attention is the most essential mental resource for any…

Keyword attention attention is the most essential mental resource for any organism. It determines which aspects of the environment we deal with and most of the time various automatic subconscious processes make the correct choice about what gets passed through to our conscious awareness. This requires extraordinary amounts of energy because millions of neurons are monitoring the environment and they need to select which part of the environment we're going to be paying attention to. These neurons are called the attentional filter and they work primarily in the background. That's why many times you can be driving on a long stretch of road and will not remember very much of what you saw when you're driving. Two of the most crucial principles used by the attentional filter are change and importance. The brain is able to detect change very easily and will also detect how important things are happening. The intentional filter is what allows you to have a conversation while you're driving and as soon as there is a change your attention is directed towards the change and you refocus. Because of this attentional filter, we end up experiencing a great deal of the world on autopilot and not registering the complexities nuances and the beauty of what's right in front of us. A good number of failures of attention occur because we're not using these principles to our advantage.

— from Fuel (Energy)

In the book

Refuel the physical tank first, because it carries the others. Move your body — exercise is the fastest way to alter a depleted state and sharpen the mind; when the gauge spikes into panic, take four or five long, slow belly breaths, which calm the whole system at the source; and never undervalue sleep and food, the plainest refuelers there are. Spend the mental tank on purpose. Attention is the single most essential mental resource you have — it decides what you even notice, and your brain processes everything at a real cost, so automate the small, repeated decisions to save the fuel for the ones that matter. In most choices the goal is not the perfect answer but a good-enough one — spend only the energy the decision truly warrants — and let well-built habits run themselves, since a little useful mindlessness frees the mind's scarce fuel for what truly needs it. — Fuel (Energy)

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