Thinking Versus Paying Attention
Stop walking the programmatic trail — open your eyes and let the insight arrive.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 90%
Asked how he keeps composure while being attacked in public, Peterson gives a two-part answer. The first part is practice: twenty thousand hours of clinical listening while maintaining composure under very stressful circumstances, plus a television producer who taught him that anger plays very badly in a public forum like video. The second part is the transferable mechanism. He draws a distinction between thinking and paying attention: if you are thinking you are walking down a programmatic trail, but if you are paying attention you open your eyes and let your mind go where it will, and ideas pop up in your field of consciousness. In that mode he attends mostly to non-verbal communication — facial expression, posture, tone of voice — and picks up patterns. The trigger is adversarial behaviour: normally when you talk to someone you accept their persona and do not look behind, but if people mistreat you or become adversarial he can snap into a different mode and look behind the scene. His own caveat is that he does not do it all the time, partly because he does not always want to know what people are up to, and partly because he has to remember to.
Origin
Peterson built the capacity across twenty thousand hours of clinical practice listening to people under stress, then sharpened its public form during a couple of years of local television work under a producer who taught him how badly anger reads on video.
Core principles
- 01Thinking and paying attention are different operations: thinking walks a programmatic trail, attention opens the field and lets ideas arrive.
- 02When you pay attention, ideas pop up in your field of consciousness rather than being derived — and for Peterson that is often where the insight comes from.
- 03Anger plays very badly in a public forum, so losing your temper is tactically useless regardless of how justified it feels.
- 04Composure is not the absence of emotion — Peterson describes himself as boiling inside and a very emotional person, but able to detach from it to some degree.
- 05Under adversarial pressure you can snap into a different mode: I do not know what you are up to, so I am going to watch you and figure it out.
- 06Curiosity is the enabling emotion — Peterson says he is really curious and likes to watch, which is what makes the observing mode sustainable.
- 07Most of the signal in that mode is non-verbal: facial expression, posture, tone of voice, and the pattern they form.
How to run it
- 1
Recognise the tactical uselessness of anger
Peterson's producer helped him realise that anger plays very badly in a public forum like video. He notes he did not have much tendency to fly off the handle anyway, but the point is that losing your temper is not useful regardless of provocation.
Pro tip Decide this before the encounter. In the moment it is a rationalisation, not a decision.
- 2
Detach without pretending to be unemotional
Peterson is explicit that he is boiling inside, a very emotional person, way too much, and that it is unbelievably stressful. The skill is detaching from that to some degree, not eliminating it.
Pro tip Naming the internal state to yourself is part of the detachment.
Watch out Performing calm you do not feel is not the same thing and does not produce the observing mode.
- 3
Snap into the watching mode
The internal script Peterson uses when people really go after him: okay, I do not know what you are up to, so I am just going to watch you, and then I am going to figure out what you are up to.
Pro tip Curiosity is the fuel. Peterson says he is really curious and likes to watch, which is what makes it feel like interest rather than defence.
Watch out He notes he can usually figure out what people are up to if he wants to — and that he sometimes does not want to know.
- 4
Switch from thinking to attention
Stop deriving conclusions along a programmatic trail. Open your eyes, let your mind go where it will, and let ideas occur to you and pop up in your field of consciousness.
Pro tip Insight in this mode arrives rather than being constructed — treat unexpected impressions as data.
- 5
Read the non-verbal channel and the breadcrumb trail
Peterson attends to facial expression, posture and tone of voice, and picks up patterns. Tim adds the complementary read: deduce where they are trying to lead you by following the breadcrumbs, which Peterson confirms is part of it.
Pro tip The direction of the questions is often more informative than their content.
Watch out It is really hard to describe, in Peterson's own words — expect the skill to stay partly tacit.
- 6
Turn it off when the adversarial condition ends
Normally when you talk to someone you accept their persona and you do not look behind. Peterson reserves the mode for mistreatment or adversarial behaviour, and notes lots of people have treated him extraordinarily well.
Pro tip Leaving the mode running turns a diagnostic capacity into generalised suspicion.
In the wild
Tim frames the question from the many interviews Peterson has done in which people are very adversarial and aggressive, and notes what struck him: Peterson's ability to maintain composure while still standing up for his arguments rather than rolling over. Peterson's account is that the clinical practice is handy here — when people really go after him he can snap into a different mode, decide he does not know what they are up to, watch them, and figure it out.
→ Composure that is informationally productive rather than merely stoic, and positions defended without temper.
Peterson says he has an advantage in being a clinical psychologist: although he is not practising anymore, he spent twenty thousand hours listening to people and maintaining his composure sometimes under very stressful circumstances. He then did a couple of years of local television work with a good producer who helped him see that anger plays very badly on video.
→ A trained rather than innate composure, and an explicit account of the two environments that built it.
Common mistakes
Trying to out-argue instead of out-observe
Thinking walks a programmatic trail, which means you are generating rebuttals to the words rather than reading the manoeuvre. You win the exchange of sentences and lose track of what the other party is actually doing.
Confusing composure with not feeling anything
Peterson describes himself as boiling inside and finding it unbelievably stressful. Assuming calm people are unmoved sets an unreachable bar and discourages the detachment that is actually available.
Running the suspicion mode on everyone
Peterson deliberately does not do it all the time, and notes that normally you accept a person's persona and do not look behind. Permanently looking behind the mask corrodes ordinary relationships.
Forgetting to switch it on
Peterson's own stated limit is if I can remember to do that. The mode is available but not automatic, so the practical failure is not incapacity but not invoking it at the moment it was needed.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone who has to hold composure in hostile public or negotiating settings while still reading what the other party is actually doing.
Not ideal for
Ordinary trusting interactions, where Peterson himself says you accept a person's persona and do not look behind it.
From the transcript
“i've spent twenty thousand dollars listening to people and maintaining my composure sometimes under very stressful circumstances”
“he helped me realize that anger plays very badly in a public forum like video”
“i can snap into a different mode which is okay i don't know what you're up to so i'm just going to watch you and…”
“if you if you're thinking you're kind of walking down a programmatic trail if you're paying attention you just open your eyes and let your…”
From the episode
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