Understanding rhythms of attention
At any given moment, our brain focuses on a single point of interest. Like a filmstrip, the brain takes pictures of these moments, then assembles them into a cohesive story.
About four times every second, the brain stops taking snapshots of individual points of focus and collects background information about the environment, like sound, people, temperature, and so on. It then uses all the information to put together a narrative of the complete experience.
148
215 reads
The idea is part of this collection:
Learn more about health with this collection
How to use storytelling to connect with others
The psychology behind storytelling
How to craft compelling stories
Related collections
Similar ideas to Understanding rhythms of attention
Our attention systems
According to scientists at Princeton University, the brain oscillates in and out of focus four times every second.
That means the brain stops focusing on the task at hand about 240 times a minute.
The Four Types Of Information
- Known Knowns: Things we know, like how to ride a bicycle.
- Known Unknowns: Stuff we don’t understand, like quantum physics.
- Unknown Knowns: Things we know but never realized that we knew it. Most of it comes naturally to us, l...
Limits Of Your Attention
Our brain receives 11 million “bits” of information in the form of sensory experiences each second. But how many of these eleven million bits can our minds consciously process and focus on at once? Just forty of them. Not forty million or forty thousand, but forty.
Our atte...
Read & Learn
20x Faster
without
deepstash
with
deepstash
with
deepstash
Personalized microlearning
—
100+ Learning Journeys
—
Access to 200,000+ ideas
—
Access to the mobile app
—
Unlimited idea saving
—
—
Unlimited history
—
—
Unlimited listening to ideas
—
—
Downloading & offline access
—
—
Supercharge your mind with one idea per day
Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.
I agree to receive email updates