Controlling Your Attention
In a world of distraction, how can we put the important stuff first?
The other day I found myself feeling quite smug, and it was all because of a burst water mains pipe. (Stay with me, what appears to be a crushingly boring antidote will become useful. I hope.)
It was the end of my children’s first week back at nursery/school, and after a long summer of juggling children and work-lite and grief and also having fun, because that’s important too, I was finally facing up to the pile of proper work – emails, requests, projects – that had built up over months of benign neglect.
It was not a small pile.
And I knew from past experience that if I wasn’t ruthless, it would overwhelm me. So, as I sat down at my desk and stared at my calendar, detailing everything coming up – including, fyi, something launching this November that I can’t wait to share with you all! – I asked myself the most helpful question I know for moments like this… Where will my focus best be spent today? What is the one thing that will move the needle? What is my priority?
Then, I ignored the rest and did that thing, my frog.
Which meant that, when I was mid-way through the day and loving my new-found freedom and planning to enjoy a child-free lunch before getting to work on the still-important-but-less-so stuff that afternoon, I ended up being as ready as I could possibly be for a text from my daughter’s new school… “EMERGENCY: A WATER MAINS PIPE HAS BURST. YOU MUST PICK UP YOUR CHILD IMMEDIATELY”.
If I hadn’t focused my attention on my No.1 priority, that text would have completely thrown a spanner in my day. (Water mains related pun or simply a good analogy? You decide.) Yes I still had other things to do, but the one big thing I had done meant I felt relatively calm about dropping the rest. Which meant, most importantly, I could focus on my daughter, and take her to the park for a bit, safe (read: smug) in the knowledge that I’d made the best possible use of my time that day.
It seems so obvious, but the question – where will my focus best be spent today? – is game-changing. The fact is, none of us will ever complete our To-do list. Life is a never-ending To-do list, and accepting that some things will never get done and other things might be done averagely, or even badly, is an important part of being a well-adjusted person. Show me someone constantly trying to out-do their To-do list, and I’ll show you someone flirting heavily with burnout.
The best thing you can do is to find the best use for your time, according to what’s important to you. There’s this saying that comes up a lot in yoga trainings, something like “where attention goes, energy flows” (yogis like to talk about energy, a lot). But it’s fundamentally true – the focus of your attention determines the experiences you have, it defines what gets done and what doesn’t, it builds the perimeters for not just your day-to-day experiences but your whole life.
I am a broken record, yes, but if you can build out a good idea of what’s important to you – your priorities – you’re more likely to focus your attention in line with them. If you know what matters to you, it becomes easier to control your attention – to figure out what to work on v.s. what to drop the ball on – and to be less swayed by other people’s ideas and demands. You can identify what best will move the needle on your life, because you know the direction you want to go. (And like all things, the more you do this, the easier it becomes.)
It’s impossible to control your attention all the time. In fact, it would make for a terrifyingly un-spontaneous and bio-hacked existence. But, it is something to keep an eye on. We live in a busy, demanding world, with more distraction and choice than ever. Ultimately, learning to control your attention gives you more autonomy over how you spend your time. And how you spend your time adds up to… your life.
So, where will your focus best be spent today?
Let me know in the comments below, and share with someone who you think could do with help directing their attention today.
Thanks for reading,
L. x
This resonated with me a lot! I feel overwhelmed recently with the amount of tasks to do so this was the perfect reminder for me at the current time 🩵