Attention: Your Most Valuable Resource

Craig 00:02 

Time is not your most precious resource. Your attention is. In this episode, I make the argument that attention is your most valuable resource, one that we often squander. I dig into the idea of attention and offer some tips on better maximizing the returns on your attention investments.

Welcome to Live Well and Flourish, where I help you understand what it means to live a flourishing life. I'm your host, Craig Van Slyke. If you're ready to think beyond material and external success, if you're ready to take control of who you are and the kind of life you live, if you're ready to flourish, this is the podcast for you.

You may have heard someone say that time is your most precious resource. After all, it’s a finite, perishable resource. You get a fixed amount of time in this life, and once a moment is gone, it’s gone forever. So every second is precious. (I’m taking a very western view of time here, and I’m restricting my thoughts to this life, but I think my ideas will hold.) So, when you waste an hour, you’ve wasted it forever; time isn’t a renewable resource. All of this is true, but I think that there’s an even more valuable resource -- your attention. Why do I think this?

Craig 01:30 

Well, this gets a bit out there, I’ll admit, so try to stick with me. Before getting into my argument, I want to define attention as the conscious, selective focus on specific information or stimuli while filtering out or ignoring others (I know, it's a mouthful.) There is also a form of attention that’s immediate and mostly beyond our conscious choice, such as when you pay attention to a sudden loud noise, but that’s not what I’m talking about today. It’s also important to note that I’m assuming that you can really only pay attention to one thing at a time. When you split attention you’re really just switching your attention from one thing to another really, really quickly.

Now, let’s get back to my argument. Attention exists within time. Because of that, you can never have more attention than time. But, you don’t really attend to things 100% of the time. For example, when you’re in deep sleep, I don’t think you’re really paying attention to anything. So, there are times in which you don’t pay attention but you still have that time, but you don’t have that attention anymore. Ergo, you’ll always have more time than attention. (Ergo is kind of a fun word, don’t you think? Although, it is not easy to work into conversation.)

Craig 02:47 

I’ll admit that there are some good reasons not to totally buy into my argument. Whether you agree or not really isn’t all that important to the real points I'm trying to make in this episode. What are those points, you might ask? Well, the first big idea here is that your attention is an incredibly valuable resource, so you should not waste it. The second big idea is that, because it’s so valuable, one of the best gifts you can give someone is your attention. For both of these reasons, paying attention to attention is critical to your flourishing. So, failing to attend to your attention is harmful to your flourishing, and a bit ironic.

Another reason it’s so important to pay attention to our attention is that there’s a direct link between how we spend our attention and the quality of our time. By “quality of time” I’m talking about the quality of the experiences that are embedded within moments of time. Failing to attend to the right things reduces the quality of your experiences. So, investing some time in attending to your attention means that your time pays more dividends (And I'm gonna apologize, attending to your attention is a little clumsy, but I don't know of a better way to say it.) This seems like it might be getting a little confusing with all of the different references to time, attend, and attention. Let me give you the bottom line. If you aren’t using your attention in a purposeful way, you’re not fully flourishing. 

Craig 04:22 

Unfortunately, our attention is under constant assault these days. Several factors account for this, but perhaps the most damaging is the tyranny of the algorithm. Any time you’re online, you’re subject to manipulation by algorithms. Those chunks of computer code dictate what you see on social media, what videos pop up on YouTube, what ads you see on websites, and even your search results. Many algorithms purposely distract you; they’re specifically engineered to capture and retain your attention. The constant barrage of custom selected content often leads to compulsive checking of your devices, even to the point of addiction. The gods of the algorithms are robbing you of your most precious resource … your attention.

So, what can you do to protect and better utilize your attention? We can go all the way back to psychologist William James, who wrote about attention in the 1890s. He makes two important points that are relevant here. First, controlling your attention requires mental effort and willpower. Second, the wandering of attention is a fundamental part of human consciousness. Let’s dig into both of these.

Craig 05:40 

The fact that attention requires effort brings up two important insights, practice can reduce the effort required, and fatigue is a factor in your attention. Like a lot of things, practice can lead to improvement in your ability to spend your attention resources wisely; this works by increasing the accuracy of your attention and by reducing the effort required to focus and maintain your attention. This is the point of certain kinds of mindfulness practices. Mindfulness requires attention. Note that I’m talking about a particular kind of mindfulness, there are lots of mindfulness practices, some of which might not fit here. What I’m talking about here is focused attention as opposed to something like Buddhist mindfulness, which I frankly don’t fully understand, but it is a different idea. My take is that Buddhist mindfulness is about a broad, non-judgmental awareness of the present moment. What I’m talking about here is really focused attention, concentrating on a specific stimulus or aspect of your environment. By the way, I talked about mindfulness in episode 24 which is available at livewellandflourish.com/24.

Craig 06:55 

When you consciously practice focused attention, over time, you’ll naturally get better at it. It’s the old practice-habit-being idea from Aristotle, which I talked about in episode 26. Yeah, I know I talk about this a lot. I talk about it a lot because it’s effective and really important. With practice, you’ll become better at finding the important things to focus your attention on, and once you have your target, you’ll be better equipped to maintain that focus. Basically, you’ll kind of build your attention muscles.

There’s another aspect of this that’s critically important; it has to do with the idea of filtering. Basically, when you want to focus your attention, you have to find your target in an environment that's filled with other stimuli, sounds, smells, sights, thoughts, devices, people … all of these compete for your attention. One way to reduce the effort involved in attention is to reduce that noise. People babbling away during a concert is a huge pet peeve of mine. The closest I’ve come to a fight in my adult life was over a pair of idiots talking loudly in the middle of a great song at a Dixie Chicks concert. You probably experienced something similar (the getting aggravated, not the fight - we did not get into a fight.) You know, if you attend concerts of movies, at some point somebody is gonna be talking and it's gonna distract you. But why are things like this so irritating? Well, they make it hard to pay attention to the music or film. The noise of the babbling jerks needs to be filtered out, which requires effort and degrades your ability to maintain your attention on the entertainment.

Craig 08:38 

Maybe you can’t control the world’s idiots, but you do have control over some aspects of your environment. Shaping your environment by minimizing distractions can go a long way towards reducing the effort required to focus your attention. I’ll give you a kind of “in the moment” example. As I was working on this, I heard a little “ding” followed by a notification of an incoming text. Without really thinking about it, my attention went to the text. Of course, then I read the text, and had to turn my attention back to the episode. All of this required effort. When you really need to focus, minimize your distractions. Turn off notifications, get in a quiet environment, silence your devices … you know the drill. Maybe you’re better about this than me, but I tend to be pretty bad at shaping my environment. Right now I have three screens on, music playing, and my phone by my side. I turned the music off before I actually recorded. Yeah, I really need to work on reducing distractions.

Craig 09:44 

This is very important because of the effects of attention fatigue. Remember, attention requires effort. At some point, putting in too much effort towards maintaining your attention and you overload your mental energy reserve, making it harder and harder to keep your attention. This is why attention breaks are important. Sometimes a short break where you just let your mind wander is a good thing overall. A little rest gives you a chance to replenish your attention resources. You’ve probably experienced this. You’re working really hard on something and it gets harder and harder to focus. You simply are too tired to pay attention. When this happens, don’t fight it. Take a break. Of course, you need to be able to tell the difference between a lack of attention discipline and fatigue. You can get better at this with … you guessed it … practice.

Craig 10:41 

By the way, I consider this in my courses. My lectures are scheduled for almost two hours, which is a long time to listen to me. (Aren’t you glad these episodes are much, much shorter?) I can’t really expect my students to maintain their attention for two hours, especially since I usually teach 8:00 AM classes. So, I build in “cognitive breaks” in which I talk about something unrelated to the course. I’ll show a cute picture of one of our four-legged kids or tell a dad joke … something silly. I even tell students they don’t have to pay attention. Then, after a minute or two, we get back to business.

OK, let’s turn OUR attention to the idea of wandering attention. Generally, we tend to think of wandering attention as a problem, and it can be. But you can gain some benefits when your attention wanders (or at least you can.) In addition to giving yourself kind of an attention break, wandering can be a source of creativity. It’s the old Archimedes in the tub yelling “eureka!” idea (I don't know if that really happened.) The wandering mind occasionally locks on to something really interesting and really important. You can get some great ideas during that time. So, a little zone out time isn’t a bad thing. Remember, excellence lies in the middle. So a little wandering is fine and good, but too much and it’s a drain on your flourishing.

Craig 12:10 

Alright, let’s talk about what you can do to invest your attention resources more wisely. Here are three practices you can start this week to help you build your attention muscles.

The first practice I recommend is time blocking. This deceptively simple practice involves setting aside blocks of time to focus on a specific task. I use an online calendar for this. I might put “work on podcast” as 6:30 to 8:00 on my calendar. Then, I try to work exclusively on that task during that time period. Note the word “try”; I'm certainly not perfect at this. But just having the goal of focusing on a single task helps me better focus my attention. Give it a try. It’s simple and effective.

Also, take a look at your environment. What attention-grabbing elements can you eliminate? One way to figure this out is to keep a log. When you’re working on something and a stimulus draws your attention away, write down what it was. Once you’ve put together a list, find common distractions and develop ways to eliminate them. Let me give you a head start. Device notifications are a distraction for many of us, so put those on your list.

Craig 13:29 

Finally, build some wandering time into your schedule. About 90 minutes is my limit for focus … well, it’s probably less than that. Find your limit by paying attention to when you start to have trouble paying attention. Track this to figure out when you need to take a break. Then actually put breaks on your schedule and treat them like an important meeting. Actually take the breaks. Seriously. Breaks, in the right amount, are great for your productivity.

Instead of a closing quote, I want to leave you with a thought. Attention is your most precious resource. What a gift you give someone when you give the gift of your attention. It’s the most precious gift of all.

Until next time, be well my friends.

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Until next time.