If you want to understand or learn something, you often have to devote some time to focused, careful attention. But there is a downside to it.
According to Daniel Kahneman, “Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.” People have a tendency to to overemphasize the importance of certain information or events simply because they are focusing on them at the moment. That’s the focusing illusion.
If you focus on your salary, and then someone asks you about your satisfaction with your life, you are likely to put too much emphasis on salary in answering that question.
Imagine you’ve been working on a new product launch, and there’s one feature the development team is particularly proud of. It’s an innovative feature that’s brand new in the market.
Your focus on that feature might make you think it’s more important to your market than it really is.
One simple way to combat the focusing illusion is to get input from others, who are probably not focused on the same things you are. Where possible, quantify the factors involved in a decision.
We like to say that something “grabs our attention,” but the opposite is often the case. Our attention grabs the thing.
Somewhat related to the focusing illusion is the availability heuristic, which is a mental shortcut that relies on what immediately or easily comes to mind. The idea is that if it’s easily recalled, it must be more important or more common.
News coverage can make us think that a rare event is more common that it is. For example, coverage of airplane crashes can make people think flying is more dangerous than driving when the opposite is the case. Media coverage of shark attacks make people overestimate their frequency.
Marketers can be deceived by this mental shortcut when a particular strategy worked very well in a recent campaign so they decide to use it again without considering if another strategy might be more appropriate.
To avoid the availability heuristic, seek out objective data and consider alternative perspectives. It can also be helpful to use checklists and other structured decision-making tools.
The focusing illusion causes us to give more weight or importance to something that we’ve been thinking about, while the availability heuristic affects our perception of probabilities. To avoid these errors, broaden your focus, be sure to consider a wider range of factors, and seek out accurate statistical data.
