Well-Resourced: Attending
to our attention.
In this note:
Some questions for you about your attention
I’ve arrived at this gold mine. The slug helped me get there though two lovely writers have also helped a lot, too.
I wrote a two part sharing (part 1 and part 2) the other day for my experiments in belonging newsletter about this delightful combo of books I’m reading right now: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell and Bones Would Rain from the Sky by Suzanne Clothier.
Reading this two seemingly disparate books simultaneously has revealed a beautiful overlap; they are both about attention.
I get into more detail about the two books in the other posts… though reading those posts is definitely not a prerequisite for reading this right now.
The gold in this - for you, human who cares about and / or for a young child - is about really witnessing one’s own attention.
So, some questions to ponder or let float around in your day today:
what or who do you love to give your full attention to? (for example, cooking, your kid, the food you’re eating when you’re eating it, your run, your cat, your coffee)
what or who requires your full attention? (see examples above)
what or who requires half of your attention?
who in your life gets most annoyed with you when you are only half listening to them?
who do you get most annoyed with when they are only half listening to you?
how could you give more attention to the three most important beings in your life (one of those beings is you)?
Jenny Odell’s call to action is for more folks to “resist the attention economy” and occupy the “third space,” a self-designed third way that flows beyond the incessant attention-requesting tactics of financially driven platforms (such as Facebook or Twitter) and other tech that thrives on the “always on” 24/7 cycle.
She writes:
Occupying the “third space” within the attention economy is important not just because, as I’ve argued, individual attention forms the basis for collective attention and thus for meaningful refusal of all kinds. It is also important because in a time of shrinking margins, when not only students but everyone else has “put the pedal to the metal,” and cannot afford other kinds of refusal, attention may be the last resource we have left to withdraw. … it may be only in the space of our own minds that some of us can begin to pull apart the links. 93 (italics author’s own)
We can be told where, how, and who we give our attention isn’t all that important in the grand scheme of things. But I think many know, deep down, that our attention is in fact mythic and deserving of thoughtful consideration.
I invite you to attend to your attention and sense for any shift.
Til next week,
Cassandra