This is what I think it takes.

Two things.

One, we have to get it, really get it, that one person’s generative attention produces another person’s new thinking.

Don’t rush that.

Two, a person’s generative attention loses its power the very second it wavers. Attention like this has to be continuous.

Take that in, too. It defies 3,000 years of instruction in how to listen.

And consider this, too: praise, appreciation, expressions of respect – all

develop human thinking. They unwrap confidence and let it saturate talent and will and buds of ability. You know this. Every time someone mentions a quality they admire in you, you do even better at just about everything for a while. And you feel good. And you think better.

And that’s the point. That good-feeling phenomenon is a good-thinking

phenomenon. So says the chemistry at least. Appreciate someone and, as with attention, the hormones in their brain change. Oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine dash around their cortex; and before they know it, they think better and better. We have noticed this repeatedly in all of our work.

So what’s the problem? Why don’t we do it more? It’s not that difficult. We can just notice what is good and say it. That’s it.

In fact, the next time you are with a human being, anywhere at all, notice

something you respect about them, or like about them, or just think is a plus for that moment, and tell them. Even strangers. Their day will change, and when they start to think about something, they’ll be better at it.

It does, though. Obviously, our brains are in our bodies, and thus depend on body chemistry in order to work. Too much sugar, sluggish brain. Too much wheat, compliant brain. Too much artificial stuff, fearful brain. Too much alcohol and drug stuff, collapsed brain. But the impact of our bodies on thinking goes beyond this chemistry question. When we try to think inside a body we disrespect, it can hear only, ‘You don’t matter.’ And that assumption practically anaesthetizes the cortex.

The body, then, is the place where we think, not only because it contains our brains, but also because it tells us whether we matter.

What to do?

Consider these questions.

About the room:

What are three things you can do before your next meeting so that when people arrive they feel, just from the room, that they matter?

About the listener:

How can you communicate to your listener the importance of their keeping their eyes on your eyes so that their eyes and their face respond accurately to the micro signals of change in your thinking?

About your body:

What one thing do you know you need to do so that your body can say to you, ‘You matter’?

And even this architecture of distraction is not the molten centre of the problem we are facing. That core is the fact that multiple distractions chemically kill discernment. Distractions, as we have seen, raise anxiety, i.e. cortisol and adrenaline, in the brain. These hormones in turn reduce our ability to think for ourselves. They make us want to give in to the wandering hands of distractors. This design of distraction is, therefore, not an oh-I-apologize, just-ignore-me-please by-product of the platform architecture. It is the goal of the architecture. It sets out to generate the hormones that make us want more distraction.

This cognitive ability to remember the past and anticipate the future is one reason some of us feel so busy—not because of the number of tasks we have to complete in the day, but because of the sheer number of things competing for our attention. What is commonly called “distraction” is probably better understood as overstimulation.

Recent findings in neuroscience have shown that our conscious minds cannot do more than one thing at a time. It may feel like you are able to multitask and think about two (or more) things at once, but really your mind is switching between them. This is a costly process neurologically speaking. Switching from one task to another takes energy and a measurable amount of time. Then, when we switch back, it takes another period of time to really wrap our minds around the original object of attention. And it’s not only about the time cost; it’s about the quality of our attention. If we are always switching from one thing to another, then we are never able to truly focus and experience the pleasure and effectiveness of a focused mind. Instead we live in a state of constant recalibration, or what the writer Linda Stone perceptively calls “continuous partial attention.”

Human awareness is not the speedy, nimble creature some of us believe it to be. Our brains have evolved to be more like owls than hummingbirds: we notice something, turn our attention to it, and focus in. It is in this state of intense, solitary focus that we are in possession of our most uniquely human and powerful mental faculties. When we focus on one thing, we are at our most thoughtful, creative, and productive.

But in the screen-heavy environment of the twenty-first century, our mind-owls, large and unwieldy, are treated like hummingbirds, and they end up flopping ineffectively from one thing to the next. Doing this day in and day out accommodates us to what is actually an unnatural, anxiety-producing mode in which the mind struggles to find nourishment.

Which owl is going to feel busier, the one focusing on the sound of a mouse in the snow, or the one trying to draw tiny bits of nectar from a thousand flowers? And which owl is going to be, in the end, better nourished?