If you want to be affective, we need to…
Page 53. If you want to be affective, we need to learn what to pay attention to and what to leave an automatic. The simple strategy of avoidance consists of giving up the effort to direct the flow of awareness. We abandon on purpose.
— from The Instruments (Awareness/Perception/Expectations)
In the book
So the first discipline is simply the choice to be aware at all, because in every moment you are free to think, or to not bother, or to actively avoid thinking, and that choice is far more yours than you let yourself believe. To fly well you must learn what deserves your attention and, just as crucially, what to leave alone. I have wasted whole seasons watching gauges that did not matter while the one that did slid quietly toward red. […] Scan wider than feels necessary. What you are not actively looking for, you will simply miss; so deliberately look where you do not naturally look, assume there is a plane in the blind spot until you have checked, and keep choosing attention over drift, because that choice is always yours. Learn, too, what to stop attending to — awareness is as much about what you ignore as what you watch. Cross-check every important perception against fact. Before you act on a reading, ask the two questions that have saved me more than any others: Is this actually true? and What is another way I could see this? Get the other side first — solicit the other person's point of view before deciding you have the whole picture — and hold the humility that there are four sides to every story. — The Instruments (Awareness/Perception/Expectations)