My mother helped me prune this plant in our backyard while they were visiting this weekend to celebrate Fin’s one-year old birthday. At my mother’s request, I got out my oversized trimmers to start cutting away the dead branches on a plant we inherited about six months ago from Brooke’s late grandmother. Not having a particularly green thumb myself, I had not been conscious to trim the dead branches from this beautiful plant. Brooke and I had a vague awareness that we had work to do in our tiny backyard to make it more enjoyable, but didn’t yet have a specific plan of action.
It was a sort of minor revelation to me to see the difference we had made in our backyard simply by pruning back the dead branches on this plant (we literally removed at least 75% of the thing) then moving it to a location in the yard where it would get more sun. The whole feng shui improved. I love how nature has such an incredible way of showing us how life works, and how we can move ourselves into harmony with it’s operation. When we remove excess and deadness from our lives, our energies are more streamlined to grow in the areas we care about.
I’ve been giving a lot of attention towards what I perceive to be a tremendous collective problem with managing our attention. Our technology, while helping us connect in new ways, is putting enormous strains on our limited attention capacity. Pings, rings, and vibrating mobile devices seem to be dictating to an outsized extent where we place our attention, leaving us in a near constant reactionary consciousness. I don’t think abandoning technology is the right move, so I’ve been looking for strategies to help me shift my attention in strategic ways throughout my day. To be clear, I don’t claim to be a master of attention just yet. I’m working on it. And not only for myself. I’m assembling the best insights on the subject, and compiling them into a sort of design brief to build the best attention management tool at our startup, OnPrio.
I think the best tool we we can have is a strong intention. If you have this, you’ll be able to trim the life-sucking deadness from life away, and enjoy seeing your attention as the living water of your life. Then you can use it to make life more beautiful. Preaching this is easy, living it is hard. Knowing what is worth your attention is hard, too.
How do you decide what is worth your attention?
What strategies have you implemented to let technology empower you instead of push you around?
Is there a product or feature you wish existed to help you manage the infinite stream of people and brands competing for your attention?
I’d love to hear your strategies. I’m listening.
