The Focusing Illusion

For many years, I ran a summer basketball league with more than 60 teams playing across six courts.

Before games started each night, I worried about referees.

We needed to cover six courts for six hours. Every referee slot was filled on the schedule. Most nights, everyone showed up as planned. But not every night.

So I’d check and then I’d check again.

As the first games approached, I’d find myself watching the entrance, counting officials, mentally preparing for the one who might not show.

Making sure we had referees was part of my job. It definitely mattered, as the games didn’t run without referees.

But looking back, I gave that possibility far more of my attention than it deserved.

Because while I was watching for the referee who might not walk through the door, dozens of coaches and hundreds of players and their families were walking through it every single night. And too often, I wasn’t paying enough attention to them.

What might I have learned if I’d stopped and talked with a coach? What would I have noticed about a player’s experience if I’d been paying attention to them instead of checking the scorer’s table to make sure the referees were there? Which relationship could I have strengthened with five unhurried minutes? I don’t know.

Too often, my attention was somewhere else.

Later I came across the explanation

Years later, I came across an idea from Daniel Kahneman that gave me language for part of what was happening.

He called it the focusing illusion: when we concentrate our attention on one aspect of something, we tend to exaggerate its importance relative to everything else. As Kahneman put it, “Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it.”

I wasn’t wrong to care whether the referees showed up. I was wrong about how much of my attention I should give to that possibility.

Protect the floor, miss the ceiling

Referees represented the floor: Can we successfully run tonight’s games?

Coaches, players and parents represented the ceiling: How good could we make their experience?

The referees could determine whether that night’s games ran successfully. The experience of the people walking through our doors would help determine whether the league and our program were successful over time.

I wasn’t choosing between something important and something unimportant. I was choosing, mostly without realizing it, between protecting the floor and raising the ceiling.

My attention kept pulling me toward the floor.

I was so focused on making sure nothing went wrong that I wasn’t paying enough attention to what could go right.

Why the wrong things get our attention

I wasn’t imagining a risk. The risk was real. Officials had failed to show up before. My focus on it definitely made the risk loom larger in my mind than it was. This distracted me from other important aspects of my role.

Every problem we choose to focus on, even a legitimate one, has an opportunity cost.

Leadership attention is a scarce organizational resource. Where you spend it shapes the organization just as surely as where you spend your money.

Every club runs on this pattern

Club directors live in an environment built to produce exactly this kind of attention.

Did the coach show up? Did we get enough registrations? Is the facility unlocked? Did the uniforms arrive? Has that parent’s complaint been handled? Did everyone pay?

Those things genuinely matter. And because the cost of getting them wrong is immediate and visible, they command your attention whether you offer it willingly or not.

Meanwhile, nobody is demanding that you spend five minutes learning what a coach is struggling with. No alarm goes off when a parent has an experience you could improve. Nothing forces you to notice the relationship that could matter six months from now.

Those opportunities rarely send an angry email.

Problems demand attention. Opportunities usually don’t.

Where this leaves you

I don’t think the answer is to stop caring whether the referees show up, or to ignore registrations, uniforms, and unlocked doors. Those things are real, and ignoring them has real consequences.

The answer is noticing when a legitimate problem has claimed more of your attention than it deserves, and asking what you might be missing while you’re watching it.

Questions for Leaders

• What has more of my attention right now than it deserves?

• Am I spending all of my attention protecting the floor and none of it raising the ceiling?

• What opportunity might I be failing to notice because I’m watching for something to go wrong?