Noise

When was the last time you truly experienced silence—no alerts, no pings, no background chatter from screens or people? In Noise: Living and Leading When Nobody Can Focus, author Joe McCormack poses a provocative question: how do you lead, communicate, and even think clearly when modern life constantly drowns you in information? McCormack argues that in the digital era, attention is our most precious—and endangered—resource. He describes how the endless influx of emails, messages, and notifications have become akin to an environmental toxin for our brains. Our focus, he warns, isn’t just slipping; it’s being hijacked.

McCormack contends that we are suffering from “infobesity”—a term likening our overconsumption of information to a diet of empty calories. We are simultaneously overfed with data and starved for meaning. The result is what he calls mental anemia: our minds are weakened by distraction and deprived of substance. To reclaim focus and sanity, he says, you must consciously design a quieter life grounded in awareness, clarity, and brevity.

The Modern Epidemic of Distraction

“Weapons of mass distraction,” as McCormack calls them, saturate every corner of our day. We pick up our phones within seconds of waking up, multitask in meetings, and scroll through news and notifications before bed. Citing psychologist Daniel Levitin’s research, McCormack explains that each mental task-switch floods the brain with dopamine—creating a reward loop that keeps us addicted to interruptions. We no longer control our attention; our devices do. A study he references shows that even a three-second interruption can double workplace errors. The result is fatigue, inefficiency, and a chronic sense of overwhelm.

This isn’t merely a lifestyle complaint—it’s a leadership crisis. As McCormack’s work with the U.S. military and Fortune 1000 companies shows, distracted leaders make poor decisions, communicate poorly, and fail to engage their teams. In organizations, overcommunication—constant meetings, redundant updates, and data dumps—creates fog, not clarity. The irony is that people are talking more and understanding less.

Two Disciplines: Awareness and Focus

To combat this crisis, McCormack introduces two intertwined disciplines: Awareness Management (AM) and Focus Management (FM). Awareness Management is about becoming conscious of your own attention patterns—recognizing when you drift into mental autopilot. Using his concept of the “Elusive 600,” McCormack shows that our brains process roughly 750 words per minute, while we speak only 150. That means 600 extra words—our internal chatter—are constantly running in the background. Learning to guide that inner dialogue is crucial to managing awareness.

Focus Management, on the other hand, is about helping others concentrate. As leaders, parents, and teammates, we must rescue people from their own noise. This requires creating distraction-free environments, running meaningful meetings, and communicating succinctly. McCormack frames this as the duty of a “Focus Manager”—a person who deliberately reduces cognitive clutter for those around them. Whether you’re managing a team, a classroom, or a family, the same principle applies: clarity is kindness.

The Cost of Tuning Out

McCormack warns that our tuning-out reflex, once a coping mechanism for information overload, now threatens relationships and safety. He recalls vivid stories—a teenager isolated by social media, employees drowning in corporate “update fatigue,” and passengers ignoring life-saving preflight safety briefings. Tuning out has consequences, from missed opportunities to near tragedies. In one vignette, a company’s “transparent communication strategy” collapses because the CEO mistakes overcommunication for engagement. The moral: when leaders talk too much, people stop listening.

A Framework for Quiet Leadership

Ultimately, Noise is a manifesto for deliberate attention. Through practical tools—prioritization, saying no, scheduling quiet time, and crafting brief messages—McCormack shows how to reclaim control over what you let in (awareness) and what you share (focus). His “pre-sets” at the end of the book act like radio channels you can program: techniques to mute alerts, simplify meetings, and live more intentionally. He urges readers to become “contemplatives in the middle of the world,” modern monks who find stillness amid chaos.

Why does this matter? Because attention shapes every part of our professional and personal lives—our decisions, relationships, creativity, and peace of mind. McCormack’s message echoes throughout: clarity is not just productivity—it’s humanity. In learning to conquer noise, you don’t just get more done; you reclaim who you are.

McCormack opens with a startling parallel: we once feared loud music would make us deaf. Today, he says, it’s information that’s destroying our ability to hear each other. From the instant we wake up until we scroll ourselves to sleep, the world bombards us with stimuli—emails, pings, newsfeeds, and conversations that never end. He calls it “infobesity,” the digital equivalent of overeating junk food.

The Brain on Overload

Neuroscience shows that constant multitasking fries our cognitive circuits. McCormack cites MIT neuroscientist Earl Miller’s warning: people can’t multitask well, and when they try, they delude themselves. Excessive digital consumption floods our brains with dopamine—the feel-good chemical that rewards novelty. Like slot machines, apps are designed to exploit this loop. “Our brains get rewarded for losing focus,” he writes. The result? Lower IQ scores, shorter attention spans, and sluggish working memory—the system that keeps short-term information accessible for reasoning and decision-making.

A U.K. study found that constant email alerts can drop IQ by ten points—more than marijuana. In practical terms, this means professionals across industries are performing below capacity simply because they can’t escape informational noise. “Our minds are like computers frozen by too many open tabs,” McCormack notes. Only when we close the extras can we process meaningfully again.

Addiction by Design

McCormack shows that our addiction isn’t accidental—it’s engineered. Social media apps, VR platforms, and phone notifications exploit human psychology to capture attention. Sean Parker, Facebook’s first president, admitted: “God only knows what this is doing to our brains.” Virtual reality, McCormack warns, will deepen this addiction by offering full sensory immersion. He likens VR to a “digital crack house”—promising both escape and dependency. Citing experts from Stanford and Berkeley, he outlines future risks: eye strain, psychological displacement, and further erosion of real relationships. The more real the tech feels, the less real our lives become.

How Focus Fails Leaders and Kids

McCormack uses stories instead of statistics to anchor his message. Bryan and Anna’s daughter, Monica, nearly loses her life to depression triggered by social media addiction. Her “always-on” world of likes and comparisons becomes a prison. Only when she attends a tech-free boarding school does she rediscover joy. Her story mirrors what psychologists call “the empathy gap” in digital youth—kids who can connect online but not in person. Similarly, McCormack describes executives paralyzed by data overload who mistake communication volume for understanding. Whether teenagers or CEOs, the result is the same: the loss of focus means the loss of control.

The takeaway is sobering but empowering. You can’t survive a flood by drinking more water. To thrive, you must set boundaries—learning to manage your brain as a finite, delicate resource. Awareness, not avoidance, is your life raft.

If the mind is a flashlight, most people swing it wildly instead of aiming it. McCormack’s concept of Awareness Management—or AM—is about regaining control of that beam. “Mindlessness,” he says, is the new default setting: we drive, scroll, and even parent on autopilot, missing our lives one moment at a time. Awareness Management is the practice of waking up.

The Elusive 600: Your Inner Static

At the BRIEF Lab, McCormack teaches the Elusive 600, the 600 extra words per minute our minds generate while listening. These thoughts—random, emotional, resistant—are the static of your cognitive radio. When unmanaged, they cause you to tune out. But when directed, they help you anticipate meaning, connect ideas, and self-correct. Awareness Management means noticing these interior monologues and guiding them back to relevance.

Directed vs. Undirected Attention

McCormack distinguishes three states of attention: directed, undirected, and misdirected. Directed attention is willful focus—what Daniel Goleman calls “top-down control.” Undirected attention, or daydreaming, allows creative drift. Misdirected attention scatters energy across distractions—doomscrolling, multitasking, gossip. Awareness Management doesn’t demand constant control but mindful switching. Like a good driver, you decide when to accelerate and when to coast.

Practices for Mental Clarity

To manage awareness, McCormack prescribes a blend of mindfulness and minimalism. Start your day without reaching for your phone. Schedule “quiet zones” of reflection. Notice emotional triggers that hijack focus—anger, anxiety, boredom—and breathe through them. Evaluate the cost of unguarded attention: wasted time, poor decisions, and strained relationships. His metaphor of the “spinning beach ball” (the loading icon on computers) captures this mental paralysis beautifully: your brain is running, but nothing’s happening.

Through self-observation and small routines—a daily scan, quiet meditation, or journaling—you become the manager of your own mind. Once the flashlight steadies, you can illuminate what truly matters.

Priority, McCormack insists, is singular by definition—yet most people juggle a dozen “priorities” and wonder why they fail at all of them. Borrowing from Greg McKeown’s Essentialism, he calls for a shift from abundance to essence. The essentialist asks: “What is the most important thing right now?” and has the courage to say no to everything else.

The Essentialist Mindset

In a world of unlimited choice, more options often produce paralysis, not power. McCormack points to “subscription fatigue” in entertainment and business as evidence. Simplicity, he says, is efficiency—the military concept of “aim small, miss small.” When you narrow your target, even mistakes stay close to the goal. Leaders must define “north star goals,” write them down, and publicly commit to them. Like Dwight Eisenhower’s D-Day plan—one page, handwritten, and underlined three times with the word simplicity—clarity wins wars.

Practical Strategies

McCormack suggests five steps: take a silent retreat, write down your goals, make public pacts for accountability, give your plans time and space, and physically discard something unnecessary—a symbolic act of decluttering. Following minimalist gurus like Marie Kondo, he argues that letting go of “mental clutter” works just as powerfully as cleaning a closet. Every unexamined commitment or possession steals bandwidth. When you simplify your life, mental energy returns to high-value pursuits—work, relationships, health, meaning.

“Less is more” isn’t a cliché; it’s a survival strategy. Prioritization, practiced daily, is focus in motion—a way of honoring what truly matters.

If mindfulness builds awareness and priorities define focus, then the word no is the boundary that protects both. McCormack reclaims Nancy Reagan’s 1980s slogan, “Just say no,” not for drugs but for digital noise. Overcommitment, he argues, is the modern addiction. Our constant yeses—to alerts, tasks, and temptations—erode willpower and create emotional noise.

The Fear of Missing Out

We fear we’ll miss something important if we disconnect, but FOMO is the mind’s biggest fraud. Each new notification feels urgent but delivers diminishing returns. Saying no, McCormack explains, requires three virtues: fortitude (strength to resist), conviction (the belief that less is better), and trust (faith that you’re not missing out on what matters). Neuroscientist Judson Brewer calls this breaking the “addiction loop”—recognizing the craving, observing it mindfully, and choosing differently.

The Counterbalance of Yes

McCormack’s rule: every no must come with a deeper yes. When he decided to start running—a task he hated—his “yes” was tracking miles on an app. The reward fueled discipline. Similarly, saying no to checking messages during dinner may be a yes to reconnecting with family. Saying no to multitasking may mean a yes to peace. These reframes transform willpower into choice instead of deprivation.

The Singleminded Mind

Neuroscientifically, the brain performs best when it does one thing at a time. The satisfaction of single-tasking is a forgotten joy. McCormack’s five-step practice—say it out loud, mute small distractions, pair “no” with a “yes,” abandon excuses, and accept imperfection—turns restraint into strength. “Let your no be no,” his father taught him. In a world of infinite input, discipline becomes destiny.

Every yes divides your attention; every no strengthens it. Each act of refusal is an act of freedom.

Silence, McCormack insists, is not the absence of sound but the presence of mind. In a chapter that feels almost monastic, he calls quiet time the antidote to cognitive exhaustion. Our attention, like muscle tissue, requires recovery after strain. The problem: we fill every gap with noise—music, messaging, podcasts—never allowing the brain to consolidate or rest.

The Neuroscience of Silence

Citing Daniel Goleman’s research, McCormack explains that mindfulness restores “directed attention” by switching the brain from effortful focus to “bottom-up awareness.” Just as physical training requires recovery days, mental performance demands stillness. Walking, prayer, or even dinnertime without devices serve the same purpose. One family he describes restores their connection simply by banning phones at dinner and sharing daily highs and lows—a ritual that makes them calmer and happier.

Why We Avoid Quiet

Noise feels productive. We equate silence with idleness, yet it is silence that renews creativity. Extroverted cultures design open offices and always-on conversations because they fear stillness. Susan Cain’s Quiet is a natural companion here: both authors argue that solitude cultivates insight. McCormack also cites research showing that open-plan offices often decrease collaboration and concentration. The myth of “collaborative chaos,” he writes, just breeds burnout.

Building Quiet into Life

McCormack’s “7-to-7 rule”—no devices from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.—is a simple ritual for mental recovery. He also recommends daily walks, 11-minute “digital fasts” (a humorous nod to This Is Spinal Tap’s amp scene), and designated “cabins” of solitude—spaces at home or work reserved for silence. His childhood memory of family rosary prayers in the car reflects this philosophy: repetition and quiet slow the mind enough to hear life again.

True focus isn’t forged in intensity—it’s recovered in rest. Quiet, he concludes, is a leadership tool, not a luxury.

Listening, McCormack declares, is now a radical act. In an era of constant broadcasting—tweets, meetings, posts—few people truly hear others. To listen, he says, is to love. Borrowing from his late brother Johnny, a model of empathetic listening, McCormack teaches Present Listening: being fully there, without agenda, as a gift to the speaker.

The Pain of Poor Listening

McCormack recounts a soldier who turned his homework assignment on listening into “assault listening.” So eager to impress his wife, he stared at her so intently that when he broke gaze for a millisecond, she shouted, “You never listen to me!” The lesson: listening isn’t performance; it’s presence. Another student, a Green Beret, wins an ambassador’s respect simply by asking, “How did you get into this line of work?” One curious question—one moment of genuine interest—changed his reputation abroad.

How to Be Present

McCormack identifies seven habits of great listeners: be present, be interested, have no agenda, show understanding, suffer a little, remember it’s not about you, and choose to focus. Professions like journalism, therapy, and interrogation succeed because they listen for something—a story, pain, or truth—rather than to something. In real life, this means asking more and assuming less. “People notice when you care,” he writes. “They remember how you made them feel heard.”

The Emotional Payoff

Present listening strengthens trust, empathy, and collaboration. For sales professionals, it turns transactions into relationships. For leaders, it turns commands into conversations. McCormack learned this firsthand from Johnny, who was “magnetic because he listened more than he spoke.” To truly listen amidst noise is to make others feel human again.

Silence in listening isn’t absence—it’s attentiveness. In your quiet, others find their voice.

Focus Management (FM) is what happens when awareness leaves the mirror and faces outward. If Awareness Management disciplines the mind, Focus Management shapes the environment—helping others see clearly. McCormack invites you to become a Focus Manager: someone who cuts through complexity, demands brevity, and restores priority to teams and families drowning in distraction.

Creating Focus Cultures

The best example comes from his eight-year-old daughter, Marta. Seeing her teenage sister’s birthday guests glued to their phones, she collected every device in a box, saying, “You’ll have more fun without them.” She was right—the evening came alive. That’s Focus Management in action: courageously setting boundaries for collective joy. McCormack argues that leaders must do the same at work—banning laptops in meetings, making agendas mandatory, and ensuring conversations lead to decisions, not detours.

The Traits of a Focus Manager

A focus manager is unapologetically intentional. They’re clear communicators, selfless facilitators, disciplined timekeepers, and brave contrarians. They push back against the “open office myth” that values chatter over concentration. They replace multitasking with meaningful sequencing. Whether you’re a parent guiding dinner table talk or a project manager steering strategy, your job is the same: make focus possible again.

BRIEF Communication

At the core of FM lies McCormack’s earlier method from his first book, BRIEF—be clear, concise, and compelling. Avoid corporate gibberish (“vertical synergy,” “value-add”). Instead, headline your point, trim excess, and map your logic visually. Brevity, he says, is not reduction but refinement. Winston Churchill’s 1940 “Brevity Memo” proved it: shorter messages save time and improve thinking. Brevity builds clarity; clarity builds trust.

To lead in noise, manage less communication but make it count. As McCormack summarizes: be better; be brief.

Focus is fragile, and environments either nurture or destroy it. McCormack insists that physical spaces must reflect mental priorities: clarity, simplicity, and purpose. Most workplaces aren’t designed for thought—they’re designed for interruption. The open-plan office, once hailed as a symbol of collaboration, now functions as an attention slaughterhouse.

Designing Against Distraction

McCormack’s recommendations mirror the “humane tech” movement. Create “Wi-Fi cold spots” where devices can’t connect. Replace screens with whiteboards to encourage dialogue. Provide “quiet zones” for reflection and “check-in cabinets” for phones during meetings. The result: balance between collaboration and concentration. He compares this approach to hospital design that minimizes noise and maximizes healing—proof that environmental peace improves performance and well-being.

Tech-Free Homes and Schools

At home, McCormack suggests replacing televisions with art, turning bedrooms into no-tech sanctuaries, and adding reading corners for calm. In schools, he applauds the Waldorf model—where Silicon Valley parents send their children to technology-free classrooms. Real learning, he argues, requires social contact and deep focus, not constant connectivity. The goal isn’t to reject technology but to design spaces where humans remain in charge of their attention.

Quiet Architecture

Even healthcare environments show the potential: hospitals that integrate nature views, soundproofing, and light control see faster recoveries. Productivity, creativity, and compassion flourish in stillness. The same applies to offices and homes. The environment, McCormack reminds us, is either your loudest enemy or your quietest ally.

Noise is not inevitable; it’s engineered. And so must be its opposite.

McCormack ends the book not with theory but with training. His “Pre-sets” are twenty practical routines designed like radio buttons for attention. Each represents a small, programmable behavior that restores clarity—proof that focus is built, not born.

From Micro-Habits to Macro Change

Some pre-sets are simple: the “7-to-7 rule” (device-free evenings and mornings), “take time with a timer” (fifteen-minute sprints), or “talk a walk on the mild side.” Others are social—run one-minute meetings with written agendas, mind your own business (stop mental gossip), or play old-school board games to reconnect. Each is small but potent because repetition rewires habits of awareness and interaction.

Metrics for Mindfulness

McCormack provides a “Personal Pre-set Programming Guide” like a noise-reduction dashboard: scan your life for distractions, set AM and FM goals, choose three priorities, and review progress every 90 days. His metaphor of “The Lineup” turns self-mastery into sport—scheduling quiet time, reflection, and reading as nonnegotiables. By quantifying clarity, he makes focus measurable and sustainable.

McCormack ends with optimism. Yes, noise is everywhere. But so is choice. Like his brother Johnny—who always listened, loved, and laughed—you can be the calm within the storm. The world may grow louder, but your attention can still sound wonderful.