Daniel Goleman opens by arguing that attention — the capacity to direct and sustain focus deliberately — represents a foundational mental resource underlying success across nearly every domain, yet remains surprisingly underappreciated and understudied compared to other cognitive capabilities.

Why attention deserves this elevated status:

• Nearly every significant cognitive and emotional capability, from emotional regulation to complex problem-solving, fundamentally depends on the capacity for sustained, deliberate attention
• Despite this foundational importance, attention receives comparatively little explicit, deliberate cultivation compared to other more commonly discussed skills
• Goleman's synthesis of neuroscience and psychological research aims to elevate attention's status as a genuinely trainable, foundational capability deserving deliberate development

This opening establishes the book's central argument, positioning attention as an underappreciated foundational capability warranting the same deliberate development attention given to other cognitive and emotional skills.