Two Essential Priorities of Modern Life
How to integrate these priorities into our daily life
Priorities drive our decisions and actions. This is true irrespective of whether or not our priorities are intentional or they are to our liking. Moreover, due to past experiences, they may have unintentionally become counterproductive or outdated. Over time, through personal experience, I have found the following two priorities most relevant to modern life.
#2 Priority: Our Attention
With all the distractions and the fast-paced modern world, focus and attention are essential assets. They are so important that the business models of major companies depend on grabbing people’s attention. And not to mention the entertainment industry. Therefore, attention is a valuable asset and must be treated as such. Once we realize and prioritize this, it will naturally drive us to find innovative ways to remove distractions.
Without focus, consciousness is in a state of chaos. The normal condition of the mind is one of informational disorder: random thoughts chase one another instead of lining up in logical causal sequences. Unless one learns to concentrate and is able to invest the effort, thoughts will scatter without reaching any conclusion. — [1]
Just like we train our bodies through regular exercise, we can train our attention through meditation. Based on my understanding and experience (I am not a doctor), the goal of meditation is not to repress the inner chaos that tends to scatter our mind but to be aware of it and ride it like a wave using our breadth (the kind where our bellies move rather than our chest) while accepting the chaos. Stronger distraction should answered with a deeper breath to detach our mind from its pull. It works by refocusing our mind to our breath and allowing our mind to regroup. A persistent meditation practice will make this a mental habit automatically cued by distraction.
#1 Priority: Our Time
Another important consideration is time because …
Time is the fundamental currency
Time used effectively and saved creates opportunities to earn more money, social connection, self-improvement, family time, and even more time. For instance, investing your time in regular exercise can add years to your life. The lyrics of the song Fly Like an Eagle by Steve Miller Band, say it all “Time keeps on slipping into the future”. This experience of the quick passage of time accelerates as we age.
We are all running out of time — Jocko Willink [2]
We must prioritize the resource of time above attention. I would go to the extent of recommending that time must be our absolute highest priority, no matter how young you are.
Again, I have found that once I realized the importance of time, the mind naturally became aware of its passage and found ways to prevent its wastage. The abundant distractions in our modern life are all adversaries trying to steal our time. Therefore, we need to be a bit paranoid about wasting time. Pulling our guard down is not an option. In my experience, time is our most formidable competitor because of its persistence; The passage of time never stops. Consequently, the natural fear of loss, our most powerful instinct, is the most effective perspective.
The stoics made a great observation: death is not a one-time event, it is an ongoing process happening with the passage of every second. I believe the universal excuse: “I am just going to spend a few minutes to indulge”, is the most dangerous: if you give it a foot, it takes a mile. One effective response to this request is to ask yourself: is it worth dying for?
Final Thoughts:
Instead of concluding with my thoughts, I would like to provide a quote that was a relevant today as it is in Schopenhauers time, with my association to modern life within square brackets.
The art of not reading [reading click-bait news, scrolling attention-grabbing social media posts, binge-watching popular series, etc. ] is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books [media consumption] is not reading bad ones: for life is short — Arthur Schopenhauer
References
[1] Csikszentmihalhi, Mihaly. Finding Flow: The Psychology Of Engagement With Everyday Life (p. 35). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRgc0QxVSC8
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