Understanding Attention

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Like a large organization, the brain does enormous amounts of work outside our conscious awareness.

Conflict and contradiction may simply be what it feels like to be a complex biological system.

We cannot micromanage our brain, but we can direct our attention, set priorities, and steer the ship.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

This is a pretty innocent question that all children are asked, and ask themselves. Mine was a baker, florist, musical instrument maker, and a U.N. worker at different times.

So when my friend said, “I want to be a CEO of a big company,” I was surprised. While it was probably just youthful blabber, I remember that comment vividly to this day.

The surprise was manyfold. I had no idea how one would become a CEO, or what that path would look like. But mainly, the surprise was because I myself would never want to be a CEO, even if (like a bad sitcom plot) somebody handed me that job.

It is not hard work I fear. What first comes to mind is a complicated organizational chart.

The many lines and arrows give me a headache because they symbolize this fact: the CEO is too far from, and cannot know, what is happening on the ground. The CEO reads the report without knowing exactly how it was made. Perhaps, intrinsically, I fear the lack of control, of not knowing everything that is happening.

The similarity between the brain and the corporate world

However, as much as I don’t desire to be a CEO of a human-made organization, this structure—a CEO having to be a leader without being able to know 100% of what is going on at the ground........

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