Our attention is being captured in so many ways. People are looking into its impacts, including Swiss-British author Johann Hari, who wrote “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—And How to Think Deeply Again.” Hari was finding it difficult to concentrate, and in his line of work, he needed to. He decided to do a digital detox by taking himself off the internet and all his electronic devices for three months.
In that time, he learned a lot about his addiction and noticed how it was impacting others. But it was when he saw how his grandson was demonstrating addictive behavior that he became very concerned.
This led to an investigation of the factors that help and hinder concentration and attention. In his book, he mentions 12 main reasons why people are steadily losing their ability to focus. He writes that the situation has escalated into a “significant crisis that has individual and societal consequences ranging from feelings of helplessness and frustration and purposelessness to an inability to elaborate and solve pressing problems.”
The part I found most engaging was when he contrasted “flow” with “fragmented” attention, the latter which most people are now experiencing in their daily lives. I highly recommend the book, which is packed with useful information and ideas to contemplate.
I feel that part of our fragmented attention is due to too much stimulation coming at us from all directions: rapid-fire news bites, so many TV channels to skip through, flooded email inboxes and attention-grabbing headlines. I find it quite exhausting to be around, so I disengage from much of it. One way I do that is to step outside and do some cloud-watching, listen to the birds or watch the antics of bees, fence lizards and the great blue heron who drops in for a gopher meal.
Speaking of attention grabbers, I feel the need to mention a phone scam alert that came out of the Better Business Bureau. These scammers will try to get you to say “yes” by asking questions like “Can you hear me?” They can then use your vocalized “yes” and splice it in to authorize charges on your phone, open a credit card account, etc.
Kelly Richmond Pope, a professor of forensic accounting at DePaul University, spells this all out in her book, “Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories, and Secrets from the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry.” Another question they ask is, “Am I speaking with…?” I have rehearsed a response, which has now become automatic, and that is: “Who’s calling?” I then hang up if it’s not someone I wish to speak with. Some people I know will let them all go to voicemail. What a world we live in now!
All this invasion of our privacy cries out for retreat time to restore one’s nervous system and equilibrium. You can go off for formal retreats or you can set up one that works for you. Some elements to consider might be (and feel free to add your own):
Time out from electronic devices and the internet.
Establishing quiet time with centering practices.
Time in nature just taking in the sounds and sights.
Time in some creative activity where the right brain is engaged.
Adding movement like tai chi, dance or yoga.
Allowing your surface self to connect to a deeper part of you.
Be open to the surprises that you encounter. Keep track of your experiences in a journal and revisit it from time to time as a reminder of the benefits of retreating from a fast-paced world that is constantly trying to distract us. I will finish with a quote from poet David Whyte:
“Life is a constant invitation to a radical form of simplification,
Of giving away peripheral complications to get down to the essence of it.”
Here’s to a deeper, more meaningful way of navigating through life.
Gail Greenlees is a retired Point Reyes Station resident interested in what we pay attention to and how we put our attention to good use.