I’m becoming more conscious about my attention on a day-to-day basis. Several times during the day I myself evaluating whether what I am engaged in at that moment is worth my attention.
It’s often most relevant to when I find myself skimming through quote-unquote content, or watching TV on the iPad, but also when I’m having phone or chat conversations at or outside of work: have we reached diminishing returns on this conversation? Is this important enough to hold my attention? There’s an awareness of the temptation of multi-tasking.
Contrastingly, when I find myself thinking through or dwelling on an idea, I ask whether I should continue to indulge it or make a note and get on with my day.
Today I came across this article titled “How to find focus“. The writer says that they have found focus by saying “no to obligations or opportunities that I would have easily accepted before”, but it’s what follows that’s more interesting:
The most significant change in my thinking has been that I have a lot of conviction now that the few things I’m spending my time on – university, writing, side projects – are right for me.
Bingo. It’s hard to answer the questions above if you don’t have some level of confidence in what’s important to you and what isn’t. In the absence of conviction, you’ll yo-yo between giving in to stimulus temptation – of which there’s no shortage in our information-suffused lives – or forcing yourself to focus on stuff that someone else wants you to: a friend, your manager.
But if you have a good enough awareness of what is worth your attention, then combined with awareness, you’ll have a much easier time deciding what to say yes or no to – that calendar invite, that new personal project, that new Twitter subscription or Netflix recommendation, that conversation segue.