“...when we reach the end of our days, our life experience will equal what we have paid attention to, whether by choice or default. We are at risk, without quite fully realizing it, of living lives that are less our own than we imagine.”
In a world saturated with smart phones and social media many of us have conceded control of our attention to giant corporations and the motivations of their shareholders. Your attention is the key to their profitability, and they will go to great lengths to capture it. Praying on the natural human inclination to focus on threats and bad news is commonplace, while even the most significant positive events are frequently suppressed below the fold. For example, take a look at this exchange between Bill Gates and Elon Musk the very same day this blog post was created:
What we pay attention to determines how we experience life.
At some point I came to the realization that I have the power to improve my world without changing anything tangible about it. By controlling the sources of content to which I am exposed I, more often than not, find myself focusing on the positive and the productive rather than the negative and the destructive.
Who controls where you focus your attention?
“All day long, you are selectively paying attention to something, and much more often than you may suspect, you can take charge of this process to good effect. Indeed, your ability to focus on this and suppress that is the key to controlling your experience and, ultimately, your well-being.”
Further Reading
In Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World author Cal Newport carves out a significant portion of his book to discuss the implications this societal shift has had on our attention, and as a result, our life experience. It also proved to be a great resource in regards to improving my ability to focus without distraction on cognitively demanding tasks.
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