I spent last week “off the grid” on an island in Lake Michigan. No internet, no email, no cell phones. It was different, interesting, and strange. I was actually glad to get back to the grid. But the experience made me think. The major difference for me was that I stopped “multi-tasking”. Task switching, not…
Category Archives: attention
5 Reasons Why Online Video Is So Persuasive
Let’s say you are browsing for shoes at your favorite online shoe store. You see a pair that looks like what you are looking for, but you aren’t 100% convinced. Then you notice that in addition to the regular reviews written by other shoppers, there is a video you can click on. You click on…
100 Things You Should Know About People: #100 — Sustained Attention Lasts 10 Minutes
You are sitting in a meeting, and someone is presenting sales figures for last quarter. How long can this person hold your attention? 7-10 — If the topic is of interest to you, and the person is a good presenter, the maximum you can focus on the presentation is about 7-10 minutes. And if you…
100 Things You Should Know About People: #99 — Well Practiced Skills Don’t Require Conscious Attention
I have two grown children. The entire time they were growing up they took Suzuki method music lessons. My son studied violin, and my daughter studied piano. After attending one of my daughter’s piano recitals, I asked her what she was thinking about while she was performing the piano sonata piece (from memory, no music…
100 Things You Should Know About People: #98 — Attention Is Selective
In the paragraph below, read only the words that are bold, and ignore all the other text. Somewhere Among hidden on a the desert island most near the spectacular X islands, an cognitive old Survivor abilities contestant is has the concealed ability a box to of gold select won one in a message reward from…
100 Things You Should Know About People: #97 — People Filter Information
Have you ever met someone that has a long held belief that they just won’t change, no matter how much evidence you show them that their belief is not tenable? People seek out and pay attention to information and cues that confirm the beliefs that they have. They don’t seek out, in fact they ignore,…
100 Things You Should Know About People: #60 — Cognitive “Loads” Are The Most “Expensive”
You are paying bills at your online banking website. You have to think about what bills need to be paid when, look up your balance, decide how much to pay on your credit cards, and push the right buttons to get the payments processed. As you do this task, you are thinking and remembering (cognitive),…
100 Things You Should Know About People: #58 — People See What They Expect To See
During December of 2009, Farid Seif, a businessman from Houston, Texas, boarded a flight in Houston with a loaded handgun in his laptop case. He made it through security without a problem. Farid is not a terrorist. The gun is legal in Texas; he forgot to take it out of his laptop case before his…
100 Things You Should Know About People: #39 — Your Mind Wanders 30% of the Time
You are at work reading a report that one of your colleagues has written and you realize that you’ve just read the same sentence about three times. Instead of thinking about what you were reading, your mind wandered. Mind wandering is similar to, but not the same thing as daydreaming. Psychologists use daydreaming to refer…
100 Things You Should Know About People: #34 — Too Much Stress Results In Poor Performance
A few days ago I found myself in a hotel room outside of Chicago with my 19 year old daughter moaning and sometimes howling in pain. She’d been sick for a week, each day with a new symptom, and this morning her eardrum felt like it was going to burst. We decided that I should…