Attention for sale
Attention has become another commodity to buy and sell, another opportunity for greed in our consumer economy. Don't sell yours cheaply.
In a class I teach on effective business communication, we start the term by considering the examples students offer of communicators they admire. Sooner or later, a student describes their choice as a “good listener.” And that gives us an opening to explore the importance of attention.
This week, we had that conversation in class. I asked students to reflect on their days so far, and to determine about how many minutes they had given another human being truly undivided attention. Only one student said they were able to offer 30 minutes of undivided attention to their partner, because they’d both risen early that morning. Most of the rest estimated their times at somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes, with a few admitting they hadn’t had that time at all.
There was no judgment - we weren’t rating more attention as “good” and less as “bad.” We simply explored the difficulties of being in the moment and truly listening when we engage with others. Our conclusion was that attention is the result of decisions we make, and is a skill we can practice.
Since that conversation, I’ve been noticing the decisions I make about my attention, and the competition for it. How often do I direct my attention to what I claim to value? For how long is that attention undivided? What decisions do I need to make to align my attention with my values?
The information age offers a flood of stimuli competing for our attention. Knowing that our brains are often quick to pick out signals of danger and threat, media providers promulgate thousands of such signals to bring our attention to their advertisers.
Attention has become another commodity to buy and sell, another opportunity for greed in our consumer economy. It amazes me how cheaply we are willing to sell our attention, for so little in return: outrage, numbness, momentary gratification.
Perhaps one of the most radical things we can do is commit to taking conscious charge of our own attention. To practice the skill of aligning attention with our values, over and over again, until we realize the social, political, and economic structures based on those values: inclusion, equity, compassion, and love.
In the week ahead, join the challenge my students and I came up with: focus your attention, as often as you can, on what is truly most important to you.
And let us know how it goes.
This patch of icy snow clinging to a gorgeously mossy tree trunk caught my attention.