I made this sketch in my commonplace book about a week and a half ago and since then this idea has come up a few times for me (including the latest Episode of Hello Internet . That’s usually a sign to take notice of an idea, when it keeps coming up. It’s also part of the value of a commonplace book, you can notice the themes and ideas that come up again and again and see patterns and connections emerging over time.

Attention is one of our most valuable resources and yet nowadays it feels like it’s given away for so little. Even giving away your Email address for some freebie is an invitation to take some of your attention.

I’ve made a few changes recently to try and protect my attention more but I know that I both don’t stick to all of those changes and they don’t go far enough.

  • Focusing on longer and deeper content
  • planning silence
  • limiting disctration time

They’ve all helped but the issue persists. Today I disabled some more notifications, removed another couple of podcasts from my app and finally set some limits in the new screen time settings in iOS 12. I hope they’ll help, but I know the attitude is the most important step.