Attention is all we have. It’s more precious than the stuff we normally chase, like leisure time, wealth, health, and status. All of those can be improved or wasted depending on how you allocate your attention.
No skill is more essential than your ability to choose what you pay attention to and when. If your attention is darting around too much, illuminating stuff that doesn’t matter, you’ll never quite find your way. Attention paves your life’s path and the way you experience it.
The world is increasingly engineered (and incentivized) to capture your attention. But every freedom and advantage you have is worthless if you are distracted from leveraging it.
The gist of much self-help lore is this:
- Pay attention to your attention.
- Figure out what truly matters.
- Focus on that.
- Repeat.