Alexa. Queue up “Let Me Go” by Adam Bartley. Sorry I had to :)
ONTO THE NEWSLETTER
An idea continually invading my consciousness when I spend my time on just about anything nowadays… is that Sustained Attention is cumulative.
This expands further stating that any Sustained Attention is generally good attention. The idea expands onward to suggest that once you unlock the ability to sustain your attention on any activity (no matter what it is), it feeds into our other activities. Having the ability to sustain attention on any task has a cumulative effect in our lives, improving well… just about everything!
Defining Sustained Attention
Sustained Attention is having the ability to focus on an activity or stimulus for a long period of time. It's what enables us to fully concentrate on an activity as long as it takes from beginning to end, even if there are other distractions at hand.
Simply put, Sustained Attention is paying attention and completing what we are working on, despite whatever distractions that may come up along the way. One word comes to mind… ping! With Sustained Attention, in our notfication-saturated existences, whatever "pings" notify us along the way, we overcome them and still complete the task we set out to complete in the first place.
Fighting and dancing with the informational storm
“What information consumes is the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” - Daniel Goleman from “Focus”
Let's face it. We live in an age of digital distraction, due to the wealth of information we have at our disposal. This has created impoverished attention spans, due to the ever-increasing amount of information we can possibly encounter in a day. That initial moment one fires up their laptop, smartphone, wearable and has access to the Library of Alexandria and then some. This is intimidating, and yet tremendously empowering.
How to sustain attention through the waves of pings coming our way?
Well you can start by putting your technology on Do Not Disturb, the moment you begin to do any form of "deep work". Deep Work can be defined as activities that are performed in a state of distraction-free concentration which enables you to push your cognitive prowess to its limit. Cal Newport has written extensively on this exact topic of Deep Work.
Leave Do Not Disturb on at all costs on your smartphone. As well as on your Macbook. Despite how much easier it can be to type out your responses to the various digital pings you may receive, Do Not Disturb is the ante to play.
What makes Sustained Attention cumulative?
My hypothesis is simple: it is that the more we engage in a state of Sustained Attention, the more easily we unlock the ability to pay attention deeply to a given task-at-hand.
It could be any task: washing the dishes, writing a daily page, meditating, folding laundry, reading a book, playing the piano or sending an email.
I am convinced that paying attention to these activities deeply, unlocks something within. That something within is the fundamental ability to pay attention to the things in our control, and realizing that we can drastically change our lives by flexing this ability.
It’s start with a shift in belief from treating our attention as a haphazard thing, to a sacred thing.
Framing our attention as sacred
If you view your attention as sacred… you may notice an inevitable switch, a switch to better value one’s: time, focus, energy and so on.
This may result in a direct translation in a change of habits. Switching from waking up and immediately scrolling social media, instead to meditate in the morning. To activate that sensation of deep attention.
Another example of a change of habits, is instead of binging another TV series on Netflix, you can instead intently decide to finally learn how to play your favorite song on piano. Using the power of the internet.
And let’s be real: in terms of maximizing your potential, the internet can be your best friend or your worst enemy.
Building your attentional landscape online
How to create a sustainable ecology online that enables deep attention?
It is important to continually sharpen up on the ways in which your time online is either harming or enhancing your attention.
I could easily rant about the tools online that greatly harm my ability to pay attention online, but I will save you the stress and remain positive touching on the tools that enhance my attention.
Three wonderful tools online come to mind in terms of enhacing my attention:
1) Anki: a flashcard app. I treat my Anki as a Digital Dictionary where I continually challenge myself to learn more about unfamiliar terms I come across. Anki uses Spaced Repetition to ensure that I don’t forget the concepts I am learning overtime.
2) Roam Research: my safehaven for notes reflecting on my time online. I treat Roam as my digital notebook, and find myself diving further into the roots of my writing, reading, as well as overall interests.
3) Readup: a one stop shop for reading articles online. Acts as a safehouse for saved articles to be read at a later date, while also having a wonderful Chrome/Firefox/Safari extension, as well as iOS app. Readup converts every article you come across online into the same minimalist screen enabling deep, distraction-free reading.
Attention is a feeding frenzy
Unlocking the ability to sustain attention on any activity or stimulus feeds into everything else we pay attention to. Something, I have come to lay bare recently, is dispelling whether or not playing video games actually enhanced my ability to pay attention, or drastically decreased it.
Focusing with my fullest capacity, I believe that video games actually helped my concentration. However, I believe going from a high-intensity stimuli-riddled activity such as video games, to a more genuinely minimal activity to reading.. probably harmed my attention.
Switching from one activity to another does typically have a switching cost.. and it is important to remember how context-switching harms our ability to pay attention.
Perhaps, after mixing music on my DJ program Serato DJ Pro, and then transferring over to playing video games is more akin, rather than switching to reading a physical book for example.
So my advice to you to end this newsletter is to pay attention to the thing that makes us tick the most… even if it is a far away, distant dream. Little by little, we can make progress on it. This progress, as well as attention builds up overtime. Translating into doing the unthinkable.
What are some astronomical goals you can focus attention on in your life today, to bring you closer to your dream?
If it’s writing a book, well it can help by first writing a page.
If it’s running a marathon, it can help by first running a mile.
If it’s making an album, it can help by first making a song.
One thing holds all these long-term goals in relation to one another. That one thing is Sustained Attention in the present, bringing us closer to our long-term goals. One task at a time. One day at a time.
Cheers and Happy Learning,
Adam Bartley
Parting Note
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