Summary of Daniel Goleman's Focus

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#1

John Berger, house detective, is constantly watching shoppers in a department store on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He is focus embodied. His gaze roams like a spotlight. He is panoramic awareness alternating with constant vigilance for a telling but rare signal.

#2

Attention is a littleknown and underappreciated mental asset. It is the beam of awareness that guides our thoughts and actions. It is vital for how we navigate life, and it is developed through cognitive science studies and practical applications.

#3

The indifference of that mother and the silence among the sisters are symptoms of how technology captures our attention and disrupts our connections. In 2006, the word pizzled entered our lexicon to describe the feeling people had when the person they were with whipped out a BlackBerry and started talking to someone else.

#4

The eight cognitive skills are attention, memory, problem solving, decision making, spatial reasoning, language, and social skills. The eight mental skills are attention, memory, problem solving, decision making, spatial reasoning, language, and social skills.