Member-only story
How to Find Focus Within
Lessons from Aurelius, Nietzsche, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Sartre, Camus
The Contemporary Attention Crisis
Our attention now seems maybe the most valuable and contested resource available on Earth in the hyperconnected world of today. Today’s ordinary person consumes more knowledge in one day than someone in the fifteenth century might have come across over their lifetime. Our devices ding and alert us continuously; social media platforms are designed to maximize interaction; the line separating work from personal life has melted for many into a continuous state of availability. Rising rates of anxiety and burnout, less capacity to engage in serious work, and a general sense of constant distraction from what counts most all pay a hefty cost from this fragmentation of attention. The situation has gotten so bad that many people are looking to old philosophical traditions for direction and insight from thinkers who, although living decades or millennia ago, faced surprisingly comparable difficulties keeping concentration and clarity in their own eras. While Buddha sought enlightenment without the distraction of constant social media feeds and Marcus Aurelius faced the pressures of running an empire rather than the ping of smartphone notifications, these philosophers developed strong techniques for directing attention…
