PDF Summary:Peak Mind, by Amishi P. Jha

Your ability to pay attention impacts every aspect of your life—from how well you perform at work to how deeply you connect with others. Yet it’s often difficult to focus on what matters.

In Peak Mind, neuroscientist Amishi Jha suggests that this struggle to pay attention prevents your mind from functioning at its peak, resulting in poorer decisions, forgotten information, and emotional instability. She argues that practicing mindfulness can help you overcome these challenges and improve your ability to pay attention.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through Jha's key ideas, covering how attention works and impacts you, the three causes of scattered attention, and why practicing mindfulness is the most effective strategy for strengthening attention. Additionally, we'll expand upon Jha's ideas with research and advice on improving attention from psychologists and self-improvement practitioners.

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Negative Effect 4: Weakened Executive Functioning

Jha explains that distorted perceptions, missed moments, and fragmented learning can leave you with irrelevant information in working memory, impeding your ability to make decisions and coordinate tasks. This is because your executive subsystem depends on clear input from your orienting and alerting systems to weigh choices and plan action steps—an ability known as executive functioning.

When your attention is scattered, working memory becomes clogged with details that don’t matter, leaving minimal space for the facts you need to assess options or juggle multiple tasks. This lack of relevant input disrupts your ability to logically plan and carry out the sequential steps involved in complex tasks—resulting in uninformed decisions and ineffective task management. In other words, your overall executive functioning suffers.

For example, suppose you’re planning a trip, which involves comparing flight times, coordinating hotel check-ins, and managing visa requirements, but you keep getting distracted by text messages. As irrelevant details occupy your working memory, you might forget to account for a layover, overlook time zone differences, or double-book accommodations—ultimately derailing the entire itinerary.

(Shortform note: If you struggle with executive functioning, it might be because your attention is scattered, as Jha suggests—or it could stem from damage to your prefrontal cortex. In Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, Daniel G. Amen explains that the prefrontal cortex directs cognitive processes such as concentration, self-control, adaptability, and time management—functions that enable your executive subsystem to make decisions and prioritize tasks. When the prefrontal cortex is impaired, it can’t properly regulate these processes, so you struggle to coordinate your decisions and priorities. Amen says activities that repair your prefrontal cortex, like listening to Mozart, can help you restore executive function.)

Negative Effect 5: Emotional Imbalance

The fifth way scattered attention negatively impacts you is by creating emotional imbalance. It does this by disrupting how you process uncomfortable feelings in working memory. As previously explained, Jha says that attention determines which emotions enter working memory and how long they stay there. Keeping attention on an uncomfortable emotion re-feeds that feeling into your limited-capacity working memory, intensifying it and crowding out other information you might want or need to focus on.

On the other hand, withdrawing attention from an uncomfortable emotion prevents you from fully registering and resolving it, allowing it to linger dormant and potentially erupt later. By swinging between these extremes—over-focusing on or denying uncomfortable emotions—you destabilize your emotional balance, making it harder to stay composed, think clearly, and respond thoughtfully in everyday interactions.

Limited Neural Resources Amplify Emotional Imbalance

Research expands on how attention problems disrupt emotional balance: Working memory and emotional processing compete for the same neural resources in the brain. This means that your brain has limited capacity to handle both processes simultaneously.

When an uncomfortable emotion enters working memory, it activates networks that evolved to prioritize emotional signals, particularly those related to survival (such as fear or anxiety). These networks continue processing the emotion to evaluate its significance and potential impact on your well-being. In other words, your brain keeps working on the emotion in the background (like how apps run background updates)—which explains why uncomfortable emotions can linger even when you withdraw attention from them.

This ongoing processing intensifies competition between emotional processing and working memory for already limited neural resources, creating a cycle that amplifies emotional imbalance. To understand how this imbalance amplifies, imagine trying to run multiple demanding programs on a computer with limited processing power. Eventually, some of the programs will dominate while others freeze or crash, leaving the system too unstable to handle both existing and new tasks. Similarly, neural competition plays out in one of two ways, each disrupting your ability to effectively regulate emotions:

• Emotional processing dominates: It impedes cognitive functioning, making it hard to think rationally or solve problems. This increases stress and negative emotions, further taxing the emotional processing system.

• Working memory prioritizes cognitive tasks: It doesn’t adequately process emotions, leaving them unresolved. These unprocessed emotions then resurface later, intensifying competition for neural resources.

Researchers suggest that attention dysregulation further intensifies this competition for resources, explaining why people with attention problems like ADHD often experience difficulties with emotional regulation and are at higher risk for internalizing problems such as anxiety and depression.

Negative Effect 6: Ineffective Communication

The sixth way scattered attention negatively impacts you is by hindering your ability to communicate effectively. Jha explains that to interact and relate well with others, your orienting system needs to pick up on specific social signals—like words, tone, and body language—while your alerting system remains aware of a conversation’s broader context. When you don’t pay attention, these subsystems can’t supply working memory with the complete picture, causing you to overlook important nuances, misread people’s intentions, and respond based on inaccurate impressions. These lapses make it difficult to truly understand and empathize with others’ perspectives—which prevents you from connecting meaningfully with them.

(Shortform note: Similarly, Jenny Odell (How to Do Nothing) blames scattered attention for communication breakdowns and relationship problems. She suggests that the way we interact with each other online encourages us to process information superficially—as a result, we don’t attend to context, nuance, and depth in conversations. In addition to impacting individual relationships, Odell argues that superficial processing contributes to a broader societal trend of social atomization, where traditional social structures disintegrate, and people become more independent and dispersed. This trend impedes social cohesion, contributing to increased feelings of isolation and mental health problems.)

Part 3: Why Common Attention-Management Strategies Don’t Work

We’ve just explained how attention interacts with working memory and why scattered attention creates problems in your life. In an attempt to solve these problems, you’ve likely tried to implement three common attention-management strategies: blocking out distractions in your environment, forcing yourself to focus, and trying to think positively. Jha argues that these attention-management strategies often fall short because they don’t address the three root causes of scattered attention: evolution, stress, and multitasking. In this section, we’ll walk through each cause, examining why common strategies fail to produce lasting improvements.

Cause 1: Evolution

According to Jha, your attention system evolved to help you survive in environments filled with immediate threats (such as predators) and sudden opportunities (such as food sources or potential mates). For our ancestors, failing to notice these threats and opportunities could be fatal—so our attention systems evolved to automatically scan for changes in the environment and treat every unexpected stimulus as potentially significant. This can make it difficult to sustain focus on a single task. For example, while trying to write your novel, you may find you’re continually distracted by background noises that don’t signal a threat to your survival (like traffic sounds or barking dogs in your neighborhood).

(Shortform note: Research supports the idea that we're evolutionarily programmed to pay more attention to environmental stimuli than to a single point of focus. For example, one study found that traits associated with ADHD, such as distractibility and excessive movement, might have provided evolutionary advantages for early humans when foraging for resources. This is because such traits encouraged frequent exploration of new areas, increasing the chances of discovering fresh food sources and avoiding depleted ones.)

Why Evolution Undermines Common Attention-Management Strategies

Jha explains that people often try to subdue this evolutionary tendency for environmental vigilance by forcing themselves to focus. But she explains that it's hard to override millions of years of evolutionary programming with sheer willpower. The vigilance system is deeply ingrained in the brain's architecture and operates automatically unconsciously, which makes it particularly resistant to conscious attempts to overpower it.

(Shortform note: The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal offers insight into why relying solely on willpower to override evolutionary tendencies is ineffective: External factors such as stress or lack of sleep compromise your ability to exercise self-control. Since most people face such issues daily, their willpower isn’t strong enough to resist their brain’s automatic, unconscious habits.)

Another way people try to override this tendency is by blocking out environmental distractions. For example, while writing, you might turn off phone notifications and close your email. But Jha explains that blocking out distractions makes you even more aware of potential environmental changes. So, your attention still wavers—you check the time, notice coworkers walking past, or wonder if you've missed any messages.

(Shortform note: Why does blocking out distractions make you more aware of those distractions? According to research, it’s because this strategy forces you to think about the very thing you’re trying to ignore. One study found that when participants tried to actively suppress unwanted thoughts or ignore stimuli, it often led them to focus more on those thoughts or stimuli. This effect occurs because the act of trying to suppress or ignore something requires the brain to maintain a representation of that thing (so that it knows what to avoid), and this mental representation inadvertently makes that thing more prominent in your mind.)

Cause 2: Stress

The second cause of scattered attention is stress. Jha explains that when you feel stressed, your brain activates primitive survival circuits that evolved to help you detect and escape dangers. These circuits narrow your attention scope, automatically shifting resources away from your current task and toward monitoring potential dangers. While this response helped our ancestors survive immediate physical threats, it disrupts the ability to maintain focus in modern environments where stress often comes from non-life-threatening sources like work deadlines or relationship challenges.

(Shortform note: Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence) expands on Jha's explanation, emphasizing that this primitive response to stress doesn't just impact attention, but also the ability to think rationally. When your brain shifts resources in response to stress, it shuts down the parts of your brain responsible for conscious thought and problem-solving. This reduces cognitive flexibility, making it harder to shift focus or consider alternative perspectives that might help alleviate your stress. Goleman adds that these negative effects tend to compound over time: Prolonged stress can cause structural changes in brain regions responsible for attention and memory—and these changes further degrade cognitive function.)

Why You Can’t Counter Stress-Related Inattention With Positive Thinking

Common advice suggests using positive thinking to reduce stress and restore focus. However, according to Jha, this strategy often backfires because suppressing worried thoughts and maintaining artificial positivity requires significant mental effort—effort that draws on the same limited attention resources your brain is already diverting toward monitoring threats. As a result, each attempt to think positively leaves you with even fewer resources—and less space in your working memory—for focusing on your task.

For example, say you feel anxious about messing up a big project. If you force yourself to think, “Everything will go perfectly,” you’ll use up mental energy trying to suppress your doubts. This will make it even harder to focus on what you need to do to make it a success.

(Shortform note: Physician Lissa Rankin (Mind Over Medicine) clarifies that positive thinking only backfires when you believe you shouldn't experience negative emotions at all. Some amount of negativity is inevitable, and trying in vain to avoid it will cause you to spiral into chronic anxiety, depleting even more attention resources than your negative emotions would. Therefore, Rankin recommends accepting all your emotions without judgment—that is, without labeling them as good or bad. This naturally leads to a more positive outlook in general and helps you preserve attention resources, which you can then use to process your feelings as they arise and get back to baseline more easily.)

Cause 3: Multitasking

The third cause of scattered attention is multitasking. Jha explains that your brain can only effectively process one task at a time. When you attempt to handle multiple attention-demanding tasks simultaneously, your brain must switch between them—and to achieve this, it must completely clear out information about the current task before engaging with another. Each switch drains your attention resources and delays your progress, making you increasingly prone to errors and mental fatigue.

(Shortform note: Brian Tracy (Eat That Frog!) expands on how task-switching drains attention sources and creates delays: After switching attention, it takes 17 minutes to totally refocus on a task and continue. Starting and stopping repeatedly can increase the time needed to complete a task by 500%. In contrast, when you work without interruption, you can cut the time required to finish by half.)

Why Attention Management Strategies Don’t Help You Multitask Better

According to Jha, you might try to multitask more effectively by blocking out environmental distractions or commanding yourself to concentrate harder. However, these approaches fail because they can't change this fundamental limitation: Your brain cannot focus on multiple attention-demanding tasks at once, no matter what. Instead, these strategies only add more strain to attention resources that are already depleted by your constant task switching.

For example, while preparing client documents, you block chat notifications and try to focus intensely as you switch between analyzing data and writing summaries. Despite these efforts, each switch between analyzing and writing forces your brain to reset, so you work more slowly and make more mistakes than you would if you'd complete one task before starting another.

When Multitasking Works

Hyperfocus author Chris Bailey adds nuance to Jha’s argument against multitasking, suggesting that you can effectively perform some tasks simultaneously, depending on their complexity.

He says you can easily perform two simple tasks simultaneously (like listening to music while making coffee). This is because simple tasks don’t require conscious focus—you’re able to perform them without using many cognitive resources, so you don’t get tired or error-prone.

You can also perform one simple task alongside a complex one (like tying shoelaces while doing mental math). This is especially true if the simple task is a habitual task you perform in autopilot mode—which means you make minimal decisions about it, and thus don’t have to shift attention away from your complex task.

However, when it comes to complex or cognitively demanding tasks (like figuring out a difficult equation or writing a report), he’s with Jha: You need to focus completely on one task at a time.

Part 4: How to Pay Better Attention

We’ve just clarified why common attention-management strategies fail to address the three main causes of scattered attention. Since it’s difficult to override evolutionary programming, eliminate stress, or effectively multitask, the outlook for improving attention may appear bleak. However, Jha argues that despite these challenges, you can train yourself to pay better attention by developing a single skill: mindfulness.

In this final part of the guide, we’ll explain what mindfulness is, why it improves attention, and how often you should practice it to see results.

What Is Mindfulness?

Jha defines mindfulness as a mental training practice that helps you maintain awareness of your experiences as they unfold, moment by moment. It involves deliberately paying attention to your thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment without judgment or reactivity.

Jha explains that to practicing mindfulness requires three steps:

1. Choose a single point of focus, such as your breath, and maintain your attention there.
2. If you notice your mind wandering, briefly acknowledge what captured your attention—whether it's a thought, sound, or physical sensation—then gently redirect your attention back to your chosen focus point.
3. Repeat this process of noticing and redirecting throughout the session. Each time your mind wanders, recognize that this is normal, then return to your chosen focus point.

(Shortform note: If you choose to focus on your breath as your point of focus, don’t try to breathe in any special way. The goal isn’t to change or control your breath, but simply to observe it and remain neutral to whatever you observe.)

Adopt an Experimental Approach

Jha presents mindfulness as a tool for improving attention, suggesting that you should expect to see tangible results from your practice. This may lead you to practice with the specific goal of enhancing your focus and concentration. However, Buddhist monk Henepola Gunaratana (Mindfulness in Plain English) warns that practicing mindfulness as a means to an end may prevent you from benefiting from it—because being attached to an outcome creates the very mental agitation that mindfulness aims to quiet. Therefore, he recommends releasing your goals and expectations so that you can practice meditation for its own sake.

To accomplish this, he says you should approach each practice as an experiment: Let go of any preconceptions of what it should feel like and what it should achieve. Instead, stand back and watch whatever’s going on in your body and mind, without straining or rushing, and without judging your thoughts and feelings.

Gunaratana stresses that your practice should never become mindless, automatic, or predictable. Therefore, you might find it beneficial to incorporate different kinds of meditation into your practice, such as the following three methods:

• Candle meditation: Light a candle, sit comfortably, and focus on the candle flame.

• Mantra meditation: Focus your attention on a word or phrase such as “om” or “calm.”

• Progressive muscle relaxation: Lie down and slowly begin tensing a part of your body. After tensing for up to 10 seconds, relax the tension. Then move on to another part of your body.

Why Mindfulness Improves Your Attention

Mindfulness improves attention by directly addressing the three root causes of scattered attention—evolution, stress, and multitasking. According to Jha, it does this by training you to notice and deliberately guide your attention system’s automatic reactions, rather than trying to suppress them.

Let’s explore how practicing mindfulness addresses each of the three causes of scattered attention.

1) Mindfulness Helps Refocus Automatic Attention Shifts

Recall that your brain evolved to be vigilant, making you susceptible to environmental distractions. Mindfulness works with this tendency rather than against it. As we explained above, it teaches you to acknowledge rather than suppress distractions, whether they’re internal or external, and quickly redirect your attention back to the object of your focus. According to Jha, this allows you to maintain awareness of both what you want to focus on and your environment, without being derailed by every new stimulus.

(Shortform note: Research shows that mindfulness helps prevent attention from wandering by keeping two key brain networks in balance: the default mode network (DMN), which activates during mind-wandering, and the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which helps control executive functions and attention. Mindfulness training strengthens their opposing relationship, ensuring that when one is active, the other stays quiet—making it easier to stay focused.)

2) Mindfulness Preserves Attention Resources Under Stress

Rather than attempting to suppress stress through positive thinking, mindfulness helps you observe worrisome thoughts and emotions without immediately reacting to them. This non-reactive stance benefits you in two ways.

First, it helps you thrive under stress—because it trains you to notice signs of stress, like racing thoughts or physical tension, without judgment. This lack of judgment creates mental space between the sensations and your response. As a result, instead of letting those sensations overwhelm you, you’re able to take a pause and react consciously. This deactivates the primitive survival circuits that narrow attention, preserving mental resources for your chosen tasks.

Second, with consistent practice, your brain gradually learns not to interpret every challenge as a threat, which lowers your overall stress levels. Each time you observe stressful stimuli without judging or reacting to them, you train your survival circuit to stop perceiving (and responding to) those stimuli as threats.

(Shortform note: In addition to helping you adopt a non-reactive stance, mindfulness helps you maintain attention under stress by changing your brain’s baseline activity. One study found that regularly practicing mindfulness over eight weeks increased activity in the left side of the prefrontal cortex—an area that becomes highly active when experiencing positive emotional states. These changes persisted for at least four months after the mindfulness training ended. This sustained shift in brain activation helps explain why practicing mindfulness lowers stress: The practice rewires your brain toward patterns associated with calmer, more focused states.)

3) Mindfulness Strengthens Single-Task Focus

Jha argues that mindfulness reduces your tendency to multitask—and thereby minimizes the attention drain and errors that come from constant task-switching. Since mindfulness trains you to notice when your attention wavers and gently redirect your focus, it helps you recognize the urge to switch tasks in daily life. Noticing this urge before you automatically act on it gives you a chance to consciously choose to focus on one task at a time.

(Shortform note: Research reveals that mindfulness training improves more than just your ability to focus on single tasks—it also helps you handle situations that require multitasking more calmly. It does this by enhancing your memory and emotional resilience. One study examining the effects of eight weeks of mindfulness practice found that participants maintained focus on individual tasks for longer periods, demonstrated better recall of completed tasks, and experienced less frustration choosing where to focus when confronted with stressful situations requiring multitasking.)

Consistent Practice Improves Attention

Jha argues that making mindfulness a daily habit is key to improving attention because it repeatedly exercises your attention system's ability to notice and redirect focus. However, you don’t need lengthy sessions to see results. According to her, practicing mindfulness for just 12 minutes a day, five days a week, over four weeks can improve attention. She emphasizes that consistency matters more than duration—practicing regularly builds stronger attention skills than longer, sporadic sessions.

(Shortform note: Research suggests that Jha's approach might not be as effective for everyone—some people might need longer or more frequent training sessions or complementary strategies to achieve the same benefits. For example, one study found that factors such as chronic pain, physical disability, psychological expectations, and social support can affect engagement with—and the outcome of—mindfulness programs.)

Jha suggests that you can integrate 12 minutes of mindfulness into your daily routine through both formal and informal practices. Formal practices involve setting aside time each day for mindfulness meditation. Jha recommends beginning with a manageable commitment, such as five minutes a day, and gradually increasing this duration until you can comfortably practice for 12 minutes a day.

(Shortform note: James Clear (Atomic Habits) offers two tips that might make it easier to adopt a formal routine. First, use the two-minute rule—instead of committing to an entire session, commit to the first two minutes to get the ball rolling. After that, continue practicing for two-minute increments. Breaking your practice into these small chunks will make it feel easier, thus increasing the likelihood you’ll continue. Second, schedule your practice in between activities you already enjoy. By doing so, you’ll automatically begin to associate your practice with pleasurable activities, which will make you want to practice regularly.)

Informal practices involve weaving mindfulness into daily life by paying full attention to routine activities. The key is to maintain the three key steps: focusing on what you’re doing, noticing if your attention wanders, and redirecting your attention back to what you’re doing. For example, if you’re washing dishes, feel the warmth of the water, see the soap bubbles, and notice each dish’s texture. When your attention inevitably drifts to other thoughts, simply notice this and bring your attention back to washing.

(Shortform note: Leo Babauta, founder of Zen Habits, suggests that you'll find it easier to remember to be mindful during daily activities if you deliberately design your environment to support the practice. He recommends placing visual reminders such as notes or meaningful objects in locations you encounter throughout your day to trigger mindful engagement with routine activities. For example, you might place a "Be Present" sign above your kitchen sink to prompt you to practice each time you start washing dishes.)