“Our eyes can distinguish several million colours, our ears half a million tones, and our noses over a trillion different odours.” (Entangled Life, Sheldrake. M)
Our entire bodies are signal detectors, whether it is touch, motion, spatial awareness, hunger, thirst, or the ability to sense the attention of others. We can use our senses for more than evaluating our physical environment and the condition of our bodies.
Less easy to understand are our ‘gut feelings’ or intuition (immediate cognition) which give us impressions and insights without proof or cognitive reasoning. For example you may be able to sense when someone is staring at you in the street, or tell when someone is lying to you. Almost imperceptible cues in voice, body, and facial expression are unconsciously processed and we get an impression.
Of course we need to be aware of self-deception. Our egos, biases and heuristics can easily interfere with the potential accuracy of any sensory input, especially intuition.
Sensory training
Removing as much noise as possible is the best starting point for increasing the accuracy of sensory signal detection. When our body and mind are calm and our awareness centred, we can separate internal from external sensory inputs.
Separating the internal from external allows us to train our body and mind with as much accuracy as possible. One simple benefit of this is being able to focus our hearing and vision. We are reducing the impact of external noise, and focussing on salient and relevant input.
Meditation
Calming the mind and directing our awareness inwards is particularly helpful in reducing internal noise. Noticing internal tension, tiredness, excitement, and distraction and then being able to manage them is a powerful skill set.
The more we are able to centre ourselves, the more we can make sense of what is going on internally. This also helps in quietening the ‘monkey mind’ and noticing our ego, biases, and heuristic assumptions. We can now make better use of our internal signals, and apply our cognitive processing with more accuracy.
Starting with 2 mins mediation each morning, and 2 more after lunch is an easy way to begin building a meditative habit. Over time this can be extended to 30–60 mins in the morning, and a refresher of 15 mins after lunch. I highly recommend Atomic Habits by James Clear if you wish to learn more about building a meditative or any other game changing habit.
Directing awareness
For the first few hours after a 30 min meditation we have a greatly improved capacity to direct our awareness.
This is the best time to be actively separating signal from noise. Perhaps you need to check the news, do some research, create a plan, read and write emails, or execute trades. Your state of mind and environment play a big role in how well you perform.
Maintaining high levels of accurate sensory signal detection over prolonged periods is not easy. However, intentionally ‘tuning in’ and then leveraging that improved capacity is something we can all do. Over time the compounded effects are highly rewarding.
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