On Attention Hygiene

Information’s pace of flooding our senses continues to accelerate by the minute. Opening Twitter, Reddit, or any social media can leave us horribly exhausted.

With a hoped for relief from the moments of doldrum between tasks of ever-tightening pressure, we can impulsively check the magic screen in our pockets.

But we are drinking sea water, making us thirstier for more.

Maybe we try to manage our impulsive natures through a digital detox, “dumb phones”, internet blockers, all versions of setting up deliberate horse blinders. Maybe some are stronger than others, but I don’t know about you, I’m pretty good breaking through them.

Maybe the relief we search for is of the existential variety, a relief from the constant “suffering” extolled by seekers of all ilk.

What is the magic touch? Where is the genuine relief?

Being the second half of the post, I should have an answer waiting for you.

I don’t.

All, I can do is continue the practice of attention hygiene, a regular shaping of my environment to prompt the guides needed to develop myself in what seems meaningful to myself and those nearby.

I can engage in that eternal practice of list cultivation, reviews, all some form of Feng Shui in which my “surroundings acts as a mirror image to [my] life and its various circumstances”.¹

Perhaps there is an irony in the attempt to guide our own attention. Yet there it is.

As our pollutions increasingly choke us, filling our lungs with smoke, our waters with plastics, and our attention with information, misinformation, and everything in between (and I am as guilty as the next person in contributing), we continue the struggle of arranging our worlds to support ourselves.