The Currency Of Attention

“Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things; let them consider the steadfast love of the Lord.” – Psalm 107:43

At a Stanford seminar Dave attended recently, someone asked, what is our currency nowadays? It is our attention. “In an information-rich world,” writes Herbert Simon, “the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: the attention of its recipients.” Our problem nowadays is not “information scarcity” but “attention scarcity.” The focus has become not on filtering out data that distracts our attention, but on designing systems that constantly try to grab our attention: ads, spam, click-bait, emails, notifications, social network requests, sponsored posts, and more.

Our attention is a limited and valuable commodity for which we are solicited, currency we are trading in every day, whether we’re consciously aware of it or not. Our attention is powerful: it determines where we direct our energy in all its other forms—our time, thought, creativity, money. Our attention shapes our connections. We are so habituated to multi-tasking that it is virtually a gift to focus our attention solely on one person.

The other day, I saw Elijah as I was walking over to his classroom to pick him up after school. I stopped for a moment, stopped thinking about logistics and being distracted by all the people around me, and watched him. He was a lone island in an eddy of swirling children, standing still and perfectly prepared, jacket on and dutifully zipped all the way up to his chin, neon-orange backpack strapped on, hands in his pockets, gaze off in the distance, striking in his calm. He didn’t seem anxious or hurried. The same day, I stopped and watched Eric doing math problems at the dining table. He never stopped moving, at one point crawling onto the table in his intensity of focus, gesticulating in glee at solving the puzzles.

It’s so rare that I’m silent and undistracted in my focus on the children, and that day, I felt like I could see things about the boys that I sometimes forget: Elijah’s preternatural calm and need for solitude, Eric’s inner intensity and need to have that drawn into a place that challenges him. Our attention shapes our affections: those moments helped me not only learn about my kids, but feel more love for and joy in them. Sometimes I think, God, the way I can show you that I love you, the way I learn more about and have greater joy in you, is to give you the gift of my undistracted attention.

This takes practice. In a milieu where multi-tasking is the norm, it takes effort to be conscious of the directions of our attention, and practice to focus it. This is of course the basis of the meditation which people here place great stock in, but what the Psalmist showcases is not an emptying of all thought, or focus on those that generate calm or happy feelings. What he does is much more like my moments with the boys: an intentional connection with another being through undistracted observation. He gives his attention to the love of God towards the longing lost, the laboring imprisoned, the dying fool, those drowned by troubles, and he considers how steadfast that love is. What has your attention? This is a question worth considering because, as the psalmist reminds us, wisdom is found in how we spend that currency.