Your brain is drowning in data. The skill is teaching it what to notice.
Most people feel like life “just happens” to them. It doesn’t. Your brain is flooded with sensory data and then forced to squeeze it through a tiny bottleneck called conscious attention. Vision alone can send on the order of millions of bits per second along the optic nerve. Your conscious throughput sits around ~10 bits per second. A firehose goes in. A drinking straw comes out. Some researchers also argue that, taken together, our sensory systems can deliver around a billion bits per second, which highlights how extreme that bottleneck is.
That bottleneck explains why multitasking feels rough and why working memory tops out at about 3 to 5 items. You can only hold a handful of things in mind at once, so what gets in truly matters.
Enter the Reticular Activating System (RAS). It is a network in the brainstem that helps regulate wakefulness and acts like a gatekeeper for attention. It filters the noise and promotes what looks relevant based on survival, goals, novelty and emotion.
You see the filter at work every day. In a noisy room, your name slices through the chatter. That classic “cocktail party effect” is a neat example of how salient cues can bypass the block and grab awareness.
The science, put simply
- Input vs attention: Retina to brain transmits on the order of ~10⁶ bits/s; conscious thought runs at ~10 bits/s. Some authors estimate total sensory inflow around ~10⁹ bits/s, but exact totals vary by method.
- Working memory reality check: You can actively juggle roughly 3–5 items. Design your day around that truth.
- RAS role: Brainstem circuits coordinate sleep–wake state and filter what reaches awareness, prioritising things that look important to your needs and goals.
- Name effect: People often notice their own name in the “ignored” stream, showing how the filter flags meaning.
A quick story
When I first learned this, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I realised I was letting the world decide what got through my filter. Fear-driven news. Celebrity rubbish. Other people’s urgency. Random pings. So I ran a tiny experiment. I wrote three clear cues I wanted my brain to surface that week: “aligned clients”, “kindness”, and “solutions not problems”. It sounded a bit airy-fairy. It wasn’t. Within days, I noticed two conversations I would normally scroll past that turned into real opportunities, caught a throwaway compliment that lifted my mood for hours, and solved an annoying task with half the effort because the answer now “popped out”. Nothing mystical. I was simply teaching my RAS what to prioritise.
This is how we maximise our experience of life, while we still have it. Not by forcing the world to change, but by training the filter that chooses our focus.
How to train your RAS and win back your attention
- Tell it what to look for, daily. Write 3 specific targets for the next 24 hours. Example: “Speak to one facilities manager”, “proof of progress on X”, “a chance to help someone”. Repetition teaches your filter.
- Use clear cues. Keywords on a Post-it, a simple mantra, or a screensaver with your top goal. The more concrete the cue, the more likely matching info jumps out.
- Single-task in short sprints. Work 20–45 minutes on one meaningful task. Fewer open loops means more working memory for the right signals to break through.
- Prime before you scroll. Before email or social, ask: “What am I here to find?” Set a search image in your mind. Then scan with intention rather than absorbing noise.
- If–then rules for attention. “If calendar alert = deep work, then phone goes in another room.” Automate guardrails so your limited attention stays protected.
- Lower background arousal. Two minutes of slow nasal breathing, a short walk, or instrumental music. A calmer baseline sharpens the signal and reduces false alarms.
- Write it down, then look for it. End the day with a 3-line “next moves” list. Sleep consolidates the priority. Tomorrow, your RAS is primed to spot the path of least resistance.
If this lands, try it for a week. Teach your brain what matters and watch how the world reorganises around what you choose to notice. That is how you move from “life happens to me” to “I create my experience of life.”
Love,
nousana.
Sources and Further Reading
https://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(24)00808-0
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39694032/
https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/thinking-slowly-the-paradoxical-slowness-of-human-behavior
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-human-brain-operates-at-a-stunningly-slow-pace/
https://meisterlab.caltech.edu/documents/30100/Zheng_2024_The_unbearable_slowness_of_being-_Why_do_we_live_at_10_bitss.pdf
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/468943
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060726180933.htm
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2864034/
https://englelab.gatech.edu/articles/2015/Shipstead%2C%20Harrison%20and%20Engle%20%282015%29.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK549835/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8908911/
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