Why attention looks a lot like intelligence (and probably is….)

I was talking with Asma the other day when she said something that made me pause.  Not because it was surprising, but because of what happened next. Or rather, because I finally noticed a pattern in what keeps happening.

“You know what that means, right?” I asked. “Yep,” she said, and then proceeded to say exactly what I was thinking. It was such a small moment, but it made me realize: she does this a lot. And most people don’t.

Usually when I point out these kinds of connections (when someone says X and it contradicts Y they said earlier, or implies Z they haven’t acknowledged) people respond with some version of “Oh yeah, true!” Like they’re seeing it for the first time. Like the pieces were there but they hadn’t quite assembled them yet.

But Asma had already assembled them. She was already there. And this wasn’t the first time.

The difference, I think, is attention. Not intelligence (although she is quite intelligent, too!) not some special insight gene…just attention. But not just attention to the conversation or to me or to the topic at hand. Attention to her own thinking. She was actually watching herself think.

Most of us don’t do that. We think, sure; constantly, reflexively…but we don’t observe ourselves thinking. We don’t track our own mental movements the way we might watch someone else work through a problem. Our thoughts come and go like weather, and we experience them but don’t really examine them. We say things without fully registering that we’ve said them. We form opinions without noticing how we formed them. We reach conclusions and then forget the path we took to get there.

Thinking about your thinking

Asma was doing something different. She was thinking and …thinking about her thinking. When she said something in earlier conversations, she didn’t just say it and move on—she held onto it, filed it away, stayed aware of it as part of the landscape of the discussion. So when the conversation curved back around, when a new point touched on that earlier thought, she saw the connection immediately. Not nercesarryl because she’s smarter, but because she was paying a particular kind of attention: the kind where you’re aware of your own mental state, where you’re tracking not just what you think but THAT YOU THOUGHT IT. 

This is what people mean when they talk about metacognition. Thinking about thinking. It sounds abstract, maybe even pretentious, but it’s actually very practical. 

It’s the difference between having thoughts and watching yourself have thoughts. Between making a claim and remembering you made it. Between forming an idea and being conscious of the assumptions that idea rests on.

WE ARE ALL capable of this.  Humans are  pattern recognition machines. Our brains are constantly making connections, drawing inferences, spotting contradictions. The raw capacity is there. What’s often missing is the attention. The deliberate, sustained awareness of our own thinking as it unfolds.

Paying attention

When someone seems insightful, when they spot things others miss, it’s usually not because they have access to some special cognitive toolkit the rest of us don’t have. It’s because they’re actually using the toolkit we all have. They’re paying attention. Not just to the world, but to themselves engaging with the world. They’re watching their own thoughts carefully enough to see where they lead.

That’s all “insight” really is, I think. Not magic. Just the discipline of paying attention to your own mind long enough to see what’s already there.