Intentional Attention: The Science and Practice of Focus Under Pressure

A science-backed framework for achieving your potential in high-stakes moments

For more than twenty years, Dr. Justin Anderson has led Premier Sport Psychology, a high-performance psychology consulting group that has become one of the most trusted names in mental training for sport and leadership. Working alongside elite athletes, coaches, and executives, Anderson and his team have transformed careers by helping clients target what truly separates sustained excellence from those that stumble when the heat rises. It's not a mysterious clutch gene, motivation, bravado, or positive thinking—it's a trainable skill. "Intentional Attention" is the ability to deliberately direct and sustain focus on what drives performance, especially when distraction, emotion, and uncertainty surge. In a world engineered to capture our attention, this skill has become to be one of the rarest and most decisive competitive advantages.

Anderson introduces a practical, science-backed framework for strengthening the attentional systems that drive performance. Through gripping stories from locker rooms and boardrooms and drawing on high-performance psychology principles, Intentional Attention will help listeners: understand why the brain defaults to protection instead of execution; identify the attentional patterns that subtly undermine consistency; build daily routines for awareness, intention, execution, reflection, and renewal; and perform with steadiness and confidence when the stakes are highest.

Pressure is inevitable, but where your attention goes when it arrives makes all the difference. This book shows you how to train that skill—and how to carry it into every arena of your life.