Your Attention = Your Life

A few books that can help you protect where your attention goes

In this newsletter, I focus on the things that are happy-making in little ways, but one of the things I’ve found that can make me happier in a big way is being less online.

For more than a decade, I’ve been interested (possibly obsessed) with the concepts of focus and attention. If there’s a book about how technology and social media have altered or stolen our focus, I’m reading it. If there’s a book on how to regain focus or deep thinking, I’m buying it. I’ve written about the topic time and again over the years. I’ve used myself as a test subject and have done detoxes. I did device-free summers for my kiddo when he was younger. I teach a Focus for Writers class.

I’ve made improvements in this area of my life—I truly have—but still, I can’t stop circling back to this topic because the barrage of distractions doesn’t stop. The effects of all of us being constantly distracted don’t stop. Phones and social media have fundamentally changed society and how we interact with the world.

I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, but what I keep coming back to is the idea that what we pay attention to is our life. That’s it. Our attention is our most precious commodity because it defines our experience. Not to be grim, but if at the end of our days, we get to look back at scenes from our lives, how many would be of us with our faces in our phones looking at other people’s lives or random things on the internet? Sorry, I know, still grim.

I hate that I’ve given these big tech companies so much of my attention. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool reader from early on. I shouldn’t find it hard to read a thick book. I used to take those doorstops down like candy when I was a teenager. Now if something is 500+ pages, I’m daunted. If a movie is two hours long, I’m antsy and want to pick up my phone. My focus muscles have atrophied and are looking for quick dopamine hits instead of being patient enough for the the slower pleasure of sustained deep focus.

I’ve been listening to The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource by Chris Hayes (Libro.fm | Bookshop.org | Amazon), which came out yesterday. I’m almost done (and I’m liking it, but it does get political so be warned). But once again, it has me thinking about focus and attention (and making me newly mad about the state of things.) Here’s a quote:

If attention is the substance of life, then the question of what we pay attention to is the question of what our lives will be. And here we come to a foundational question that is far harder to answer than we might like it to be. What do we want to pay attention to? If we didn’t have all the technologies and corporations vying for our attention, if our attention wasn’t being commodified and extracted, what would we affirmatively choose to pay attention to?

You hear complaints about the gap between what we want to pay attention to and what we end up paying attention to all the time in the attention age. Someone ambitiously brings three new novels on vacation and comes back having read only a third of one of them because she was sucked into scrolling through Instagram. Reading is a particular focus of these complaints, I find. Everyone, including myself, complains that they can’t read long books anymore. We have a sense that our preferences haven’t changed—I still like to read—just our behavior. And the reason our behavior has changed is that someone has taken something from us. Someone has subtly, insidiously coerced us.” — Chris Hayes, “You’re Being Alienated From Your Own Attention” (an essay adapted form the book’s content), The Atlantic (bold added by me)

I feel it in my bones, that part about how someone has taken something from us, coerced us. I know we’re responsible for our own behavior, but when things are designed to play specifically to the parts of our brains that are wired to respond in certain (often addictive) ways, we’re playing the game hurt. We don’t have the advantage.

Maybe there will be systematic change one day, but until then, we’re on our own if we want to regain some of our attention and focus.

I’ve done many things over the years to decrease the amount of time I spend on social media and my phone, but I’m a work in progress still. With the current state of the world, I’m even more motivated to lean into “slow” media like long-form articles, newsletters, and books.

“One of the most powerful things we can do as human beings in our hyperconnected, 24/7 digital media world is to turn our attention to things that last, to get out of the hellscape of noise and go to truth. It’s a transgressive act, I think, to pick up a book these days—better yet, an old book. If you wish to understand the present moment, you’ll gain more clarity by studying the past than you will from following the breathless news cycle. Put distance between you and the attention merchants. Read philosophy. Read history. Read biographies. Study psychology. Study the patterns of humanity.” —Ryan Holiday, “This Habit Is Making You Miserable and Driving You Insane”

I want to be able to think more deeply about topics instead of just scrolling onto the next thing and forgetting what I just saw. It’s a weird world that we live in that I can scroll on Instagram and see someone’s house burning in California and then the next post is a dog eating a cucumber. The whiplash is brain-bending.

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By the way, I wrote about ways to corral/limit the news in a post for my other newsletter, The Nourished Writer. It’s aimed at creatives but the tips can apply to anyone:

Creative Output & Breaking News Do Not Mix

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Books That Can Help

So, if you’re feeling like I am and want some inspiration on how to get started with getting your attention back on what you’d like it to be on, here are some resources I’ve found helpful over the years:

Deep Work and Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport - If you want to jump straight to reducing your online time with action steps, I’d go with Digital Minimalism. If you want the overall concept of sustained attention for hard things, go with Deep Work.

How to Break Up With Your Phone by Catherine Price - a very practical, step-by-step guide

Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari - the subtitle says it all

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Right Now by Jaron Lanier - a skinny book with some big thoughts

24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week by Tiffany Shlain - On taking a digital sabbath and how even one day unplugged can make a big difference

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr - One of the classics in this subgenre. It’s a thick book with a lot to say, dense but interesting reading.

4000 Weeks and Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman - Not about social media but puts the spotlight on thinking about how we want to spend the limited time we have here

Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday - If you want to think about all this from a more philosophical perspective.

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I know today’s topic was a little more serious than usual, but I hope you found it useful. I don’t get preachy about much, but I can get preachy about protecting our brains/attention, so forgive me if I got on my soapbox at all. :) I want us all to be able to pay attention to what we want without our focus being hijacked all the time by the loudest, brightest thing or the best algorithm.

Have you made any changes lately to your online time or where you’re focusing your attention? Have you noticed changes in your ability to read longer or more challenging books?

*book links are affiliate links