Human Attention and the Pursuit of Happiness

When were you happiest in your life?

If someone asked you that, what would you say? 

You might say the birth of your child or the day you got married, and I wouldn't doubt that, but studying behavioural science has taught me to be careful about how my brain tells itself stories (there is a fascinating piece of research on this called "Split Brain" if you want to see the evidence behind the anecdote).

When I reflect on my second son being born (first one has its own separate story!), 99% of that experience for me was emotional trauma (which was a lot easier than my wife’s experience obviously!) but I do clearly recall the moment I held him and no one was in danger anymore. That was an intensely happy moment.

Same for my wedding day.  Most of the day was actually quite stressful!  But the moment we had our civil wedding (we did a civil wedding, Indian wedding and reception in one day… so hence the stress!) I remember turning to see my wife for the first time in her wedding dress and experiencing a moment of intense happiness.

So when are we most happy?

“Happiness” is a fascinating concept and one well worth understanding given that we have one life and one opportunity to experience it to its best.  Luckily we can call on the work of Professor Csikszentmihalyi ("Cheek-send-me-high" is the way to say it), considered to have been the worlds leading researcher on positive psychology, and the person that found the human state for optimum happiness.

When researching the conditions for happiness, he initially worked with artists.  He was interested to understand why someone would spend the majority of their life working on something that provided so little probability for fame or reward.  They would describe to him moments of “ecstasy” where they would lose track of time and forget about any other worries they may have.  He then researched athletes and sports people who talked about feeling at “one” with the task, and this research continued with over 8000 interviews, ranging from Monks to Shepherds, Mountain Climbers and business professionals (including the CEO’s of Bodyshop, Sony and Lockheed Martin).

This research led him to the discovery of the concept we know as “Flow”, the point at which humans experience the most happiness.

What is "Flow"?

You and I may have described moments of “being in the zone” – this is Flow.  When we're in "Flow", we're so immersed in a task that we lose track of time, the environment around us, even other thoughts and emotions.  The professor describes this as a sense of ecstasy (outside of reality).  This experience is partly a result of how we allocate attention.  The human brain is exposed to masses of information every second (wide ranging research on this, but estimate somewhere in the region of 5 million bits) but according to Professor Csikszentmihalyi, our conscious mind can only process 120 of them. 

120 out of 5 million… that shows you how scarce a resource our attention actually is.

To give you an example, its estimated that having a conversation with one person requires over 60 bits per second.

"Human attention is a scarce resource, second only to time"

Without the ability to allocate significant attention to something, we can’t move into a state of Flow, or the point at which humans, according to the research, experience the most happiness.  There are several other requirements needed to experience Flow, but today I want to focus on human attention.

Why should Organisations care about Flow?

It's safe to say that most companies are looking to innovate, grow, problem solve and adapt in a fast moving, constantly disrupted, volatile economy.  As technology continues to take away more of the routine tasks through automation, humans should theoretically be "free" to focus on more complex problems.

The success of organizations is closely linked to the amount of attention that their employees can focus on their work. Human attention is the means by which mental cognition is carried out, so the more attention that a company can direct towards its goals, the better it will be for the company.

You might be reading this feeling like there's something missing... and you're right.

Motivation and Attention

For a human to tackle a task and decide to allocate attention to it, we require motivation. Any conscious task requires some degree of motivation in order for us to do it.

Motivation and human attention are very closely linked, with Intrinsic Motivation being another key component to achieving Flow State.  Professor Csikszentmihalyi’s research showed that people in Flow were motivated by the enjoyment of the task itself, not the external rewards (the artists completing their work despite the low probability of fame or fortune). 

Daniel Pink developed this work when he researched how you maximised human performance through motivation in his book Drive.  His research aligned with Professor Csikszentmihalyi in that extrinsic motivation (paying bonuses for example) are ok for routine/simple tasks, but they are ineffective or even counter productive for more complex tasks (problem solving/creativity etc...).

So what do we learn from all this?

1. Human Attention is a scarce resource, and one thats critical both in how we experience happiness and how companies can increase their chances of success.
2. We need to manage our environment intentionally when considering human attention.  Maximise the opportunity to allocate as much attention as possible to tasks.  One obvious example is to removing distractions.  Our brains will look for the quick dopamine hit you get from a social media notification, for example, so don’t give it the opportunity!
3. Let your brain rest between tasks.  We only have a finite amount of energy when it comes to daily mental cognition, and allocating lots of attention to specific tasks is taxing.  Take the walks, listen to music, do some exercise or whatever you need to do to get that space to replenish.
4. Role model your approach to attention to others.  Engage fully in conversations with people rather than trying to email/check your phone at the same time.  These are healthy habits to get into which will benefit you and others around you.
5. Consider how you motivate yourself and your team/company. If you want creativity and innovation and deep thinking to solve complex problems, then look at the research and not just rely on traditional motivational constructs and wonder why the bonus isn't delivering the outcome.

An interesting point to be aware of is the business model of most technology companies.  They want your attention.  Social Media companies, even enterprise software providers that are designed to optimise our productivity (Slack/Microsoft Teams/Google/Zoom) all want you to spend your time and attention in their applications.  That’s what gives them value. They are the masters of capturing that attention and keeping you locked in.  They all can serve a positive purpose to our lives both in and outside of work, but be masterful in your management of them, otherwise they’ll manage you.  And that’s not the route to happiness for you or your company.

#CultureHack

This weeks #culturehack is all about prioritisation using the The Eisenhower Matrix (thank you President Eisenhower!). In a world that's increasingly noisy, allocating your attention to the right task is challenging for all of us.

So, take some time to learn how to use this model, and then help those around you to do the same. It just might help.

This how I use it (if you use this differently then please share it!):

1. I list all of my tasks at least weekly if not daily
2. For each task I add some information such as due date and amount of time needed
3. I'll then consider if any of these tasks are able to be delegated (our default is usually to think we have to do it for a whole host of reasons like ego and concern over adding workload to others, but challenge yourself with this assumption)
4. I'll add personal tasks to this list as well (2 different lists don't work for me!)
5. I then allocate the tasks to the buckets, prioritising my time from Bucket 1 (Do) to 2 (Schedule), 3 (Delegate) and finally 4 (Delete).

The challenge I find is deciding what is "Important"... Urgency is usually determined by the time requirement, but categorising importance is more difficult! Something that's important for someone else might not be important for you...

It's a good model to learn using as a team as it helps people to debate and discuss what is actually important and worthy of your focussed attention.

I hope it helps and thank you for reading!