Review by Choice Review
The ubiquitous reality of technological tools and gadgets in contemporary society can seem to impede the development of a conscious awareness of the world. Goleman, author of several works, including the acclaimed Emotional Intelligence (1995) and Social Intelligence (CH, Oct'07, 45-0941), explores here the issues this loss of awareness can create on an individual and global scale. He looks at the physiology of the brain and the way in which information, experiences, and emotions are tracked and processed. A storyteller at heart, Goleman makes complex scientific material accessible and captivating. He moves from personal to organizational to global in evaluating the need to strengthen "systems awareness" through three kinds of focus--inner, other, and outer--all of which are required for "a well-lived life." Drawing on work with children and adults in multinational corporations and small inner-city schools, Goleman explores the dynamics of attention training. He draws the reader into a dialogue with critical long- and short-term dilemmas that will require a new type of systems focus if they are to be resolved. Realism is tempered by a positive optimism in this engaging work. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All collections and readership levels. T. M. Mckenzie Gonzaga University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
"INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF the visible." So begin the musings of Stephen Dedalus as he walks along Sandymount Strand in the third chapter of James Joyce's "Ulysses." "Signatures of all things I am here to read." The chapter isn't just a tour de force of prose writing. It's an exquisitely sensitive depiction of a mind at play. Conscious of his own consciousness, Dedalus monitors his thoughts without reining them in. He's at once focused and unfocused. Seemingly scattered ideas, sensations and memories coalesce into patterns, into art. Brain researchers and Zen masters call this state of mind "open awareness," the science writer Daniel Goleman reports in his new book, "Focus." According to Goleman, the author of "Emotional Intelligence," it's a form of attentiveness characterized by "utter receptivity to whatever floats into the mind." Experiments suggest it's also the source of our most creative thoughts. Going beyond "orienting," in which we deliberately gather information, and "selective attention," in which we concentrate on solving a particular problem, open awareness frees the brain to make the "serendipitous associations" that lead to fresh insights. Artists and inventors alike seem unusually adept at such productive daydreaming. We tend to think of attention as a switch that's on or off - we're focused or we're distracted. That's a misperception. Attention, as Goleman explains, comes in many varieties. Its extreme forms tend to be the most limiting. When we're too attentive, we fall victim to tunnel vision. The mind narrows. When attention is absent, we lose control of our thoughts. We turn into scatterbrains. Open awareness lies in a particularly fertile area between the poles. It gives us entry into what Nathaniel Hawthorne, in one of his notebooks, described as "that pleasant mood of mind where gaiety and pensiveness intermingle." All forms of attention, Goleman argues, arise from the interplay between two very different parts of the brain. The older, lower brain, working largely outside of consciousness, constantly monitors the signals coming in from the senses. Acting as a warning system, it alerts us to shifts in our surroundings, pains in our body, memories of worrying events. Such "bottom-up" attention, as neuroscientists call it, is impulsive, uncontrolled and often commanded by fear and other raw emotions. The alerts that stream from the lower brain are so visceral that, when they pop into the conscious mind, they're hard to resist. Working to control all those primitive impulses is the neocortex, the brain's more recently evolved outer layer. The source of voluntary, or "top-down," attention, the neocortex's executive-control circuitry is what enables us to screen out distractions and focus our mind on a single task or train of thought. Without it, we'd have the attention span of a chipmunk. "Top-down wiring," Goleman writes, "adds talents like self-awareness and reflection, deliberation and planning to our mind's repertoire." As we go through the day, the direction and steadiness of our mental gaze are shaped by the "continual dance" between the top-down and bottom-up systems of attention. Attention is not only a product of brain function. It's also influenced by culture and, in particular, by the technologies we use to navigate and make sense of the world. Goleman's book arrives at a time of growing anxiety about what he terms "the impoverishment of attention." Our smartphones and other networked gadgets allow us to jack into an unending supply of messages and alerts. Some of them are important, some of them are trivial, but all of them demand notice. The resulting "neural buzz" can easily overwhelm our ability to control our focus. We become prisoners of our bottom-up attention circuits. What appears to be most at risk is our ability to experience open awareness. Always a rare and elusive form of thinking, it seems to be getting rarer and more elusive. Our modern search-engine culture celebrates information gathering and problem solving - ways of thinking associated with orienting and selective focus - but has little patience for the mind's reveries. Letting one's thoughts wander seems frivolous, a waste of practical brainpower. Worse, our infatuation with social media is making it harder to hear the mind's whispers. Solitude has fallen out of fashion. Even when we're by ourselves, we're rarely alone with our thoughts. In the end, we may come to see the flights and fancies of open awareness as not only dispensable but pathological. Goleman points out that the brain systems associated with creative mind-wandering tend to be "unusually active" in people with attention-deficit disorder. When they appear to be "zoning out," they may actually be making novel connections between far-flung ideas. If Stephen Dedalus or, for that matter, James Joyce were growing up today, he might well receive a diagnosis of A.D.H.D. and be put on a diet of Adderall to curb vagrant thoughts. His stream of consciousness would be dammed up into a stagnant pool. Trained as a psychologist, Goleman knows his way around a brain. His earlier works on emotional intelligence popularized the notion that being smart involves more than acing the SAT. One reads "Focus" with the hope that it will perform a similar function for open awareness and other forms of attentiveness now under siege. But the book suffers from an attention disorder of its own. Its brief chapters jump from topic to topic, the links between them growing ever more tenuous. We get discursive lessons on ethics and empathy, systems theory and skill building, even climate change and business strategy. "Focus" lacks focus. NICHOLAS CARR'S new book, "The Glass Cage: Automation and Us," will be published next year.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 3, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
Attention is a little-noticed and underrated mental asset, sorely tested among modern distractions but essential to success in work, play, relationships, and self-awareness, asserts Goleman, psychologist, journalist, and author of Emotional Intelligence (1995). In fact, the ability to focus, more than IQ or social background, is the key to performance and success. Neuroscience, case studies, and personal experience contribute to Goleman's exploration of focus, which includes concentration, selective attention, open awareness, self-awareness, empathy, and systems awareness. He breaks them down to inner, other, and outer focus. Among examples of the significance of focus: a doctor's ability to shut down emotions to focus on gory medical procedures; an epidemiologist's attention to patterns and systems to track the human connections that lead to global pandemics; and a gamer's focus on spatial perception, decision making, and ability to track objects. In commerce, education, sports, and personal life, Goleman offers concepts and techniques, including mindfulness and meditation, to train ourselves to be more focused, exercising those areas of the brain involved in focusing attention. An engaging, wide-ranging look at attention and intelligence.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Psychologist and journalist Goleman, most acclaimed for his book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, offers here previously explored psychological findings filtered through a new lens. He highlights the need for focus in our modern, hectic, distracted world as a means toward a better society. Although he quotes no empirical evidence, much of his argument for this reviewer recalls research on the effects of middle age and psychologist Erik Erikson's notion of generativity. (Perhaps Mr. Goleman is middle-aged?) Instead of concentrating on developing and cultivating more relationships, the book emphasizes deepening current ones. Instead of letting ourselves become overwhelmed by possessions and mental clutter, it is suggested that we lighten our load and choose what's important. Instead of working mindlessly, we need to be mindful of our contribution to the world, providing for both our children and others. And in order to do all that and do it well, the author suggests one needs to focus! VERDICT Self-awareness, empathy, and ability to see the bigger picture are all themes investigated by Goleman; this work is recommended for those interested in being a better person and for libraries offering books on psychology and self-help.-Nadine Dalton Speidel, Cuyahoga Cty. P.L., Parma, OH (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Goleman (Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence, 2011, etc.) argues that the ability to focus is "a little-noticed and underrated asset" that can help overcome problems like "zoning out" and "mind wandering," among many others. The author explains that attention span can be compared with a "mental muscle that we can strengthen by a work out," with memorization and concentration being the forms of exercise that work the "muscle." Showing how much time is spent in day-dreaming and mind wandering--up to 40 percent of the day, according to some estimates--Goleman identifies the changes in psychological and mental habits and activities that he believes will contribute to effectively addressing important contemporary issues like climate change and global warming. Quick, default reactions, which focus on the short term and "favor now in decisions of all kinds," prevent concentration on the long-term objectives that such issues demand. Goleman also believes that such a transformation will require new methods of leadership working through new kinds of institutions. The success of future leaders will depend on their ability to maintain focus on long-term goals and improvements for the widest circles their influence can reach. The author supports his arguments with a psychological framework drawn from the contemporary field of neuroscience. He refers to a Nature magazine study on the ambiguous effects of playing computer games--from "Minesweeper" to poker--and stresses that "face-to-face interactionspick up a multitude of signals which help us connect well, and wire together the neurons involved." Unfortunately, "during thousands of hours spent online," he writes, "the wiring of the social brain gets virtually no exercise." A lively personalized account of the science of attention, which "ripples through most everything we seek to accomplish."]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
