Your Attention Please

The problem of attention prioritization

The environment of modern internet requires us to be very quick in deciding to what we give our attention. With algorithms, feeds, and apps calibrated to monopolize our time and attention, we have had to hone our filtering abilities to be able to tell in as little as a second whether to swipe or stay.

What has incorrectly been termed “attention span of a gold fish” is actually the result of your eyes and mind being optimized for deciding quickly what is and isn’t worth your time.

I know this because the same people who swipe in 0.3 seconds will binge watch entire seasons (or even multiple seasons) of TV shows in a single sitting. Whether or not that is a good use of time I will not say, but it shows that attention allocation and prioritization does not equal attention span.

As a writer, I’m very aware that I’m just one of many competing for your time and attention. I find myself wondering from time to time if my stories are worth the time of others.

This wondering is intensified when I find myself spending days in a row writing nothing because my attention is being caught by interesting YouTube videos. One unique blessing of creativity is curiosity. But with great curiosity, their must also come great prudence. (And intentional time management)

I still struggle with this. But identifying the reasons I struggle has helped me to see a path forward. If you find yourself repeatedly giving time and attention to things other than the productive or creative things you want to be doing, it’s time to get away from the device. As hard as that is for me to say, it’s the only way to break the loop. Our devices are optimized for attention retention and the only way to beat it is to not expose yourself to it.

In his book, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad, Austin Kleon describes the necessity for separating your observation and curiosity times from your creative output times. As humans, we can’t create from nothing. We need inspiration. We need to immerse ourselves in the best creative works and influences we can find. Then we need to shut out inputs and noise so we can get bored and start thinking creatively.

This doesn’t just apply to “creative” people though. This methodology is applicable in any area of life because we all face the optimized attention farmers. We all have productive things we want to do and we all have a limited time to do them.

Here’s an idea. Use two different browsers (I use Brave and Vivaldi because they auto-skip YouTube ads… seriously, I haven’t seen an ad on YouTube in months) one for exploring interests and the other for work, productivity, and creativity (if that creativity is expressed in a google doc).

If this article was helpful, informative, or encouraging to you, please consider clicking the heart and leaving a short comment to let me know.

Now for buttons!