Tag: Attention

I was planning on writing this post 3 days ago but I kept getting distracted. When facing a blank page, you soon realise just how much work you need to do before thoughts can be put into words.

Sure, it’s much easier to browse through some social media feeds, reading other people’s posts or watching their YouTube videos, than spend time to create your own work. Honestly, if I don’t produce another post, the world will still go around, no one would care.

But I do care, I simply can’t quieten that voice on the back of my mind.

Why attention? The other day I was driving my brother and my parents to a beach, I noticed my brother kept commenting on the scenes outside while we were talking about something else. Not that he meant to interrupt our conversation or wanted to change the subject but he simply got distracted by each passing traffic. And? My way to stopping him from being distracted was to continue talking about the topics we were on before.

A typical type of so-in-your-face distraction is ads. Look around, they are just about everywhere. Of course, they exist for a reason, love it or hate it, the bottom line is they want to find ways to getting into your head, so you don’t forget.

Let’s say you are watching one of your favourite YouTube clips, then out of blue, a couple of ads pop up one after another, you feel annoyed so decide to click a skip ad button. But if the same ads repeat often enough, they will be stuck in your head in no time. Any tricks? Lately, I’ve started to let those ads run freely but while pressing the mute on the speakers.

Remember the phrase “selective hearing”? I admire those people who have such an ability. They can focus on only what they want to hear and block out all other noises. Whether it’s your thing or not, in this day and age, we can’t literally take all in, being selective is really the way to go. How we treat our attention should be in the same way we treat our most valuable commodity – time.

They say it’s all in your head. I agree. But more precisely, I think it’s all in your attention. What we pay attention to has consequences. It will pretty much set the course of your day. In my case, I ended up procrastinating and postponing this post for 3 days.

It may sound ironic but perhaps distraction is a homework I had to do, a warm-up session I had to take part in before qualifying myself to write about attention. In the process, I’ve learned that attention is really a choice, a decision. It’s a split second thing you do, but the outcome can make a world of difference. How I bought my attention back, is by obeying and bowing to that nagging voice in my head – paying attention to writing.

Now this post is done, it’s time to cut myself some slack…

Believe it or not, the moment you open your eyes, get out of the bed in the morning, get ready for a new day, you are already a wanted person, even though you don’t feel like it. Guess which part of you is the most sought after by the world? Your attention that is – the invisible but super highly valuable asset you’ve ever had. Look around, it’s not hard to understand why. You step out the door, go to places, watch for the traffic lights, the road signs, the cars. When driving or crossing the streets, your close attention on the traffic conditions keeps you safe and sound. Meanwhile, there’re tons of distractions from all corners of the world are also fighting for your attention. Somehow, within your conscious mind, you decide to block them all and only focus on one thing that matters most – the road safety. However, as soon as you arrive at your destination, you check your phone or other mobile devices, read your Facebook feeds or new emails, before you know it, another round of battle for your attention has already begun. Day in and day out, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even when you sleep. The world wants your attention badly. If your attention isn’t your most important asset, then what is?

To conceptualize the idea of attention, a good way to start is looking at its closest cousins – thoughts. Much has been said about our thoughts and how important it is to watch what we’re thinking in our heads as it can lead to how we speak to ourselves and others, how we act and react to circumstances we are in. Ever wondering how many thoughts do we have a day? Let’s Google it and see. And? What are the numbers? Thousands! I’m amazed by just how those neuroscientists or researchers came to their conclusions. Assuming those numbers they came up with are right, it goes to show how complicated and thoughtful creatures we as human beings really are. To me, thoughts alone aren’t enough to make or break our days. It’s thoughts that we pay attention to make or break our days. Furthermore, since we can only hold one thought at one time, then the quality of our output all depend on choices we make consciously and subconsciously.

Like it or not, the world is a biased place. It has favuoritism towards positivity. Our attention can go through the roof, work their way to sabotage us if we spend too much time dwelling on negativity. I don’t think negative thinking is that big deal but it’ll become one if we give more weight than it deserves and let it expand out of control. Take my recent experience as an example, the other day I found myself getting more passive aggressive at work. The trigger? I didn’t feel appreciated. It sounds like a silly reason, doesn’t it? I’m sure no one likes to feel underappreciated or underrated especially when someone fails to show appreciation in a way we expected. The question is: Should we be the ones pay the price for it? In my case, I kept hanging on the same thought- not feeling appreciated and the moment I captured myself falling into the deep trap, I started asking myself: Why am I still paying attention to something that clearly doesn’t serve me? How should I stop it? Paradoxically, the harder I tried to stop it, the more emphasis I placed on it, the more attention it got from me and the deeper I got stuck in it.

Later that day when I got home, I no longer got hung up by my earlier thought as there were more important things in my place for me to focus on. I realized: to shift our attention, it’s not about getting an old thought out of our heads or de-focusing. It’s about letting a new thought into our heads and re-focusing. Do you agree? If you’ve read this post up to this point, I thank you for your attention…