OU Get Smarts: Paying Attention

How to Better Pay Attention and Stay Focused
*Attention is the fundamental building block of thinking, communicating, and other literacies

Mindfulness is the process of METACOGNITION

Attention to Intention is how the mind shapes the brain
The Breath connects the Brain, Mind, and Body

Paying attention to your breath helps cultivate mindfulness

Question: Where are you directing your attention?

Managing mind tools

Knowing which form of awareness to use at each moment

Managing information tools
Match your dashboard to your priorities

Create space to get your computer work done

Train your attention

Repeat until paying attention becomes habitual

Focus on achieving your intentions

Understand your goals and daily priorities

Put (your daily goals/priorities) in your periphery vision (next to your computer, etc.)

Whenever you notice your note, notice what you are paying attention to
Is you attention intentional?

One Word Focus Daily Map
Create to-do lists

Start small and build new habits

ATTENTION IS THE FOUNDATION OF THOUGHTS AND COMMUNICATION!

INFOTENTION

Combining attention training with information skills
You need to learn how to search, filter, and scan the info-stream and know when not to search, filter, and scan

You will learn how to make better, faster micro-decisions

You will learn how to have an awareness of how you are deploying your attention when you are working on your computer, together with self-training in deliberate decision-making about information encountered online

Should you attend to the information at all, or ignore it?
Open a browser tab for later inspection?
Tag or bookmark for much later?

It all depends on what your goals are

You will learn how to match your attention to your toolset

Creating and tuning your own online information dashboard can serve as a scaffold for you infotention habits-an efficient way of displaying incoming information so you can select the information you need to pay attention to at any moment

Delicious

Taken together, you synchronization of attention to your dashboard and your goal-contextualized micro-decision-making about where to deploy your attention, which will enable you to develop more effective control of your information consumption

source: rheingold, 2012

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