Summary: Peak Mind: Find Your Focus, Own Your Attention, Invest 12 Minutes a Day by Amishi P. Jha

• The book is about the science of attention, the most valuable and vulnerable resource of our minds, and how it can be improved with simple and flexible exercises that take only 12 minutes a day.
• The book covers topics such as the three types of attention, the four enemies of attention, the benefits of attention, the role of mindfulness in enhancing attention, and the 12-minute-a-day exercises based on the author’s research with various high-stress groups.
• The book is a comprehensive and accessible guide to understanding and improving attention, written with clarity, authority, and enthusiasm. It is also a wake-up call and a reminder that we are not alone in this challenge, but part of a global community that can learn from each other.

Peak Mind (2021) provides a cutting-edge overview of the science of attention – looking at the various ways your mind focuses and pays attention, as well as the factors that cause our mental vigilance to lapse and weaken over time. What’s more, it lays out a simple, easy-to-follow regimen to keep your mind in tip-top shape – even as you deal with the ups and downs of life.

Get your attention into peak shape.

Imagine this: you’re a firefighter – and not just any firefighter, either. You’re a specially trained emergency responder in the Australian bush. Your job is controlling the blazes that regularly break out in the country’s scrubland.

It’s not an easy job. The bush is inaccessible by land, so you and your team rappel into the area from a helicopter and then fan out, each of you carrying a big bag of tools and specialized equipment. Each firefighter takes their own section, where they’ll aim to contain the rapid spread of the fire.

You know that before long, a support helicopter will drop foam and water on the blaze. But for now, you’re on your own. So you get to work. Sweat pours down your face as the sound of an inferno rages in your ears. As you tackle the intensity of the fire roaring in front of you, you lose yourself in the work, focusing on the urgent task at hand.

After a while, though, something suddenly grabs your attention: a huge whooshing noise. It’s the sound of a gigantic amount of air being sucked up by the flames, and it means that while you were honing in on the fire in front of you, a wall of fire crept up the other side.

So what happened? Basically, your attention failed you – not because you couldn’t focus, but because you focused too much. When your mind zeroed in on one small patch of flames, your awareness of the broader situation became hazy and unclear. In this case, a lapse of attention endangered your life.

Now, forget the flames for just a second. Let’s say you survived. There are two things you can learn from your close brush with death. Number one is this: issues of attention can be life threatening.

Sure, you might not be a firefighter or a soldier. But do you drive? Are you a pedestrian who needs to cross roads on foot? Do you take any medications? All of these things require your attention, and messing them up can be fatal.

Point number two? Attention is misunderstood. When people talk about it, their thinking is often confused and imprecise, and based on a big misconception: that attention describes a single phenomenon. That simply isn’t true. Attention is actually three subsystems, each of which does something distinct. We’ll call these subsystems the flashlight, the floodlight, and the juggler.

The flashlight.

Human beings are sensitive creatures. We have a number of finely tuned sensory organs. We have memories. And we have the ability to contemplate, imagine, and predict.

But to do any of these things well – to pay attention to a sound, predict someone’s reaction to your behavior, or remember the events of last week – you need to be able to control your attention. That is, to highlight what’s relevant and dampen what’s unimportant.

So, really, the ability to bring certain things into focus and clarity while leaving others vague and obscure is what attention’s all about. And the three subsystems of attention, the flashlight, the floodlight, and the juggler, are all vital to that ability.

Of these three, the most familiar is probably the flashlight—a handy name for what attention researchers call your orienting system. The flashlight allows you to select certain kinds of information and orient yourself toward it – whether that’s a friend’s facial expressions, your own inner monologue, or a particularly delicious taste. It’s the type of attention you exercise when you focus on something, making it brighter, more detailed, and more clearly defined; the things around it, by contrast, recede into the background, becoming dim and out of focus.

For example, your flashlight is pointed at this text right now. But what about your surroundings? Chances are, whatever’s going on behind you, above you, or across the street is dim and out of focus. Here’s another example: think about how it feels to bite into a warm, crumbly spoonful of raspberry pie, the slightly tart berries perfectly balanced by cool whipped cream and an overall sweetness that melts across your tongue . . .

So are you paying attention right now? Or are you wondering how long it would take to get your hands on a slice of raspberry pie? In other words, is your flashlight pointing toward these summary – or straight at the nearest bakery? It just goes to show that while the flashlight can be a powerful tool, it’s only effective if you can keep it pointed in the right direction.

The floodlight.

If you’ve ever lived alone, you’ve probably experienced something like this: You come home at night and notice that the front door – the one you always make sure is definitely, completely, 100-percent locked – is sitting wide open.

All of a sudden, you’re on high alert: you’re living in your nerve endings. You shout out a tentative “Hello?” and then listen very, very carefully to the sounds beyond the doorway. No response.

You step in, monitoring the shadows on the floor and listening for any movement. Again, nothing. What on earth could be going on?

Emboldened now, you move from room to room, listening and looking around with complete attention. And . . . it’s all clear. You must have simply forgotten to close the door all the way when you left earlier. From now on, you’ll be more careful.

So what was going on in your mind when you arrived home and saw the door? Where was your attention? Well, in a word: everywhere. And that’s because you were using your alerting system – also known as the floodlight.

When you stepped through the open doorway, your attention was broad, receptive, and flexible. It was ready to dart out and seize on any relevant stimulus: a voice, a footprint, a shadow down the hall. You didn’t know exactly what you were looking out for, but you were sure there was something.

The alerting system – the floodlight – is associated with states of vigilance. And not just vigilance to threats out in the world, such as doors sitting open or things that go bump in the night. The floodlight also helps you keep an eye out inside yourself, looking out for thoughts and feelings that you ought to pay attention to.

Of course, you can’t always be looking for threats. At some point, you need to shut off the floodlight and calm down. So with the front door locked again and the house safe and sound, relax: it’s time to meet the juggler.

The juggler.

In the business world, you probably know what a chief executive does: she sets goals, supervises, and makes decisions. She ensures things are running smoothly, and keeps everything on track.

In your mind, the central executive – also known as the juggler – plays a similar role. It doesn’t carry out every small task, but instead oversees and manages the whole process. That means overriding automatic impulses, like the knee-jerk desire to pick up your phone every time it beeps. And it also means matching goals with the actions you’ll need to take to reach them. Whether your goal is short-term and simple or long-term and more complex, you’ll rely on the juggler to help you navigate the demands it presents. That’s why the central executive is called the juggler: whatever challenges you’re facing, it has to try to keep all the balls in the air.

So that’s the spotlight, the floodlight, and the juggler – all powerful subsystems of attention. But as impressive as they are, there is a catch: these functions tend to operate solo, one at a time, rather than in tandem. For example, you can’t really have the spotlight and the floodlight on at the same time. Your stint in the Australian scrubland taught you that.

Stress, threat, and poor mood degrade your attention.

So you’ve discovered the way attention works, and the various forms it comes in – the flashlight, the spotlight, and the juggler. But what about when attention doesn’t work? When things go wrong and your power of attention is weak or misdirected. Exactly what is happening then?

Well, there are three main things that can damage your attention system and wreak havoc on your power of attention. The first is stress. Whether you’re feeling overwhelmed by professional worries, relationship issues, or financial woes, feeling stressed out can drastically interfere with your ability to marshal your attention.

Why? Well, stress hijacks your mind’s cognitive resources, directing them toward imagined catastrophes and remembered mistakes. In other words, it directs your attention away from the here and now, forcing you to engage in “mental time travel.” With your mind locked in bitter ruminations and dark imaginings, there’s naturally less attention at your disposal for other tasks.

The second thing that can mess with your attention is threat. Imagine trying to take a driving test with a wild animal in the back of your car. How much attention would you be able to devote to your three-point turn with a raccoon breathing down your neck? Probably not a lot. You see, threats magnetize your attention like little else, and disengaging your mind from them can seem all but impossible.

That brings us to the third and final thing that degrades attention: poor mood. Anything from a passing bout of the blues to chronic depression can interfere with your attention system. In fact, the author and her research team found that people’s attention and working memory decline significantly after seeing upsetting images.

That’s a serious problem because, as you’re about to discover, a weakened attention system doesn’t just cause issues in the present. By interfering with the way you create memories, it also leads to problems down the line.

Making memories require rehearsal, elaboration, and consolidation.

Did you know that making a memory involves three steps? Rehearsal, elaboration, and consolidation – that’s all it takes. But if the attention system isn’t working properly, a lot can go wrong with this seemingly simple process.

Now, the word “rehearsal” might call to mind images of orchestras and theaters, but in this context it means something much more mundane. When you hear a phone number and repeat it aloud, you’re rehearsing it; when you meet a new coworker and say his name three times in your head, you’re rehearsing that too. Rehearsal, in other words, is the act of tracing over information, reminding yourself of it in order to help lodge it in your memory for good.

When that’s done, step two begins. That’s elaboration, which simply means connecting new information with your existing memories. In other words, integrating the new input with the old.

Finally, there’s consolidation, the process by which new neural pathways are created, strengthened, and stored. It occurs at the same time as rehearsal and elaboration. Thanks to consolidation, information passes from your ephemeral working memory into your more enduring long-term memory. In everyday terms, think of it like taking a receipt out of your wallet and tucking it into a folder for safekeeping.

Rehearsal, elaboration, and consolidation. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Well, it generally is. But degraded attention can easily mess the process up. One reason for this is that consolidation normally takes place during mental downtime, when attention is flexible and unconstrained and the mind can roam freely.

But if you’re undergoing stress, experiencing poor mood, or constantly fending off threats, you don’t get mental downtime. Your attention gets hijacked, and the mind never really has the chance to wander in the way that memory-making requires.

There’s also another, more fundamental reason that you can’t make memories when your attention is occupied, and it’s a simple one, too: you can only remember what you focus on. If you’re not mentally present at your child’s birthday party, then you’re barely going to remember it, even if you were there the entire time.

Practicing mindfulness strengthens attention.

Imagine if a friend asked you to come over and help move a heavy sofa. You wouldn’t drop to the floor in preparation and knock out a couple of push ups, would you? Of course not. Building strength takes time – a few exercises shortly before you need to exert yourself is only going to tire you out, not strengthen you.

So why is it that you do the mental equivalent of those push ups whenever you’re facing a difficult scenario? During a job interview, you try to calm yourself with a few deep breaths; before the big game, you try to center yourself and focus.

Just like the last-minute workout, these interventions are too little too late. What’s more, they can even leave you feeling more depleted by draining your cognitive resources. The solution isn’t emergency mental push ups, then: it’s gradual training. And the exercise in question is mindfulness.

Practicing mindfulness was the one thing the author and her team found useful, time and again, in helping to improve participants’ attention systems. During times of stress, mindfulness meditation helped to defend attention – and, practiced enough, it actually improved it.

In other words, poor mood, threat, and stress are all handled better when you regularly meditate – keeping the attention trio of spotlight, floodlight, and juggler in peak condition.

Improve attention by meditating for 12 minutes, five days per week.

When the author brings research participants into her lab, she’s able to track the effects of mindfulness meditation on both their minds and their lives. Improvements in attention and working memory crop up again and again. People’s minds wander less. They’re more aware of where their attention is. Their sense of wellbeing rises, and even their relationships improve.

But that’s not all. The author and her team can see actual physical changes in the brain that correspond to these improvements. For example, the brain’s cortex thickens in sections that are linked to attention – in much the same way that your biceps would grow if you practiced hammer curls in the gym.

So, what exactly do you need to do if you want to reap the rewards of mindfulness meditation? How do you use it to train your attention, and how long do you need to practice for?

The last thing we’ll do in this summary is a meditation exercise – a type of meditation called breath awareness. For now, though, let’s keep things practical. How frequently should you practice, and how long should each session last?

Well, once again it’s like physical exercise. The more time you spend practicing, the greater the benefits you’ll see. In scientific terms, then, mindfulness training has a dose-response effect: the greater the input, the greater the output.

But there’s a more precise answer to these questions. If you want to benefit from your practice, aim to meditate for twelve minutes, five days a week. That’s right: just one hour in total each week is enough to start seeing results.

So why not start now? Next up, we’ll show you how to begin.

Mindfulness meditation exercise

If you’re driving or walking, or in a loud and distracting environment, then feel free to skip this exercise for now and revisit it later. If you’re somewhere quiet, though, and ideally somewhere you can sit, then now might be the right time to start your meditation practice.

Ready? Sit comfortably to begin, upright but not rigid. Put your shoulders back, close your eyes, and breathe.

Don’t try to control your breath. Just follow it, breathing at a normal pace.

Now, take a second to notice the way breathing feels. Pay close attention to the sensations, but don’t think about them: just sense them. Choose one area of your body, wherever the breath is most noticeable, and focus your attention there. Maybe it’s the rise and fall of your diaphragm. Maybe it’s the movement of air in and out of your nose. Choose just one location and sense your breath there: following it in and out, in and out, over and over again.

If you find that your attention has drifted, don’t get frustrated. Simply redirect it to the sensation of the breath. Once again, you don’t need to think: just sense.

Sense the breath. Give it your full attention, feeling its minute, second-by-second alterations. If your mind wanders, simply notice it and redirect your attention.

Still there? Well done. You spent the last minutes meditating. And remember: twelve minutes, five times a week is all it takes.

About the Author

Dr. Amishi P. Jha is professor of psychology at the University of Miami. She serves as the Director of Contemplative Neuroscience for the Mindfulness Research and Practice Initiative, which she co-founded in 2010. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California–Davis and postdoctoral training at the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center at Duke University. Dr. Jha’s work has been featured at NATO, the World Economic Forum, and The Pentagon. She has received coverage for The New York Times, NPR, TIME, Forbes and more. Watch her TED Talk on “How to Tame Your Wandering Mind” with 5 million+ views here:

Genres

Science, Productivity, Mindfulness, Happiness, New Age Meditation, Cognitive Psychology, Personal Success in Business, Self Help, Personal Growth, Personal Development, Leadership, Business, Health

Table of Contents

Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction: “May I Have Your Attention, Please?”
Chapter 1: Attention Is Your Superpower
A user’s guide to the powerful attention system and how it defines your life
Chapter 2: . . . But There’s Kryptonite
The vulnerabilities of the mind and the failed strategies that make things worse
Chapter 3: Push-ups for the Mind
The new science behind the ancient solution that works to train attention
Chapter 4: Find Your Focus
Keep your “flashlight” where you need it in a distracting world
Chapter 5: Stay in Play
Use attention powerfully in the here and now
Chapter 6: Press Record
What you pay attention to is what you experience . . . and what you remember
Chapter 7: Drop the Story
Stop “biased thinking” from affecting your attention and clarity
Chapter 8: Go Big
Use meta-awareness to unlock your attentional powers
Chapter 9: Get Connected
Revolutionize your interactions and relationships
Chapter 10: Feel the Burn
Get the “minimum required dose” to transform your mind
Conclusion: The Peak Mind in Action
The Peak Mind Practice Guide: Core Training for the Brain
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Weeks Five Through Forever
Acknowledgments
Notes
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher

Review

The book is about the science of attention, the most valuable and vulnerable resource of our minds. The author, Amishi P. Jha, is a neuroscientist and a leading expert on attention and mindfulness. She explains how attention works, why it matters, and how it can be improved with simple and flexible exercises that take only 12 minutes a day.

The book covers topics such as:

• The three types of attention: orienting (selecting what to focus on), alerting (maintaining readiness to respond), and executive control (resolving conflicts and switching tasks).
• The four enemies of attention: threat (stress and fear), lure (temptation and distraction), load (information overload and multitasking), and habit (autopilot and mind wandering).
• The benefits of attention: improving performance, well-being, relationships, creativity, and resilience.
• The role of mindfulness in enhancing attention: paying attention to present-moment experience without judgment or reactivity.
• The 12-minute-a-day exercises: based on the author’s research with various high-stress groups such as military personnel, firefighters, athletes, students, teachers, and healthcare workers. The exercises include breath awareness, body scan, open monitoring, loving-kindness, gratitude, and compassion.
• The tips and strategies for applying the exercises to everyday life: such as setting goals, tracking progress, finding a buddy, creating cues, choosing the right time and place, and overcoming obstacles.

The book is a comprehensive and accessible guide to understanding and improving attention. The author writes with clarity, authority, and enthusiasm, combining scientific evidence with personal stories and anecdotes. She does not only explain the theory behind attention and mindfulness, but also provides practical tools and tips for applying them to real-life situations. The book is well-researched and well-referenced, drawing on various sources such as studies, reports, interviews, articles, books, podcasts, etc. The book is also well-structured and well-paced, covering a wide range of topics in a logical and coherent way. The book is engaging and informative for both general readers and experts alike.

The book is not without its limitations or criticisms. Some readers may find the book too repetitive or simplistic, or too complex or technical. Some readers may disagree with some of the author’s opinions or arguments, or question some of her sources or evidence. Some readers may want more details or examples on certain topics or issues. Some readers may find some of the language or imagery too graphic or disturbing.

Overall, the book is a valuable and important contribution to the public discourse on attention and mindfulness. It is a wake-up call for everyone to take charge of their attention before it is too late. It is also a reminder that we are not alone in this challenge, but part of a global community that can learn from each other. The book is highly recommended for anyone who cares about the quality of their mind and life.