Our society puts an emphasis on fast. Hustle culture will get you promoted. We look at headlines in the news and make snap judgements without reading the article. We are constantly getting barraged with ads. On average we see about 5000 advertisements a day in one form or another. You don’t have to drive very far down the road from wherever you live in this country to know that America is the fast food capital of the world. Track builders can build a house in mere weeks these days.
But there is a problem with fast. Fast prioritizes speed while de-emphasizing quality. With everything programming us to be on hyper alert and look from one place to the other, our ability to hold our attention on something has dwindled significantly.
Raise your hand if you have ever been watching even your favorite tv show or a sporting event that you love, but still pick up your phone to check out something else. We no longer have the ability to even hold our attention to the things we love.
Farm to Table Sets a Nice Example
Now our society has begun to push back on some of these things. For instance, farm to table restaurants have become extremely popular. Being able to sit down and have a conversation over a meal of high quality food is something that many seek out now. But why is farm to table good? It’s all about the process of growing the food from seed and following the process all the way through to your plate. This process is fulfilling to the farmer, the chef, and the diner. Certainly more than your average fast food burger.
Reverse Renaissance
When it comes to how we consume news and information, social media has really thrown us off course when it comes to being able to critically think and comprehend what we are seeing and reading. We read a headline and are more likely to head to the comment section to see how other people are judging it rather than actually reading the article.
Add to this that the algorithms are putting in front of you only the things that they know you will interact with. By the way the emotion that gets the most interaction is anger. Do the math on this and you can understand why the country is on the brink of modern civil war. We are going through a reverse renaissance in which the populace is getting dumber every day and picking and choosing what they want to learn or believe about the world in the name of “freedom”.
It’s rare now to find a person sitting at a coffee shop and reading the newspaper. They still exist but they are getting harder to find. Newspapers allowed you to actually read the article, and the “comment” section was left to a few editorial letters in the back. Imagine taking the time now to actually write a physical letter.
Long Term Projects are More Fulfilling
All is not lost however. Everything that we need to exercise and lengthen our attention spans still exists in the world. There is more good news, most of these activities are good for your mental health and physical health as well.
You see, starting and completing a project that takes more than a few minutes to do is actually more fulfilling than having someone or something do it for you. If you are a computer coder, it is much more satisfying to write a program on your own and have it work than it is to tell AI to do it for you. Now it may take you longer, yes, and there will be plenty of frustration points along the way, but the journey and seeing it to completion is the fulfilling part.
Find Your Flow
Finding a flow state where you can do an activity without thinking about anything else is incredibly theraputic. Writing this article myself is more fulfilling than having AI do it for me.
I have also been a photographer and a painter. While both can be extremely fulfilling, I find painting is more fulfilling. Having to actually blend the colors that you want and put them on the canvas one by one is more fulfilling to me than having the camera take the picture. It also requires me to keep my attention on the simplest thing for a longer period of time and allows me to achieve the flow state I am looking for.
Do Something In the Analog World
This week’s challenge is to do something in the analog world that requires a longer period of time to complete and focus on keeping your attention span on one task and one task only while you are doing it. This could be reading a book, writing, painting, or even putting a puzzle together. You get to make the rules as long as it is longer term and takes you away from the screens and the ads.
Outside has tons of options like gardening, meditating, yoga, playing sports, hiking, kayaking. It doesn’t matter what the activity is. The point is we need to build space for ourselves in our daily lives to be in the real world, especially if you have an office job where you are at a desk or in front of a screen all day.
The more we work on this the more our attention spans will increase as will our ability to creatively think and problem solve. This in turn hopefully gives us a better chance to make stronger decisions for our future and the future of our communities and to be more fulfilled in the process.
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