Hi Jon, Thanks for contributing to this discussion. You've ask some very interesting questions of your own! Both you and John (previously in this thread) have definitely got me thinking (about thinking). You wrote, "If your conscious mind has 9 slots available to hold chunks of information, could "focus" be defined as the ability to control the content of those slots and perhaps to deliberately keep several of those slots empty, "focusing" only on the 1, 2, 3...n chunks that are relevant to the issue?" I do think it is possible to "control the content" as you suggest. (e.g. listening to conversation at another table in a busy restaurant), and I  think that as a function of our neurology we do this all the time. The simple test being "What are you paying attention to...Now?" You wrote, "Could the "know-nothing" state be defined as deliberately keeping all/most of the slots empty?" As my "know-nothing state" is still in development, perhaps John, or someone with a richer, better defined description of it, would be better able to answer this question. From my experience, the process still occurs; the conscious still has to focus on "something", albeit a (pre-qualified) "set" of very rapidly changing "focused" somethings, and acts more like an active participant in the state than as a director. You wrote, "Could the "creative" state be defined as filling 1, 2, 3...n slots with certain information, then letting the unconscious rapidly fill the other slots with series of chunks that are directly or tangentially associated (a mental slot-machine, waiting for 3 cherries in a row)?" Ah Ha! Everyone likes the cherries! ;-). Although, I'm not sure that the conscious mind would ever have any slots "empty". I think that a person's attention, or "focus" just shifts to whatever's next, and that information must always come from the unconscious, (F1)-->(F2). You wrote, "So, to get back to your original question, perhaps the type of "sorting and attending" being done is more relevant than the number of bits being sorted, as an indicator of a high-performance state?" A good point, and I agree that "focus" has more to do with the "what" that is being sorted/attended to, and less to do with the "how many bits/chunks". The questions I have is, "In what context is it more relevant?" Certainly in the context of a an overload induction or a training room, it's handy to know what is being sorted/attended to, consciously  vs. unconsciously, and in this case "7+-2" would be sufficient. In a larger frame however, my thought was perhaps if we better understood the "chucks", we could use our conscious minds with more precision, and in turn manipulate our unconscious minds with that same precision. Most NLPeers can rattle off the many presuppositions about the unconscious mind, (which seem to hold validity in most circumstances), but when it comes to the conscious, it's seems that 7+-2 is about as far as we've got. The question remains "How specifically?". ;-) Cheers, Mark.