What if we’ve been thinking about attention the wrong way?
Perhaps the single most famous sentence about attention comes from William James in his 1918 book The Principles of Psychology: “My experience is what I agree to attend to” (page 401).
It’s surprising that such a short, nine-word sentence contains two ideas that have not aged well.
The first is agreement. James never had to grapple with addictive-by-design digital media in which, to quote Tristan Harris, “1,000 engineers [are] on the other side of the screen, using notifications, using your friends, using AI to predict what’s gonna perfectly addict you.”
By definition, addicts have lost their ability to agree to using their substance of choice.
Even without deliberately designed digital addiction, life in the early 20th century did not lack stimulation. Just listen to the first four minutes (from the Library of Congress) of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (1924), which represents a sleepy New York City waking up and zipping into its full daily symphony of bustle and traffic. Other people (servants at Harvard, his family) worked hard to create the serene atmosphere at Harvard that gave James the illusion of control around his experience.
The second weak idea is the two instances of the first person: “my experience” and “I agree.” How self-centered. James views his attention as a limited resource, which it is, and he is the first in a long line of thinkers that think about stimulus as an attention tax.
Another such thinker is Winifred Gallagher in her 2009 book Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life:
As the expression paying attention suggests, when you focus, you’re spending limited cognitive currency that should be wisely invested, because the stakes are high… By helping you to focus on some things and filter out others, attention distills theuniverse into your universe.” (page 9-10).
There are different modes of attention: spotlight attention where I concentrate on a specific thing versus lamplight attention where I have ambient awareness of lots of things around me. The magic mirror in my pocket complicates both: can I truly swing the spotlight to the object I want to think about when notifications try to summon me elsewhere? Am I aware of the other people standing around me in the checkout line if I’m playing Wordle on my phone? Who am I to think I deserve a universe?
I have so many articles and books and podcasts about focus and mindfulness and meditation and mental organization and productivity and time management, some by scientists, some by thoughtful writers, some by hucksters promising easy fixes. Many are interesting. None help.
For a while now, since at least a 2007 concert, I’ve been thinking about attention in an additional way: one less focused on my experience and more focused on other people.
Carol Channing at the Hollywood Bowl
The band Pink Martini, a favorite of mine and La Profesora’s, decants music, curation, history, and surprise into a deliciously Rabelaisian sensibility. In concert, they often bring long retired artists out of mothballs. At a Hollywood Bowl concert in September of 2007, the band brought on then-86-year-old Carol Channing to sing “Give ‘Em the Old Razzle Dazzle.”
As she came onstage to applause ranging from enthusiastic to “who is this?” skeptical, Channing hobbled at a slow pace, like the elderly lady she was. Then she started to sing. Even at 86, boy could Channing sing. The audience went from lean-back polite to lean forward interested.
As our attention poured into her, Channing transformed before our eyes, plumping up like a bird, posture straightening, energetic, voice confident—she started dancing! (A resourceful audience member grabbed a videocamera, so you can see part of it here.) After, Channing, lead singer China Forbes, and 90-year-old French singer Henri Salvatore performed “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” which you can see a grainy version of here. Like Channing, Salvatore’s energy grew and grew.
When you train your focus on other people, it doesn’t have to be a tax. It can be a gift.
Attention + You = Attentuon
I’d like to separate attention, where my focus is on me me me and my experience, from attention I train on another person, which I’ll call “attentuon” because it swaps out i for u.
(This awkward neologism is driving my spellchecker nuts, which I rather enjoy.)
Whether it’s in person, on the phone, or on a video call, it can be hard to be with another person and give that person my whole focus. Other thoughts push at me. What time is it? Did I leave the stove on? When did the dogs last pee? Even if my phone is powered down and in another room, as mine is now because that’s what it takes, I still find myself wondering if there’s something else I should be doing. (That’s different than wondering if there’s something else I could be doing, which also happens and makes me feel bad.)
But I can also see how attentuon feeds others. I sat with an old friend over coffee this week and talked through a career inflection point; together, we reframed it as an opportunity.
Later that day, I spent a few hours with my 100 year old former teaching partner, quietly chatting. When she talked about her 100th birthday party and how many people spoke about her impact on their lives, because we were deep in conversation I was able to say, “how great that you were there to hear all of those things instead of people saying them at the funeral.” She’s 100. She knows that her funeral is not in the far distance, but I don’t know if I would have been brave enough to say that out loud if our conversation had been shorter or if other people had been there.
Sure, per James, “my experience is what I agree to attend to.” But at least part of my value is how I attend to others and they to me.
A worthy struggle.
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* Image Prompt: “Our perspective is from the back of a theater facing the stage. Onstage, we see an an elderly woman performer wearing a white pants suit standing center stage and singing. She takes energy from the audience’s attention.” Note that the image, although lovely, has the perspective wrong: the focus is from behind the onstage singer rather than, as requested, from the back of the theater.
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