We Need Control of Our Cognitive Gaze Now More Than Ever

One of the most vital powers we have is a power that not enough of us use, and those that use it, don’t use it enough. And that is taking charge of where we direct our cognitive gaze, literally where we direct our attention. In many ways, our attention is one of our most precious commodities and something that, day to day, we’ve ceded control over. Why is this so important? At the risk of being simplistic, our attention is what we attend to: It is what we spend our time and effort doing, thinking about, and reacting to.

There are so many calls on our time. On the personal side, there are family, friends, work, and our physical and mental health, not to mention our hobbies or interests. From the outside world, we have intense news and events crowding in that either affect us, or we are interested in, or feel we ought to be aware of. The tidal wave of the 24/7 news cycle, outside information, and constant commercial bids for our time can easily swamp us. Often, it seems that our time is no longer our own.

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We attend to the urgent because, well, it's urgent, and the roof will continue leaking or the alarm will not stop ringing until we do. We sometimes attend equally to what’s important and what’s banal because of habit – we make meals, we do the laundry, we scroll on our phones, we do online word games. We continue to do things sometimes because many need to be done but often just because we’ve always done them. We also, at times (more often than some of us would like to admit), attend to the trivial and amusing because we like to be distracted from things that are more effortful or frustrating for us. In reality, many of us squander much of our time. I don’t mean to be a killjoy. I’m as keen on distracting activities as anyone – sports, crosswords, jigsaw puzzles, frivolous conversations, dance videos, you name it. But if we stop and think about it carefully, I wonder which of us would want to be so reactive to inputs coming our way and the constant noise of them crowding in on us, and so avoidant of things that mean something more to us. The majority of our time is being grabbed by outside influences.

We attend to the dramatic because it shouts loudly; we attend to the exciting because it’s fun; we attend to the banal because it often saves us from more strenuous work. But what we rarely attend to is a quieter need in ourselves to think about what we consider is fundamentally important for us. If we had a clean slate, and no claims on our time and attention, what goals would we set ourselves? What would we really like to pay attention to? What are our long-term hopes and aims that need preparation and consideration if they’re ever to be realized? What will make us feel engaged, connected, productive, and fulfilled? To know these things, to really work them out, takes time, reflection, and self-awareness.

Neurologically speaking, we have the power to turn our attention to the subjects of our choice but, in reality, we are not all created equal in our ability to do this. Some of us are naturally wired to be more distracted, others live in environments that make us so, and some, due to their natural wiring or lived experience, find it harder to be persistent in the face of stumbling blocks or insistent interruptions. That having been said, and to generalize, I think that our major problem is that we are not practiced at being acutely aware of and actively tuning in to the objects of our attention. We often do not consciously decide what we pay attention to, and we equally often do not consciously switch our attention to a preferable focus. Too often, we are not actively making this choice, at all. Too often, we do not even see that it is a choice.

But despite our bad habits and natural inclinations, it is absolutely within the capabilities of most of us to take control of this aspect of our cognitive functions and our lives. Like most mental and behavioral skills, we get better at something if we practice it, much like going to the gym regularly and exercising specific muscles. There's a regularly quoted phrase that ‘cells that fire together wire together’ It simply refers to how neural pathways, when repeatedly used, strengthen and then continue to work in tandem more easily.

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The bottom line is that if we practice training our attention and controlling our cognitive gaze, we can get better at it and it becomes easier to deploy as a tool. How do we do this?

First, we need to see it as a goal, as something that we want to do. If you’re in doubt about this, start writing a time/activity log and see where you spend your time each day.

Second, we need to identify what we would like to do with our time, and what we’d like to achieve. Identify the activities you need to engage in to make it happen. Understand your motivation. Write it all down. Put it somewhere you will see it.

Third, we must start to recognize the emotional, physical, and social telltale signs that we’re getting sucked into something. What is the thought or feeling we have just before we decide to click a distracting news link or before we sign on to YouTube or spend an hour on mental candy floss?

Fourth, when we notice those thoughts or feelings, we must actively make the choice to think about the goal we’ve set and switch our attention to it.

It won’t be easy to start with, but it gets easier over time. And very satisfying. Try it.