Reclaim Creative Attention

“Attention” originates from the Latin word attentio, coming from “ad” – meaning towards– and “tendre”–  to stretch. Attentio essentially meant to direct towards. In just the last 15 years attention has seen a dramatic shift in meaning. Search “attention” in book titles from 1915-1994 and there are associations to performance, subconscious, cognition, and advertisements– perhaps the first whispers of the attention economy. 

Today, the word attention elicits a range of emotions, as it often gets paired with deficit disorder, or a lack of focus, or related to the loss of attention from algorithms and media. Feelings around these topics, and even attention itself, are largely negative in nature as I often hear guilt and shame around a lack of attention span. People are fearful for how challenging they find it to concentrate, and how “addicted” they are to screens.

These conversations about our attention play a trick on us. Through our language, we unknowingly disconnect attention as a cognitive subset that requires upkeep, or risk deteriorating performance. Attention has become a kind of competition as to what– or who– owns and wins the attention prize. Your attention is owned by your boss and coworkers, family and friends, devices, advertisers, until you have no attention left to yourself. Attention is a currency we trade, hence the attention economy. 

Here I present a reframe: what if attention, consciousness, and time were treated as the same thing.

If attention, consciousness, and time were seen as the same thing, you would not own your attention, because it’s not anyone’s to own and never has been. You can, however, reclaim your time, consciousness, and thus your attention. To claim is to demand your right to your attention, but to own attention is to possess it, and that possession can be stolen. 

Your attention is your willfully made creation. It can never be sold or taken without your consent. “Your willfully made creation” as in, your life as you live it, both deliberately and impulsively. Willfully is a contronym, a word that has two opposite meanings. Willfully embraces paradox at the source of your present moment. You decide what your attention focuses on, but you also allow yourself to be distracted. There does not have to be any judgement. Shame about how we’re distracted emanates from our productivity-obsessed culture. 

Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus, recounted a trip with his godson Adam to Graceland. At the time, Adam was 19 and spent “every waking moment” looking at screens. Hari pitched the idea to go to Graceland as a way to reconnect and do something they talked about doing when Adam was young. The only condition was that Adam had to do it all without his phone. 

But, “at every stage in the trip, he had broken his promise,” writes Johann. 

There was a moment standing in the jungle room of the late Elvis’ home where Johann snapped. Just before, a couple nearby were busy staring at the tour guide iPad screens to realize they were standing in the very room that they were viewing digitally. Johann turned to laugh with Adam about the insanity, only to find Adam was on his phone. He snapped, and tried to wrestle the phone away from Adam’s hand. 

Later, the two sat together next to the hotel pool. Johann confessed that his rage towards him was really with himself. “I was losing my ability to be present, and I hated it,” writes Johann. Adam, still holding his phone, says “I know something is wrong, but I have no idea how to fix it.”

Johann and Adam’s story is shared in many families. Many of my dear friends and family complain they don’t have enough time. TikToks show teens viewing multiple streams of media at once, scrolling, watching TV and potentially consuming third and fourth medias all simultaneously. David M. Levy, Ph.D coined the term “popcorn brain” to describe this phenomenon of obsessive multitasking. Signals that time is a strained resource are everywhere– scarcity is after all, a feature of the economy. 

My theory is that cultural guilt and shame, compounded by overwhelm and anxiety, are fueling a convenience and productivity feedback loop. People feel pressured to perform all they can in their waking hours, either from fear of death, fear of poverty, or both. Overwork and exhaustion lead to a pleasure-inducing binge cycle, where we feel we “deserve” screen time to make up for our hard work. But if screen time is not leisurable, and disrupts the nervous system, we end up feeling worse than before. 

Digital content influences the brain and nervous system. These effects are proven by both Western science and Eastern philosophy. According to Wang et. al, mobile phone overuse has been linked to reductions in the brain’s grey and white matter, impairing attention and decision-making in a morphological way. McLaughlin et. al found study participants experienced mental and physical ill-being with increased “doomscrolling” sessions. And according to Āyurveda, digestion begins in the mind, and what we see or sense before eating anything influences our body’s condition. 

While yes, attention has become inextricably tied to flashing rectangles, aka screens, I think this tragedy is deeper than the few hours lost scrolling TikTok. In my journal entries over the years, I’ve recounted how bizarre the whole mess would seem to an alien. I imagined them watching us allow time to disappear into nothingness, our consciousness siphoned by blue light like the dementors in Harry Potter. 

A little while after I commented on that friend’s Facebook post, I decided to delete Facebook. It took a few more years for Instagram and Twitter to follow suit. I didn’t like who I was when I scrolled social media. Without it, I felt free with a lot of downtime. 

It was then that I started to piece together my idea about attention, consciousness, and time. If you think about it, reality doesn’t actually have “parts”. The parts, labels, categories, names, words, stories are made-up by our mental sensory computers. We call it a “tree” or an “economy” because then we can easily know for next time and communicate what we mean. But really, the universe unfolds as the present moment. You sense what happens, your brain selects and interprets details, finding the edges to call that this and this that, and instantly scans your memory bank to identify the appropriate nervous system response. 

There is voluntary and involuntary “focus”. Your brain picks up everything, both what you choose to look at and listen to, but also everything else that gets filtered out as extraneous data. 

To me, concentration is an ability to hold focus. I’ve also seen written that focus is the ability to hold attention, like if you are focused on a task you’re holding attention, but to be focused is to be concentrated in attention as if I distilled the essence of your full sensory experience and concentrated it into exactly what you are focused on. 

If your attention is stolen from you, so too is your time and consciousness. Algorithms are time thieves but they’re not alone. Everything is geared to waste our time, claims Drew Gooden in a YouTuber to his 4.5 million subscribers. Gooden is known for his quick-cut, deep-dive comedic style. In Everybody wants to waste your time he criticizes Netflix for adding episodes to series in order to extend monthly subscriptions. 

Why is this eight episodes? Is it because they knew it would take me four days to finish instead of getting through it all in one night, therefore extending my subscription just long enough for them to make a little bit more money for me? You know, now that I hear that out loud, I'm pretty sure it's that.

Traffic, queues, buffering, and the endless stream of time-wasting content sacrifices human potential. The more we allow unnecessary stalling to occupy our daily lives, the less time we have to experience it for ourselves.

Reclaiming Creative Attention removes ownership from the equation. If we are experiencing a moment together where we are sharing intentional, thoughtful connection, neither of us own each other’s attention. We are sharing time. 

When I claim my creative attention, I become a leader of the future. I find that I never actually needed more “attention” or attention span. What I needed was myself, and I gave myself the motivation to create. Meditation helps with attention, not because you are only focused on your breath, although that is a common vehicle for meditation. Meditation builds concentration because you are having a conversation with consciousness, aka your inner knowing. Your inner artist or child. When I write for 6 hours, it now feels easy and genuinely enjoyable. I don’t have resistance because I trust in my potential. 

In abstract, reclaiming creative attention sounds great, if not idealist. It’s in practice that it becomes all but impossible. We can’t remove the distractions and demands for our attention, so where will the focus come from? In a world that already feels short on time, where are we supposed to find more? 

Change doesn’t happen overnight. In my case it has taken three years of intentional time for myself, my practice, and my craft until I began to see results. Along the way I learned more, I read The Artist’s Way twice with friend groups and took classes online. Similar to progress at the gym, show up and let the mind and body do the rest. 

Stephen King is known for his #1 writing rule, “sit your ass in the chair”. In a blog post about this rule, Matthew Olson of Chaotican Writer shares this, “if it's a story you are looking to write, and writing it with words is the goal, then it's time to admit to yourself with all of your power and courage that you’re not writing enough! If my words unsettle you, then good! This tip is intended to zap you to attention; put you in the hot seat,… literally. It doesn’t matter if it's coming from me, or a published writer. The commandment is the same.” The general rule of thumb here is that your story is worth telling, but only you can make the time to tell it. 

How do you express yourself? What future do you see for yourself, your family, friends, neighbors? These questions are touted as being deep, or real, and so they’re avoided due to the emotionally triggering nature of the truth.

An open honest dialogue in today’s world is controversial. Politics are polarizing, relying on cultural norms and biases that inform generations of beliefs. We talk against each other without really listening. It’s hard to envision a world believing what “they” believe. Language becomes heated, and emotions further influence decisions. 

What’s happening on a micro scale in our imagined conversation, is the nervous systems of both parties become activated. Fight or flight kicks in, triggering an “us v. them” response. 

On a macro level, focus is drawn towards that which is triggering on a micro scale. Consider an analogy– you’re in a submarine in the ocean using a radar to navigate. All around there is mostly nothingness, and your target will appear as a single dot on the screen. This is your focus, and most of the entire ocean doesn’t matter to your mission. 

We can all recognize that headlines are sensationalized, that we feel awful after doomscrolling, and that the world does maintain some beauty amidst the horror. But it’s difficult to apply this knowledge from under the dark cloud. I never got over my biodiversity grief, I grew around it. As my friends who share a love for the environment say, “you have to live your life knowing the world is on fire somewhere and underwater somewhere else.”

Let’s observe what judgements arise when evaluating small talk v. deep talk. Why is one more acceptable than the other? What comes to mind is fear, about misinterpretation, even death. Fear of death leads us away from connection and towards self-preservation. So we avoid the deep talks all together, because talking about it would make it real, even though there is nothing more certain than death. In a way, humans would rather be anxious about uncertainty than face what they already know to be true.  There’s only certainty at the edge of uncertainty, an answer is greeted by more questions. There’s only experience, and the story of our experience. Minds can only ever feel and think, but knowledge can be changed because nothing is certain. 

Honesty takes bravery. It’s vulnerable to be honest with yourself as well as others. But creation moves the world forward, and we all need you to have quality time with authentic expression. If you follow your passion, continue learning to be empathetic and set boundaries, care for yourself, you will naturally lead to positive impact. 

It can start small, taking time in your natural meditation environment– the shower or bath, to write down your thoughts. Notice what comes to mind without judgement. Expand this observational mindfulness to other parts of life. How are you in traffic? In the grocery store? With your partner and children? How do you respond to stress? Start with noticing, then reflect on what you notice. Find patterns in your behavior and habits. Reflect on what feels good, and what relationships serve you. Take care of your household, keep a clean fridge with lots of fresh whole foods. Cook delicious nutritious meals and do small things to make yourself happy. It’s not because you deserve it, because you never had to earn this treatment in the first place. You are what you’ve needed. Exactly, you get it!

Read more in The Charter 1.0