Do Not Expand Your View. Instead, Pay Attention.

One of the books I enjoyed reading as a kid was Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. This was partly because of the detective stories and his magic deduction powers, of course, but I do remember one thing about Holmes’ character that was oddly impressive: his ability to focus his attention on what he wanted to learn.

This might not be a guide for learning, but it made me think about the advantages of thinking deeply about what matters to me and trusting the ability of others to learn about many other important things one can care about.

After I started writing about Paying Attention, I got the results of it: paying attention on paying attention, I came across others reflecting on similar things.

Here is what I’ve learned:

Pay Attention, it’s important;
Not everything that deserves attention can be measured;
Expand our view can hinder our ability to see.

What do you pay attention to?

Millions of events happen around us every day, and most of them we don’t even notice. Lucky us.

If we already have many things processing in our minds daily, imagine if all that was available would become conscious. Certainly, stress at 10 in the morning.

To change new things we have to pay attention to new things.

It is only on the things that we pay attention to that we have a conscious influence for change. If we want to make things differently, we have to start paying attention to them. In the same direction, if we want to change new things, we have to pay attention to new things.

Measure and Analyse

One of the interesting ways to change is to measure and analyse. Measurements and analysis are gifts for humans, but they rely on looking at the past and planning the future. They use your attention of the present to travel through time. Even though knowing how to measure and analyse is fundamental to life in society, there is more on the horizon.

Not everything that deserves attention can be measured.

We just have to be careful not to be carried away. Analyse can highjack and monopolise all your attention. They are practices that constantly take us away from the present if practised all the time. Measure and analyse less and pay more attention.

Do not expand your View

Change the focus of our attention is to change our view. Expanding our view, in the sense of paying attention to more, is a pathway to undermine our ability to see.

Look at few things with great attention.

On the other hand, it is essential to change our views. Not to expand it, but to change your view from time to time, expanding the number of views you experience. It is like knowing how to tell many versions of the same story, like inviting yourself to look again.

The best way to change your view is by truly being with the other. By looking at others we change our way of looking. In contact with other worlds, resulting from being with the other, we look with other eyes and learn new stories.

Attention Requires Energy

This does not mean people can’t pay attention to more than one thing at a time. I personally can’t, but I know aliens who have a fantastic parallel processing unit, all in one brain!

But even for those crafty multi-taskers, our attention requires energy, and there is a limit to what we can take and give. If you deal with many things in parallel you will quickly stop paying attention.

Paying Attention on Paying Attention

Store energy to pay attention to what matters.
In a world where information is abundant, learn how to ignore the ones that distract you.
From time to time pay attention in the way you pay attention.
Pay attention to a few things at a time.
Always consider changing what you are paying attention to.

Paying Attention Develops the Brain’s Plasticity in Rethinking Complexity
The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time
Chris Corrigan’s How to make a learning journey.
The Attention Merchants book review.
I’m reading Adous Huxley’s last novel, Island. You will meet Pala, an idylic island where the birds will constantly call for Attention!
Dadi Janki’s quote on “learning to live a very simple life”:
If you don’t have the power to pack up and the power to merge, then the whole of your life will be in a continuous state of expansion. You will then have to think a lot in order to manage everything.