Coaching practices for Rick Rubin Attention
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Rick Rubin Attention, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- My days blur past on autopilot and when I finally sit down to make something the well is dry
- My whole attention as a manager is tuned to what’s broken
- My attention feels welded to the inside of my own head
- Once my mind latches onto a worry I genuinely cannot pry it loose
- I know exactly which one thing in that room is going to set me off, and once I’m in there my eyes go straight to it and I’m gone
Practices that may help
- Cultivate awareness as your primary creative tool
Pay unusually close attention to what you notice, what you feel, and what catches you — these are the raw material.
The Creative Act: Rick Rubin’s Approach to Making - The Creative Act: Rick Rubin’s Approach to Making
Rick Rubin’s 2023 book The Creative Act presents creativity as a practice of attention — noticing, collecting, and following what genuinely interests you — rather than a performance of originality. The practices are more phenomenological than procedural: they cultivate a particular quality of awareness from which creative work emerges. Evidence is practitioner and anecdotal; the book is a distillation of experience, not a research synthesis. - Catch people doing things right
Most management attention goes to problems — systematically noticing good work is both rarer and more powerful.
The One Minute Manager: Three Practices That Still Work - Attention training technique (ATT)
Practice deliberately shifting attention across sounds — a drill that builds attention flexibility and reduces self-focus.
Metacognitive Therapy, Made Practical - Rapid attention shifting between sounds
Switch attention between sound sources on cue, making each shift deliberate and immediate.
Attention Training Technique (ATT), Made Practical - Attentional deployment
Direct attention away from the emotionally provocative element of a situation before the emotion fires.
Cognitive Reappraisal vs. Suppression, Made Practical - Expanding to panoramic awareness
Deliberately widen attention from its usual narrow focal point to include the full field of sensory experience simultaneously.
Open Monitoring Meditation, Made Practical - Train attention to interrupt rumination and worry
Rumination is attentional deployment gone wrong — building the skill of redirecting attention breaks the loop.
Attentional Deployment, Made Practical - The Formula First-Session Task and Between-Session Noticing
Assign between-session observation tasks that direct attention toward what’s already working.
Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works - Follow genuine interest, not strategic interest
Pursue the thing that genuinely excites you — even if you cannot explain why or see how it fits.
The Creative Act: Rick Rubin’s Approach to Making
Related concerns
- How To Direct Attention
Secure genuine attention before delivering your most important message.
Create a privileged moment — a context of undivided focus
- Situational Attentional Refocusing
Direct attention away from the emotionally provocative element of a situation before the emotion fires.
Attentional deployment
- Where Does My Attention Go
Practise deliberately moving attention between external cues and internal experience — and back.
Train flexible attention
- Adrian Wells Attention Training
The Attention Training Technique (ATT), developed by Adrian Wells, is a structured auditory exercise that rebuilds voluntary control over where attention goes — directly countering the self-focused, threat-locked attention that sustains anxiety and health anxiety. Randomised trials support its effectiveness as a standalone and as part of Metacognitive Therapy.
- Attention And Pain
Shifting attention away from pain signals reduces the experienced intensity of pain — a clinically proven, non-pharmacological technique.
Deploy attention away from pain and physical discomfort
- Attention Management As A Caregiver
Maura Thomas argues that the limiting constraint on productive knowledge work is not time — everyone has the same 24 hours — but attention: the ability to direct focus intentionally toward chosen work rather than being pulled reactively. Her attention management framework builds practices around controlling attentional choice, reducing reactive digital stimuli, and developing the skill of proactive, intentional focus. This is a practitioner framework aligned with attention and self-regulation research rather than a formally studied protocol.
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