Attention & Focus · “You Become What You Hold”
Goal Clarity + the RAS Focus Practice
Write clear, specific goals and review them daily so that deliberate focus ‘sets’ the reticular activating system to filter for and notice relevant opportunities.
Goal clarity + RAS focus: Write a few clear, specific, meaningful goals. Review them daily so your attentional filter stays tuned to them. You’ll start noticing relevant opportunities you’d have missed — then act on them. Focus sets what you notice; it doesn’t deliver results without action.
What it is
This is John Assaraf’s goal-and-focus discipline: writing clear, specific goals and reviewing them daily so that deliberate, repeated focus tunes your reticular activating system (RAS) — the brain’s attentional filter — to spot relevant people, resources and opportunities you would otherwise miss.
In his telling, the RAS filters “400 billion bits” of sensory input each second, and what you make important and focus on determines what gets through. The point is not magic delivery but attention set by intention: “you will start to notice things in your world that you would’ve missed before.
Opportunities will arise, and you’ll take them.” This is the cognitive cousin of his vision board and rehearsal practices — here the lever is clarity and written focus, not imagery. It differs from concentration practices which train sustained focus on one object; this trains what your everyday attention filters for.
The Method
Assaraf’s practice, faithfully:
- Get clear and specific about what you want — vague goals can’t tune the filter. Define the outcome concretely.
- Write the goals down (he favours written goals and scripts) and make them emotionally meaningful so the brain flags them as important.
- Review them daily — re-reading and re-focusing keeps the goals salient, which is what “sets” the RAS.
- Expect to notice differently — trust that with focus you will start seeing opportunities, contacts and information relevant to the goal.
- Act on what you notice — Assaraf insists the noticing is only useful if you take the opportunities: focus without action “is wasting your time.” (Sourcing note: faithful to Assaraf’s Having It All, The Answer and NeuroGym goal materials; the “400 billion bits” and “notice things you would’ve missed” framing is his.)
Source & Lineage
The practice descends from the goal-setting strand of success literature (Earl Nightingale, Napoleon Hill, the written-goals tradition) and from popular accounts of the reticular activating system as an attentional filter.
Assaraf systematised it in Having It All (2003) and The Answer (with Murray Smith, 2008), and folded it into NeuroGym’s programs.; (written-goal entries).
Common refinements
Vague goals. A fuzzy goal can’t tune attention; be specific and write it down.
- Set and forget. The benefit comes from daily review keeping the goal salient.
- Noticing without acting. Spotting an opportunity and not taking it wastes the practice.
- Over-claiming the RAS. Use it as “I’ll notice more relevant things,” not “the universe will arrange it.”
- Too many goals. A few clear priorities focus attention better than a long list.