The Tomabechi Method: "The Principle of Blind Spots"—The Cognitive Science Key to Reclaiming the World Your Brain "Hides" from You

Can you accurately draw the face of your own wristwatch right now? Even though you see it dozens of times every day, when you try to draw it from memory alone, you’ll be surprised how many details are missing. When cognitive scientist Dr. Hidetoshi Tomabechi poses this question, our certainty about “reality” is shaken to its core.

We firmly believe that “what we see with our own eyes is reality.” However, that “reality” is merely an extremely limited simulation constructed by the brain. Over 99% of the vast amount of information that should inherently exist there is “erased” before it reaches your consciousness—this is the “Principle of Scotoma,” the core foundation of the Tomabechi Method.

Scotoma is originally an ophthalmological term meaning “blind spot.”Even in healthy eyes, a physical blind spot exists where the optic nerve exits as a bundle. Dr. Tomabechi, while honoring the work of coaching pioneer Lou Tice who expanded this physiological concept into a psychological one, further redefined it within the precise framework of cognitive science. “Our unconscious discards everything except what it deems important”—this single sentence encapsulates the core of human cognitive structure.

Mindset Design has repeatedly emphasized that “Attention = Life” and “95% of the unconscious governs our lives.” The “Scotoma Principle” provides exceptionally clear scientific validation for these assertions and elucidates the mechanism for life transformation derived from them. This article thoroughly analyzes and examines Dr. Tomabechi’s lecture, extracting the deepest insights to rewrite your brain’s filters.

Lecture Overview and Core Message: The Brain Principle That “Nothing Unimportant Exists”

We will structurally organize the core message Dr. Tomabechi conveys in this lecture.

• Etymology and Expansion of Scotoma: Originally an ophthalmological term referring to the physical blind spot at the exit of the optic nerve bundle in the eyeball. Lou Tice expanded this into a psychological concept starting in the 1970s, using it as a general term for “information that inherently exists but is not cognitively perceived.”
• The Brain’s Energy Conservation Principle: The human brain consists of 16 billion neurons connected by approximately 100 trillion synapses. Operating all of these at full capacity would require the energy output of a nuclear power plant, which the human digestive system cannot supply. Thus, the brain evolved the “scotoma principle”—an energy-saving strategy of not processing unimportant information.
• The “What You Know, You Don’t See” Principle: Once seen, the brain tags something as “processed” and never reprocesses it as new information. You merely “notice” having seen it, but you haven’t truly seen it. This is why you can’t accurately draw the design of your wristwatch.
• Importance changes “moment by moment”: A mother instantly wakes to a baby’s nighttime crying, while the father sleeps soundly. Yet if the mother is absent, the father also wakes to the cries. Importance shifts in tandem with one’s “social role.”
• The absolute necessity of setting goals beyond the status quo: If the goal lies within the current reality, the brain keeps displaying “the same world as yesterday,” seeing nothing new. Statistical data showing retired people have an average life expectancy of one and a half years is proof that a brain deprived of goals decides “tomorrow is unnecessary” and gradually shuts down vital functions.
• “Invent on the way”: Goals outside the current state are ones where we don’t even know how to achieve them. However, the moment a goal is set, the blind spot lifts, and things previously unseen begin to appear. The method of achievement is “inventing while walking”; a consultant-like approach of designing the entire process beforehand does not work.

These elements are connected by a single, robust logic. The brain has a mechanism to conserve energy by “not seeing what is unimportant” → What determines importance is the “goal” → A goal within the current state reveals nothing new → Therefore, only by setting a goal outside the current state does the blind spot lift, and the world transforms. This simple yet powerful causal relationship forms the foundation of the Tomabechi Method.

The Brain’s “Energy-Saving Strategy”: The Scotoma Device to Avoid Solving 100 Trillion-Dimensional Differential Equations

Why Does the Brain Cut Corners?

One of the most shocking points in Dr. Tomabechi’s lectures concerns the energy consumption if the brain were to operate at full capacity.

The human brain contains approximately 16 billion neurons, each with thousands of synaptic connections. A simple calculation suggests roughly 100 trillion neural connections exist. Attempting to simulate all this information transmission mathematically equates to solving a “100-trillion-dimensional differential equation.” Estimates suggest replicating this computationally would require the power output of an entire nuclear power plant.

However, our digestive system—the stomach, intestines, and liver—has evolved very little compared to the brain. As Dr. Tomabechi points out, “There is almost no difference between a pig’s digestive system and a human’s.” While humans have developed the prefrontal cortex to an extraordinary degree, the body’s energy supply system has not kept pace. In reality, only about 20% of the energy humans obtain from food is used by the brain, far short of the energy needed for full processing of 100 trillion dimensions.

The strategy the brain adopted to resolve this “evolutionary imbalance” is the principle of scotoma—an energy-saving mechanism that disregards unimportant information.

The Astonishing Mechanism: “We Don’t See What We Know”

The principle of scotoma employs two primary energy-saving techniques.

First, “we don’t see what we know.” To borrow Dr. Tomabechi’s words, “Once you’ve seen my face, you’ll never look at it again. After that, you just think you’re seeing it.” This is a powerful observation. We believe we see the same person’s face every day, but in reality, we are merely “retrieving previously processed information from buffer memory and convincing ourselves we’re seeing something new.” Virtually no new information processing occurs.

The wristwatch experiment proves this succinctly. Very few people can accurately draw the design of their own wristwatch from memory, even though they see it dozens of times daily. Most can’t recall whether it uses Arabic or Roman numerals, or even if numbers are present at all. Why? Because the watch’s “essential function” is “telling time.” While its design might matter when purchased, once worn, it becomes “processed” information to the brain.

Second, “we don’t monitor things that don’t change.” We learn new things “because they are new,” but we don’t allocate information processing resources to things that show no change. Conversely, the brain only intensively focuses resources on something when change is about to occur, treating it as requiring attention.

This means that most of what we think we “perceive” daily isn’t actually perceived in real time—it’s merely the replay of past memories. The cityscape you see every commute is just your brain repeatedly replaying the memory of your first time on that route. New shops that opened today or signs that weren’t there yesterday are, in most cases, hidden in your scotoma and remain unseen.

“Importance” Determines the World—The Mechanism of What We See and What We Don’t

The Ferrari, Pregnant Woman, and Stroller Principle

Several examples cited by Dr. Tomabechi vividly illustrate the principle of scotoma at the everyday level.

The moment you desire a Ferrari, you suddenly notice they’re everywhere in Tokyo. When your wife becomes pregnant, you first realize pregnant women are everywhere. Then, once the baby arrives and you need a stroller, you notice strollers everywhere. Furthermore, when you reach the stage of buying a stroller, you start noticing details like the placement of buttons or the folding mechanism on each one.

The crucial point is that both Ferraris and strollers existed in the same places and in the same numbers all along. They didn’t increase. Your “importance filter” changed, removing the scotoma. Information previously processed as “non-existent” suddenly surfaced in your consciousness as “existent.”

This perfectly aligns with the mechanism described by Dr. Tomabechi in his cognitive science analysis of art: “Goals create perception, and perception creates the world.” The “world” we see is not an objectively fixed stage set, but a subjective image rendered in real-time by our own goals (our filter settings for what we deem important).

When roles change, the world changes—the example of a baby’s night crying

Another brilliant example Dr. Tomabechi cited is a baby’s nighttime crying.

A baby sleeps between its parents in a row. When the baby cries in the night, the mother wakes instantly. Yet the father remains sound asleep. Why does this difference occur, even though the baby’s cries reach both ears at the same volume?

Dr. Tomabechi answers clearly: “Because it’s the mother’s job, not his. This is also the principle of scotoma.”The father’s brain recognizes “caring for the baby is the mother’s role,” so it processes the sound of the crying as “information not important to me” and keeps it out of consciousness. However, if the mother were to disappear—in that instant, “caring for the baby” becomes his role, so he would immediately wake up at the sound of crying.

This example demonstrates that scotoma dynamically changes based not on a “permanent personality,” but on “what is important to oneself at that moment.“ When roles change, importance changes; when importance changes, what is visible changes; when what is visible changes, the world changes. This chain of causality operates ceaselessly in every aspect of our lives.

The moment you entrust authority, your world “disappears”

Dr. Tomabechi demonstrated an even more dangerous aspect of the scotoma principle through a clever experiment. After having participants draw a picture of a wristwatch, he instructed them to “grade your own work.” The participants looked at their watches to check for mistakes. However, when later asked, “What time did the watch hands show when you graded your work just now?” many couldn’t answer.

Despite having just looked intently at the clock, they couldn’t recall the time. Why? Because the “authority” figure, Dr. Tomabechi, instructed them to “grade it.” Their brains concentrated resources on the task deemed important by authority (i.e., grading), causing the information about the time—which should have been equally accessible in that same situation—to fall into the scotoma.

Dr. Tomabechi states he uses this experiment as a unit in his coaching program for children (PX2) to teach them “to be wary of what authority figures say.” The moment they listen to school teachers, parents, or career counselors—what is truly important to them is replaced by “what that authority figure said was important,” and the most crucial choices for their own lives become hidden in a blind spot.

This observation connects perfectly, at the cognitive science level, to the issue discussed in “Education is Brainwashing, Society’s Brainwashing.” “Common sense” is established by unconsciously installing into your brain the importance filter set by authority figures (parents, teachers, media, politics) declaring “this is important.” As a result, what you truly desire, what is genuinely important for your life, vanishes beyond the scotoma as “something that doesn’t exist.”

The reason you must set goals outside your current reality—the decisive relationship between blind spots and goal setting

A goal within the status quo means “seeing nothing”

At the core of the Tomabechi Method lies the ironclad rule: “Always set your goal outside your current reality.” This principle, repeatedly emphasized in both the Comfort Zone Principle and the Efficacy Principle, is fully explained cognitively by the principle of the blind spot.

Having a goal within the current state means “your destination lies within the world that yesterday’s self deemed important.” Since yesterday’s importance filter remains intact, the brain judges “everything is already processed” and performs no new information processing whatsoever. The principle “you don’t see what you know” is fully activated.

Dr. Tomabechi repeatedly states: “Setting a goal within the current state renders that goal meaningless. You cannot become the person you aspire to be. You are merely searching for a tomorrow identical to yesterday.” This logic is overwhelmingly simple. And frighteningly correct.

Average Life Expectancy After Retirement: 1.5 Years—A Brain Without Goals Deems “Tomorrow” Unnecessary

The data Dr. Tomabechi presents as a consequence of this principle sends a chill down the listener’s spine. Statistics compiled by Lou Tice’s organization and U.S. government agencies revealed that the average life expectancy of retired individuals was one and a half years.

Retirement means either achieving your goal or abandoning it. In either case, you enter a state where “maintaining the status quo is sufficient.” In other words, the brain’s filter is no longer set to “new things to see.”

What happens then? Following the principle of “what you know, you don’t see,” the brain tags the entire world as “processed.” The cessation of new information processing means the brain concludes: “Tomorrow is a perfect copy of today → There’s no need to expend energy on new information processing → Therefore, tomorrow is unnecessary.”

Life maintenance is an energy-intensive endeavor. When the brain concludes “there is no tomorrow worth paying this cost to sustain,” the body literally begins shutting down. This is not a matter of willpower, but the outcome of a cognitive survival mechanism.

That is precisely why humans must constantly maintain a goal. And that goal must lie outside the current state to possess the power to update the brain’s filter.

“Invent on the way”—the method of achievement is invented while walking.

Here, many people have a question: “How can we achieve a goal outside our current reality when we don’t even know how to get there?”

Dr. Tomabechi answers with a phrase often repeated by Lou Tice, the founder of coaching: “Invent on the way.”

By definition, a goal beyond the current reality is a target residing in a world invisible through your current importance filter. That’s precisely why the steps to achieve it remain unseen at this moment. An approach like that of a management consultant, meticulously mapping out a three-year roadmap, works for goals within the current reality but is fundamentally inapplicable to goals beyond it.

However, the moment you set a goal beyond the current state—from that instant, your brain’s blind spots begin to lift. Things invisible through yesterday’s importance filter suddenly become visible. Just as strollers suddenly appeared everywhere the moment you decided to buy one, the moment your brain’s filter resets toward a goal beyond the current state, the resources, connections, information, and opportunities needed to achieve that goal become recognizable, as if they suddenly appeared.

They did not “suddenly appear.” They were always there. They were simply hidden by your blind spot and processed as “non-existent.” Therefore, the method of achievement is not something designed in advance; it is something you “invent” after setting the goal and starting to walk.

The principle of blind spots permeates all themes of Mindset Design—connecting to brainwashing, attention, and finiteness.

“Common sense” is an installed scotoma

The “social brainwashing,” “educational traps,” “news traps,” and “advertising traps” Mindset Design has discussed so far—all of these can be integrated into a single structure using the principle of scotoma.

What is “common sense”? It is established when “authorities” like society, education, media, and parents install an importance filter into your brain, telling you “this is important.” “Going to a good university is important,” “Getting a stable job is important,” “A high annual income is important”—the moment these priorities are set, all other possibilities vanish beyond the scotoma.

Paths to success without university. Ways of life beyond corporate employment. Definitions of wealth beyond money. These are not “non-existent.” They are simply invisible because your brain’s filter has judged them “unimportant.” “Common sense” is nothing other than a blind spot systematically installed by society.

Attention = The Battle for Life and the Deep Connection to Blind Spots

The core theme of Mindset Design—”Attention = Life“—can also be precisely explained by the principle of scotoma.

The brain discards unimportant information based on the blind spot principle because information processing resources (attention = energy) are finite. In other words, attention is the brain’s most scarce resource, and what you choose to pay attention to determines what “exists.“

Social media snatches your attention with red “Like” notifications, attempting to set your brain’s importance filter to “satisfying the desire for approval.” News grabs your attention with fear and anxiety, trying to install an “The world is dangerous” importance filter. Advertisements program your brain to view purchasing as “important” by telling you “You lack this.”

All these activities essentially rewrite your brain’s scotoma settings for the benefit of others. And when your scotoma is rewritten, it means you lose sight of what is truly important to you—your own goals, time with loved ones, inner fulfillment. Having your attention stolen is literally having your world stolen.

Awareness of finitude removes the blind spot

Data showing an average post-retirement lifespan of one and a half years directly connects to human finitude. When people lose their goals, the brain judges “tomorrow is unnecessary” and gradually halts vital functions within a year and a half—the cruelest proof of life’s finite nature.

But we can also consider the opposite. Recognizing finitude itself can become the most powerful way to remove blind spots. “My life has an end,” “This moment will never return”—this awareness fundamentally resets the brain’s importance filter. The question “What truly matters?” blows away the false importance installed by others, leaving only the goals that well up from within oneself.

A brain aware of its finitude will not tolerate complacency. “If I stay like this, I’ll die without ever seeing what I truly want to do”—this sense of crisis becomes the driving force to set goals beyond the status quo. The blind spot lifts, and a world previously unseen unfolds before you.

Conclusion and Next Action—Practical Steps to Reclaim the “Unseen World”

Let’s integrate the structure revealed by the principle of scotoma.

The world we believe to be “reality” is an extremely limited simulation constructed by the brain for energy efficiency. What appears in that simulation is determined by the “importance filter (= goal).” And for many people, this importance filter has been arbitrarily programmed by authorities like society, education, and media. As a result, everything you truly desire, every chance or resource that could change your life, vanishes beyond the scotoma as “non-existent.“

There is only one key to escape this structure: set your goals beyond the current reality. Simply doing this updates your brain’s filter, removes the blind spot, and the world literally transforms. You can invent the method of achieving it as you go.

Next Action: Three Practical Steps to Remove Your Blind Spots

Instead of merely consuming this insight as knowledge, I propose the following three concrete actions to update your brain’s OS:

• Set just one “goal beyond your current reality” today: Something not on the extension of your current self. Something you have absolutely no idea how to achieve. Something that excites you just thinking about it, yet simultaneously makes you think, “That’s impossible.” That is precisely a goal beyond your current reality. Write it down on paper and keep it hidden in your heart (to protect your efficacy, the golden rule is to tell no one). The moment you set it, your brain’s filter will quietly begin to reboot.
• Record one “thing you saw for the first time today” on your daily commute: When walking your usual route, consciously search for “something you hadn’t noticed until yesterday.” A new sign, the shape of a building, the view down an alley. This is training to experience the existence of blind spots. By accumulating experiences of “seeing something you hadn’t seen before,” your brain gains the metacognition that “there might be many more things you aren’t seeing.”
• Inventory the “importance” set by authority: For each thing you currently believe is “important”—annual income, educational background, social standing—ask yourself: “Is this importance truly arising from my own heart, or was it installed by someone else?” The moment you uninstall the importance filters programmed by others, your own goals, hidden beyond them, begin to emerge from behind the scotoma.

The “reality” you see now is only a small part of the world’s full picture. Vast possibilities, opportunities, and beauty await you beyond the blind spot. What you need to make them visible isn’t talent, effort, or luck. It’s simply setting your goal outside your current reality. That’s all. Your brain will automatically begin to show you a “new world.”