Alex

“Every one knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence.”2 But also importantly, James believed that our choice of what we pay attention to is consequential, as we construct our life experience this way: “Millions of items of the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind—without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.”3 In other words, James believed that what we decide to pay attention to becomes part of our lived experience. I might be walking in a beautiful garden and have my cell phone out. I am texting with a friend, and I’m trying to spell correctly and dodge autocorrect, which often guesses wrong. It is the texts that have entered into the record of my experience, and not the softness of the ground, the trill of the warbler or the scarlet of the azaleas. I have focused my attention on texting, and I could have been in Times Square. To James, then, as we move through the world, we are confronted by a host of different kinds of stimuli, and we select what to focus on by our own volition. In other words, we can control where we pay attention. Oh, would that it were so easy as James envisioned.”
― Gloria Mark, Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity