Principle · chapter 01, Attention
Scattered attention does not produce bad decisions. It produces default ones.
Scattered attention does not produce bad decisions. It produces default ones, which is to say, other people’s. When you have nothing left to weigh with, you choose what is loudest, nearest and cheapest in that minute. After a year of such choices you have a life nobody consciously designed, and the honest sense that it simply turned out this way.
Nothing in this scene hurts, and that is its whole strength. You did not run out of will; will was never called upon. At some point the direction of your looking changed hands, unsigned and undated, and nobody recorded the handover. What you lose is not time but steering.
Attention is not a resource you have. It is a capacity you train. It is made of three things we confuse with one another: direction, what you look at; duration, how long you stay with one thing; and quality, whether you are present or merely turned towards.
Try this for one week
For five days, take six snapshots a day at random moments. At each, three words: what attention was on, who directed it (me, a person, a device, fear), and what state you were in afterwards (fed, neutral, emptied). On day six, list every channel through which something can enter your head without your consent. On day seven, choose one change of conditions, not a resolution, and keep it for thirty days. One, not five.
What this does not promise
It will not rebuild in a week a duration you have been losing for years. It shows the map, and the map is often harsher than the image you have of yourself.
From Modern Hermet, chapter 01: Attention. The book reads the real Hermetic texts with their dates, and offers twelve practices for an ordinary week.
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