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**Adam Stacoviak:** I would hope so, yeah. There's some reason. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Right. Because do people really have -- Adam, have you ever had an experience where someone has playfully hit the emergency stop button when you're in an elevator? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Um, no. No, honestly. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** I was gonna say, if you \[unintelligible 00:18:46.26\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's usually a purposeful action, usually... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Right. And so if I shut down on that awareness, that signal my brain is giving me, I am now in further opportunity for harm because I'm not gonna react out of that perception of threat. So our conversation when it comes to attention isn't all around threat, but actually deciphering signals... |
Another area in which I can talk about this is when people have chronic pain. Pain as an experience is really pervasive. It's always knocking on your door; you're aware, you hurt. Remember this hurt, don't do this. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** But the pain - if you can learn how to move and maneuver it from the forefront of your mind to the background of your mind, so from the forefront of your attention to just in the background, it actually helps you navigate the pain differently and more adaptively. |
That being said, it doesn't mean it's easy... Right? Hence binge-watching Game of Thrones. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It all comes back to Game of Thrones. Season eight... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** There is this aspect of willpower involved with attention. So what if you could think of attention very much like your camera lens? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[20:19\] Well, we've used that as an example before, the panoramic view versus the narrow view. This makes sense. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Selfie mode versus outward-mode. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** And going "Where is my attention?" Because if you can imagine, wherever you're placing that attention, I'm now blowing up the balloon bigger and bigger, so that I'm very much focused on that detail. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Let me add one more to this then for you. So what if instead of saying "Where is my attention?" you can say "Where is my camera pointing?" And then the question after that might be "Which focal length am I at?" So you might have to dig into the camera aspects of this, to some degree... A 20 mm... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Right, but do you see how it then creates a whole different experience because of what you're bringing into focus? And whether you see the close-up or the distant and all of the sort of images or outlines of the images, as opposed to all of the pixels of the person... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** And there's times we need both, right? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, that's why the new iPhone has three cameras. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's a joke there, but it's true though, because -- I mean, why take one picture of one focal length, why not take a picture with all three, or three different, distinct focal lengths? Is that something that we can sort of adapt to us? Can we have many focal lengths at once? |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Sure. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That would be perception? That's how you narrow your focus and attention? |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah, yeah. Think about this being able to push things out of awareness or into the background. It's like, I am just honing more of a certain image in my camera lens, so that I can see it more clearly. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. I like this analogy a lot. This idea of our awareness being a camera; where is it pointed, to which degree is our lens focused? What are we seeing in there? We've said this before, it's all data, and how can you take in this data to make wise choices? And if we can use fear to our advantage...... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Sure. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** But the point is that to not die today means to leverage your fear, to make wise choices, to focus your attention to therefore hit some sort of optimization of what you're trying to do in your life. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah. And I don't wanna divert too far away from this, but I can't help but braid in also the concept of vulnerability. Because if we're talking about fear and not dying, it might not be that there's an imminent threat to my physical body, but rather in creative endeavors. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. My creativity, my ego, my brand... Personal brand even. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Who people think I am. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Right. And I think people encounter this vulnerability in a myriad of ways in different jobs. Authors, writing books. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** They're very vulnerable, yeah. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** \[24:14\] Correct. Even when you write a program. Whenever you sort of use yourself as the frame of reference to then offer something to the world, without a guaranteed outcome around how others are gonna receive it - now I'm vulnerable, now I'm anxious, and now I'm like "Am I really think... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Attack. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So why do you think vulnerability plays into attention? Why is it important to -- I guess if we can say "If fear is a feedback, is vulnerability a feedback?" |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** It is. I would say that that's part of it, because having the awareness of whatever I'm doing involves a certain amount of vulnerability. Then I'm switching over to a matter of the will, and asking myself "Is it worth it to recognize that I'm going to potentially lose, or be rejected, or h... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** And remember, when we are talking about these things, I'm never talking about it as a binary construct, like it's all or nothing, black or white... But rather, vulnerability is a continuum; attention, even as a continuum... That you can focus your camera lens in different ways along a cont... |
So coming back around to that attention, there is what we talk about or describe as divided attention, like literally I'm attending to two separate things simultaneously. Think about it like taking notes when you're in college, or you're listening to a lecture. You're listening, so you're taking it in through your audi... |
But then there's also sustained attention. So it's literally like one track, one way; there's no two-ways streets. I'm on a one-way road, and this is all I'm focused on. |
**Break:** \[26:45\] to \[26:45\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So these two aspects of attention - you've got divided, you've got sustained... I think about flow. Years ago I did a podcast with a woman named Kathy Sierra, very famous in the software world. She exposed me to user experience and this aspect to the brain that's cognitive awareness, so to speak... ... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah, flow is a very interesting concept, and it gets at the heart of the sustained attention, although there's more to it... And that flow is very much the epitome of mindfulness, like I'm fully absorbed in the moment I'm in. Some people would reference flow very much like the concept of ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[28:13\] That's why they encourage some work -- I'm not sure how to phrase it, but essentially making work playful. Because you get lost. You find a kid deep in a pretend mode, their play mode, whatever it is - it's gonna be very difficult to get their attention. My son - he's playing, and I'm like... |
When we're in flow, it's like tunnel vision, deep, deep, deep, and some really amazing things can come from that... Whether it's a child play, or using that in a work-related aspect, whether it's an artist, a podcaster, a software developer, whatever it might be, to use this data flow to their advantage. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** It is. Years ago I actually had that opportunity when I was in graduate school, to do what we referred to as bio-feedback, or neurofeedback. You put electrodes on someone's head in certain places, and then ironically, that's like the video game controller for a computer screen. So based on... |
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