The Attention Filter

Let that sink in.

David Eagleman’s research shows how desperately unequipped we are to process reality as it actually exists. The brain is a filter, not a camera. It doesn’t capture what’s there — it captures what it thinks matters.

This has everything to do with why nobody cares about your story unless it’s relevant to their story.

You can have the most brilliant narrative, the most lyrical prose, the most meticulously researched setting. But if it doesn’t ping the filter, it doesn’t get in. The reader’s brain has already moved on. They’re thinking about their own problems, their own deadlines, their own fears. You’re competing against eleven million bits of actual sensory noise plus their entire internal landscape.

Novelty is one of the few things that consistently escapes the filter. We’re wired to notice new things — it kept our ancestors alive. A sound in the darkness. A face in the crowd. A pattern you haven’t seen before. These punch through the filter almost automatically.

Relevance is another. If your story connects to something the reader already cares about — their own pain, their own ambitions, their own questions — it passes through. Straight to the conscious mind.

This is where The Beacon comes in. It exists precisely to aim your story at the right person’s filter. To make what you’re saying relevant to what they’re thinking about.

Without clarity about who you’re writing for and why they should care, your words just become more noise in the eleven-million-bit stream.

The filter doesn’t work in your favour. It works against you. Unless you understand it.

Master it, and you can say everything with nothing. Ignore it, and you can say nothing with everything.