Book SummaryFocus, by Daniel Goleman

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Focus

Daniel Goleman argues that attention is a complex and underappreciated cognitive resource in our modern society overrun with distractions. Your relationship to this resource—how you use it, strengthen it, and restore it—affects virtually every aspect of your life. In Focus, Goleman explores how you can understand, harness, and improve your attention to have a more fulfilling, productive life and become a healthier, more adaptive, and more engaged member of society and the planet. He asks readers to consider that what you focus on indicates what you care about—what we, as a collective, care about—and how this will impact the planet's future.

Goleman is a psychologist and science journalist known for his work on emotional intelligence and leadership. His work has been widely influential in psychology, education, and business. In addition to his writing, Goleman is also a speaker and consultant, and he has worked with organizations around the world to help them improve their leadership and management practices.

In this...

Focus Summary Understanding Attention

Goleman describes attention as an elusive and subtle mental asset. He writes that we tend to notice what abilities attention gives us, like learning and connecting to others, more than we notice attention itself.

(Shortform note: In describing attention as elusive, Goleman alludes to the ongoing challenge in psychology and neuroscience to define it. Often it is defined similarly to the word focus—the deliberate act of concentrating your mind or effort on something. However, attention can encompass more than an act and can include your brain’s ability to be aware of yourself and your surroundings. To avoid confusion, in this guide we’ll use the term attention to talk about this broader mental ability and focus to talk about the purposeful concentration of our attention.)

Goleman highlights three fundamental characteristics of attention that we must understand as we explore more specific aspects of this mental resource:

1. Attention is indivisible. You can’t divide your attention between multiple things simultaneously, as in multitasking. You...

Focus Summary The Three Directions of Attention

Goleman outlines three main directions you can aim your attention: inward, toward others, and outward. These three directions of attention represent three sets of attention skills that can support you in every significant aspect of your life and help you reach your full potential. These skills are self-awareness and willpower (Inner), empathy and social awareness (Other), and systems awareness (Outer).

(Shortform note: You can think of each of the three directions as levels that build on one another. Without developing the inner focus skill of self-awareness and paying attention to how you feel, for example, it would be challenging to meaningfully focus on others with empathy and pay attention to how they feel.)

He writes that when you've mastered the attention skills necessary for each of these directions, you'll master emotional intelligence (a combination of self-awareness, empathy, and social skills), which, he argues, underpins all successful relationships.

How Strong Attention Skills Can Build Emotional Intelligence

Goleman goes into more detail about emotional intelligence in his book _[Emotional...

Focus Summary How Attention Affects Our Lives

Goleman spotlights two major life areas where our deployment of attention is particularly impactful—in leadership and in addressing the climate crisis.

Attention and Leadership

Goleman argues that attention skills are particularly necessary in leadership positions, and everyone is a leader in some capacity, whether we’re parents, teachers, social media influencers, activists, or leaders in our professions.

The author writes how good leaders effectively use all three directions of attention:

Inner Focus: Self-awareness is required to assess your own strengths and weaknesses, which in turn helps you manage your impact on the team, the organization, and society at large. With strong self-awareness, you can stay connected to your intuition to make big organizational decisions.

Focus on the Other: Empathy is required to effectively communicate strategies to the team and listen attentively. Goleman describes how good leaders have the ability to zoom in on one person’s feelings or zoom out to read the room. This helps you understand group dynamics and sense the direction of your team’s energy and attention.

Outer Focus: Without systems awareness, leaders may...

Focus Summary Troubleshooting Attention

In this section, we will look at the ways Goleman says you can improve your attention—by strengthening it with training and restoring it when it’s fatigued. We’ll start by exploring what weakens and disrupts our attention.

What Disrupts Attention?

Goleman outlines two main ways in which your attention can be disrupted: distraction and attention fatigue.

Distraction

If you live in modern society, the demands on your attention are at an all-time high. Distractions are waiting for us at every turn.

(Shortform note: What makes something a distraction or not? Bailey defines distraction as anything that pulls you away from your intended purpose or task. Understood this way, anything can become a distraction if it diverts your attention away from what you want or need to be focusing on.)

Goleman outlines two main types of distractions:

• Emotional, in which emotion takes center stage and interrupts our attention. The stronger the emotion, the greater the disruption it has on our focus. Goleman stresses that emotions are a potent source of distraction.
• Sensory, in which a physical sensation inside...

Shortform Exercise: Discover Your Self (Awareness)

Keen self-awareness—awareness of your physical and emotional sensations and your state of mind—forms the foundations for other attentional skills like empathy and social awareness. Examine the state of your self-awareness to discover how it is impacting your life and if it may need some improvement.

Reflect on your experience of your body. Describe what your physical sensations are like on a typical day. How “loud” or “quiet” are they? Then, on a scale from 1-10, rate how sensitive you think you are to the messages your body sends you (1 being mostly unaware and 10 being extremely aware to the point of distraction).