Driven to Distraction
The other day I found myself stopped at a traffic light, doing what nearly all of us do now without thinking: scrolling my phone. I wasn’t responding to anything important. I wasn’t even reading anything new. In fact, I was mindlessly skimming the same news headlines I’d read over breakfast when the car behind me honked and I was pulled back into the present. By the time I pulled up to the light, it had already turned back to red. And there I sat, feeling both angry and foolish. Because I realized I had given my full attention – or the better part it – over to what? Absolutely nothing.
I think about this a lot as I watch my young children navigate the digital world, and the daily existential battle we are engaged in for their attention. And make no mistake, it is a battle. The average media platform or app has armies of engineers paid handsomely to keep us staring, swiping, and coming back for more. And the truth is, they do not care about our wellbeing or contentment. What they care about is “user engagement” – time spent on the app. The goal is minutes and hours. Yours, not theirs.
If our time here is valuable, why then do we give it away so cheaply? I think it’s because we’ve been convinced that the real excitement, the real news is happening somewhere else. On another platform. On someone else’s feed. So we scroll back and forth – reels, shorts, stories, headlines – hoping to find some shred of connection or meaning. But the truth is probably simpler that that: we are hardwired for distraction. Our brains want the hit of newness. And the companies behind our apps know this. In fact, they design for it. Their business model depends on our inability to resist the ping, ding and alert that heralds the arrival of something new.
As a Gen X dinosaur, let me say that I am not anti-technology: I use and enjoy it as much as anyone. But I am also aware that whenever we cede control of our attention, we cede control of our lives to people who fundamentally do not deserve it. What can we do about this?
Pay Attention to Where You Pay Attention
Most of us don’t really notice where our attention is going, we only notice after it’s gone. Here’s a little experiment: spend one day auditing your attention and notice each time you reach for your phone without meaning to. Track the small leaks as they occur. Notice when it happens. Is it when you are bored, lonely, feeling anxious? Every hour spent scrolling is an hour not spent learning something new, deepening relationships or pursuing meaningful goals. Two hours spent scrolling social media daily adds up to 730 hours annually. That’s the equivalent of working a part time job, for free. Except that the product being sold is you! The goal isn’t to eliminate technology from our lives entirely, but to ensure that every interaction is a conscious choice rather than an automatic response to an engineered trigger.
Give Your Attention To Things That Will Grow
Not everything has to be meaningful – we all need to switch off now and again. But in the main, we want to give most of our time and attention to people and things that have the potential to grow: a loving relationship, a child who needs help with a project, a garden, a volunteer opportunity. Because these have the potential to expand from the gift of our attention.
And this isn’t just generosity toward others, it is also an act of generosity towards yourself. In his seminal book The Gift, Lewis Hyde describes ancient cultures in which a true gift was never meant to be owned by any one person; it was meant to move, to circulate among the tribe. A true gift doesn’t enrich the one who holds it; it enriches the community by being passed along. In this way, the real gift is to the giver, because any act of generosity creates its own return. Our attention works a bit like this. So give it freely and wisely, but only to those things that have the capacity to grow.
Come Back to the Present, Again and Again
Can you treat your attention as something valuable – scarce, even. Because it is. Before you open an app or reach for a distraction, ask yourself: Does this deserve my full attention right now? Is this what I want to be doing? If not, consider pulling back and returning to the moment in front of you: the person beside you, the task at hand.
Simone Weil once wrote that, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” The moment you notice your attention begin to drift, try to gently guide your mind back to the moment. Not with shame, but with curiosity: What am I looking for right now? What am I feeling that needs distraction? Awareness is the beginning of freedom.
This holiday season, consider giving the gift of your undivided attention to the people and places that deserve it.