What happens to deep attention?

Some things need time before they give us anything back.

A book may take a few pages to draw us in. A conversation may become more meaningful when we stay with it. An idea may need time to unfold before we understand what we think about it. A difficult problem may require us to sit with not knowing for a while. These things ask something of our attention. They ask us to stay.

I’m curious about what happens when our attention is continually being invited somewhere else.

Staying with one thing

We have become used to having somewhere else to look. A message can arrive while we are reading. An email can appear while we are working. A thought about something else can lead us to reach for our phone, and a few minutes later we can find ourselves somewhere entirely different. Sometimes the shift is necessary. Sometimes it is welcome. Sometimes our attention simply drifts.

The question isn't whether our attention should ever move. It naturally does. The question is whether we still have opportunities to stay with something long enough for our attention to deepen.

What deep attention asks of us

Deep attention isn't necessarily about being productive or concentrating as hard as we can. It can be found in listening carefully to someone, reading a book, making something, thinking through a difficult question or simply noticing the world around us.

It often requires us to resist the feeling that we need to move on to the next thing. We may become bored. We may feel restless. We may notice that our mind has drifted and wonder whether there is something more interesting waiting for us.

Perhaps that is part of what makes deep attention different. It isn't always immediately rewarding.

When our attention drifts

We might sit down to read and find ourselves checking our phone. We might listen to someone while thinking about what we need to do later. We might begin a piece of work and switch to something else before we have really settled into it. None of this means that we have lost the ability to pay attention. Our attention is naturally mobile, and it will always drift.

But if we rarely notice the drift, we may spend much of our time following whatever catches our attention next.

There can be a difference between having our attention captured and choosing to give it.

What deserves more of it?

Perhaps this is the question I keep coming back to.

In a distracted world where so many things are designed to catch our attention, what do we want to give our deeper attention to?

It might be our work. It might be a relationship. It might be a book, a creative practice, a difficult question or something as ordinary as eating a meal without looking elsewhere. It doesn't have to be the most important thing in the world. It simply needs to be something we decide is worth staying with for a while.

The practice of staying

I don't think deep attention means never checking, never switching or never letting our minds drift. That would be another impossible standard to live up to.

Perhaps it is much simpler than that.

Notice. Pause. Return

Sometimes we will stay. Sometimes we will choose something else. Sometimes we will drift again almost immediately. The practice isn't in holding our attention perfectly. It is in becoming familiar with where it goes, and gently returning with kindness.

Our attention will naturally drift in different directions. Caring for it means remembering that some things become clearer, richer and more meaningful when we give them enough of our attention to stay.

I wonder what might become possible if you gave something a little more of your attention today?