The cognitive scientist and philosopher William James observed that attention is the very substance of genius — 'the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the root of judgment, character, and will.' As a leader navigating a Friday full of loose ends and the mental pull toward the weekend, this is worth sitting with. Generosity, sound decisions, and genuine curiosity all require the same upstream resource: where you place your attention. James wasn't offering a trick; he was pointing to something structural about how minds work — the quality of your leadership is, in large part, the sum of what you have consistently chosen to notice.

In the last week, what has consistently pulled your attention away from what you say matters most — and what does that gap actually reveal about your priorities?

Drawing from Pragmatism / Early Psychology — William James