⌚️ Attention and Intention

Bill (Stormrider) Wear’s article on The Quiet Art of Attention got me thinking about my understanding of efficiency.

Efficiency is achieving an outcome while wasting as little time and resources as possible

In my productivity system post, I synthesized the optimization of space and time complexity into doing things the “best” way, leaving it up to the reader to determine what the best way was. I bring it up because Wear’s article challenged my idea of optimizing for time in the pursuit of defining an optimal process.

What is an “efficient” life? Is it synonymous with a fulfilling, memorable story, or something that passes us by where we fulfil everything we set out to do?

If efficiency is such a good thing, why doesn’t a good life seem like an efficient one? By popular definition, life is about taking the “scenic route”; arriving at death’s door, not as quickly as possible (while eating canned beans every day) but rather, cherishing every moment as if it were our last.

Subconsciously, as per our nature, we live life in the least efficient way possible, ignoring the little moments in favour of the apparently grand. Disappointment sets in when realizing that life is mostly small moments with occasional blips of joy and sorrow. Upon not paying attention and taking for granted the little moments given to us, we miss out on life itself.

“In some sense, life gets in the way of living."

How do we live the best life? The stoics say virtue, the hedonists say pleasure, and the author argues that its about finding joy in every moment, living with attention and intention.

Optimizing time means spending it as best as possible. We pay attention to every moment, valuing it, and understanding ourselves without judgement.

Only when we pay attention to the little things, can we make menial, impactful, and most importantly, intentional changes, not controlled by reflex, instinct, or habit.¹

An example of a detractor of attention/intention is multitasking. By breaking down seemingly simple tasks into pieces that we can synchronously process, the attention divider that is multitasking loses control of our actions. At that instant, we gain an otherwise elusive power we understand as control of our lives.

Obviously, synchronous processing is slower than async processing. In contrast, the author notes that life isn’t a rush or a race to the finish. When we suddenly pause, breathe, and think about our thoughts and the current moment, life begins to slow.

Imagine that when you’re born, you’re given a gift: a clock ticking down the seconds until your death.

2522880000 seconds remaining

2522879999 seconds remaining

2522879998 seconds remaining

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…

By the time you wake up, the clock will most likely read 2144448000 seconds remaining. All in all, it doesn’t seem like too much time has passed, when really, 12 years have passed you by.

One day, you take the clock out of your kitchen cabinet, and it reads: 1419120000 seconds remaining. You are 35 years old, and 1103760000 seconds have passed you by. Do you remember how you felt those 1103760000 seconds, or do you only remember the present? The kids are finishing middle school, your second wife is getting pressure at her new job as a paralegal, and you’re managing a team of 10 junior accountants.

What was it all for? Did the big moments turn out to be as big as you’d thought they’d be? Did they shape you more as a person than the seconds that clock took away from you? Imagine having that clock on your deathbed:

10 seconds remaining

What do you remember in those 10 seconds? I hope, in my last 10 seconds, I remember the little moments. I don’t remember my failures or regrets, but instead, when I climbed the mountain, wrote a few blog posts at a night club, walked the wall, sailed the river, dived off the cliff, etc. Y’know, the little things.

As a naive 20 year old, the only way one can remember and appreciate is by paying attention and acting with intention.

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