a sense of a journey, they lose sight of where they are headed and lose their motivation and commitment.
In this new age of attention war, we are constantly battling with the forces that want our attention, to focus only on the following immediate action, purchase decision, or ideological chewing gum they want us to consume.
Daylight helps you define who you are, what you want, and where you are going. Your meta mindset needs to become a solid foundation to withstand significant distractions.
Starlight helps you remember all that and develop a set of habits that will allow you to course-correct, place your focus, and generate the energy and information necessary to arrive there.
Finally, awareness of your micro mindset can help you direct or spotlight the right way. Your tendency to identify with helpful behaviors contributes to success in this area. For example, instead of saying, "I am very good with numbers," you might say, "I am a numbers guy, sort of a finance sorcerer." I may be very good with numbers, but today I might have to have a conversation with a client or coach a team member to achieve my desired outcome.
On a global level, we propose that humans need to be more in charge of their mindset and attention to survive and thrive in a sustainable world. However, on a more local, immediate impact level, we see mindset-guided attention as the differentiating factor that creates more motivated teams and individuals who excel while keeping their mental health in good shape.
Without conscious, mindset-guided attention, we become hostages of other forces that are very happy to direct our spotlight, starlight, and daylight into directions that they believe will serve their purpose.
At the very least, competing against and comparing ourselves to our "friends" may consume us.
At worst, we might become puppets who only consume carefully-curated (and manipulated) content that shows only one distorted reality.
When that distorted reality connects to consuming certain kinds of information or products or even political actions such as voting in a certain way, then we are not far from being droids in mighty hands. To me, this is far more of a scary thought than worrying about the impact of artificial intelligence on our future.
There are plenty of implications for businesses too.
First, organizations need leaders that can guide attention with "daylight" in terms of clarity of vision, mission, purpose, and longer-term goals. They need leaders who can sustain "starlight" when the going gets tough and who can create habits of success with their teams. Finally, the spotlight becomes a key daily challenge when teams fight against the multiple distractions coming their way. This way, mindset becomes the difference that makes the difference every single day.
In summary, only stable meta, macro, and micro mindsets can drive the three-layers of human attention in the right direction. Our mindset defines our actions, which shape our outcomes.
Aristotle's injunction about the excellence of character comes to mind. "Do the right thing, at the right time, and in the right way."
We believe excellence of character can only come from the right mindset. We need a mindset that guides our attention every day, every hour, every minute.
Mindset matters more than we think.
[i] J. D. Meier and Michael Kropp, Getting Results the Agile Way: A Personal Results System for Work and Life
[ii] Gollwitzer: Deliberative and Implemental Mindsets: Cognitive Tuning Toward Congruous Thoughts and Information, December 1990, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
[iii]Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Random House 2006
[iv] Robert B. Dilts, Next Generation Entrepreneurs: Live Your Dreams and Create a Better World Through Your Business (Success Factor Modeling Book 1)
[v] James Williams, Stand Out of Our Light. Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy, University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom 2018