#29 - Attention, please!
Hello,
If there is one thing that is the single biggest determinant of the quality of our lives, it is our attention.
I realised it so clearly in the past few weeks. Singapore went back on a heightened alert and my kids - back to home-based learning. It was the first time I had to accompany my 6-year old daughter in her schoolwork every morning. I've usually been considering myself "a queen of multitasking", always juggling multiple projects, calls, meetings, priorities... That's what I tried in the first couple of days of HBL. My daughter was sitting next to me, I was superficially checking on her while trying to tackle work emails and my own online meetings. It kind of worked, but how miserable and irritable I felt! I neither spent a great time with my daughter nor thrived doing work staff that required sustained attention. On the second day, I told myself: ENOUGH. What if I paid full attention to my daughter and her schoolwork first, and when done, switch my attention fully to work? From the next day, I cleared up my agenda for the first morning hours, shifting the start of my working day to around 11 AM for the whole period of home-based learning.
This small change changed everything. We had a great time with my daughter, I gave her 100% of my attention, and when we were done, I was feeling refreshed and energised to start my work day. A small shift in attention made me feel so much happier! Since then I was back to my usual hours, but I decided that whatever I am going to do, I will be giving it my full attention. Attention is really able to transform mundane into magic, to make us feel that we are living our lives fully.
In the past few weeks, the topic of the attention attracted my attention :) In today's newsletter, I share a few resources that have particularly resonated with me.
Podcast: Taken for Granted: John Green Wants You to Pay Attention to Your Attention
What you pay attention to matters, but maybe what matters most is the kind of attention you pay. And if you pay that kind of careful sustained attention, almost everything becomes a potential site of real intellectual and emotional reward. Listen here...
Book Recommendation: Awareness
This book taught me about the best way to pay attention: to listen to the world and to yourself without judgment or prejudice, to drop opinions, not to identify with any labels, not to depend on anyone or anything psychologically, to be in the present moment. It's much easier said than done. Yet when we try, it changes everything. Read more...
Yoga as the best way to pay attention to your body and mind
I first discovered yoga when pregnant. It taught me how to be relaxed. I came back to yoga a couple of years ago to solve my back problems. I started practicing daily with a very utilitarian purpose to keep my back feeling great - until this fantastic teacher in Singapore showed me that yoga is so much more. Practice with Olga is now the highlight of my week. For any other days, I trust Down Dog to compose my daily practice.
Documentary: Jiro Dreams of Sushi
One way of feeling great and proud about your work is by achieving mastery, practicing your art daily. "This documentary profiles sushi chef Jiro Ono, an 85-year-old master whose 10-seat, $300-a-plate restaurant is legendary among Tokyo foodies. It's an art that requires continual perfection. This chef's mastery is legendary. Savor perfection in one bite". Watch here...
A Project of One's Own
Another way to feel excited, energized, and fully alive is to work on a "project of your own."
Working on a project of your own is as different from ordinary work as skating is from walking. It's more fun, but also much more productive. In this article, Paul Graham defines a 'project of one's own', regrets that school almost stifles our kid-like excitement, insists that autonomy is a necessary condition for a project to feel like your own, and highlights the most important step: the beginning.
The most important phase in a project of one's own is at the beginning: when you go from thinking it might be cool to do x to actually doing x. And at that point high standards are not merely useless but positively harmful. There are a few people who start too many new projects, but far more, I suspect, who are deterred by fear of failure from starting projects that would have succeeded if they had.
Eye Candies: Attention can affect our perception
Optical illusions are great to illustrate that.
Sometimes, paying attention means we see the world less clearly. The Tse illusion shows that focusing on an object can make it appear more vivid than objects that we don’t pay attention to.
Sometimes, on the contrary, interesting things happen precisely when we stop focusing our attention. Stereograms are a great example when all you need to see things is to look differently, to relax your eyes. This video stereogram is my absolute favorite (full disclosure: I don’t like the music, but I like the moves, so I switch the audio off and listen to something else while watching it)
Stay healthy and pay attention to your attention,
Arina
Illustration: I took this picture on Wednesday evening. After a very busy day at work, I took a couple of hours' break for a walk at MacRitchie Reservoir. A reward that was waiting for me at the end of this 11k walk was this magnificent sunset. A great experience to relax the mind and enjoy the simplest things in life fully.