Episode 24
Your attention is sovereign
- You, personally, get to decide where you put your attention.
- By acknowledging this fact you have to take full responsibility for where you have put your attention in the past, and where you will put it in the future.
Multitasking is mostly bollocks.
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Your Attention Is Sovereign
Oh Lord Make me a tree,
Sturdy,
Deep rooted,
Useful,
Support to those in need,
Shelter to those who are weary,
Fruit for those who hunger.
Make me a tree, oh Lord,
Sturdy,
Deep rooted,
And Useful.
I’ve done a shit load of meditation in the last few years or so. During 2018 especially.
However, It wasn’t until the summer of that year that I realised something fundamentally important. Quite frankly It is a little embarrassing that it has taken me this long to realise it to be honest. But the point is: Your Attention Is Sovereign.
There are two things that should be addressed.
- You, personally, get to decide where you put your attention.
- By acknowledging this fact you have to take full responsibility for where you have put your attention in the past, and where you will put it in the future.
Yes, all those hours spent on twitter, facebook or netflix were influenced by dark patterns designed to monetize your attention but ultimately you alone are responsible.
Yes social media addiction is a thing we hear spoken about. But the difference is that it’s a habit not an addition. The skinners box that is the algorithmic interface of almost all social media platforms has trained us this way.
It gets a little sticky when it comes to young children. But as James Bridle said last year: Kids are engrossed in screens all the time, in pushchairs and in restaurants. But it’s important that we don’t make parental judgments for or on anyone else. Children sitting quietly plugged into Peppa Pig and nursery rhyme videos, makes them happy and gives everyone a break, so OK. But never-the-less. The parent is still sovereign, Adults make the decisions about where they allow their children to put their attention
Multi tasking
It gets even worse when you speak to Adults who are labouring under the misguided assumption that they are ‘a multitasker’.
Multitasking is largely misunderstood by everyone. Multitasking is holding a conversation whilst juggling, or walking along the road whilst speaking to a friend or thinking about the next talk you have to write. Multitasking can only occur when one of the behaviours you are ‘tasking on’ is so automatic that you can just leave it to run while you do something else.
What most people call multitasking, especially in a workplace context (or whenever we are in front of a computer screen to be honest) is actually task switching. Moving between singular tasks rapidly. It’s the familiar feeling of having 5 things you need to get done by 5pm but struggling to finish any of them. Because your focus is across 5 things and not on anything at all. A solid hour in a spreadsheet is equivalent to 2 days of leaving google sheets open and trying to slow burn it, whilst trying to respond to emails, interruptions in the office etc.
This is covered in detail in the productivity world. Books like Deepwork, or Chris Bailey’s new Hyperfocus (which I still haven’t read) all speak to this. I am also deeply suspicious of the term productivity in general. It has its origins on slave plantations and the British Empire, and it makes me uneasy how management consultants and the wider business world just throw the term around.
Neil Postman has that line “People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” But I believe, if we focus on cultivating attention, and try to be aware of all our behaviours through this lens. Perhaps we can start to break out of our modern cognitive atrophy. Read a book, watch the clouds from the train window.
Turn off the feed.
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