How Are You Protecting and Maximizing This Important Psychological Resource?

Your attention is an important psychological resource. How you use your attention makes a huge impact on the quality of your life. That's why you have to learn how to protect, preserve, and maximize your attention span.

When you think about your important resources and how they influence your life, what comes to mind?

Most people think of money or other financial resources. Those are important, for sure. They're the key to some aspects of stability, freedom, and pleasure. I'd argue, though, that we expend too much time and energy acquiring and protecting that particular resource at the expense of others that have a more dramatic impact on our life experience. 

Psychological Resources

Just as your financial assets may make a tangible difference in the quality of your day-to-day experience, so will your psychological resources. Yet, we often overlook the importance of these resources and how the ways in which we choose to "spend" them will shape our life experience. Today, let's focus on one important psychological resource: attention.

Attention

Simply put, what we focus on matters. The information we take in and the relationships, activities, and aspects of experience that we spend time on will have a big effect on us. What we focus on day in and day out shapes who we are, our outlook on life and the world, and, ultimately, what we do with our time on this planet. 

Attention is a limited resource, though, so it's important to think about where and how you "spend" it. Unless you're a fellow psychologist or really into mindfulness, you probably haven't thought a lot about where your attention goes and why. 

Internal and External Distractions

Our attention gets hijacked all the time, with and without our direct permission, We are constantly being bombarded by demands for attention. Things come at us from the outside (like notifications or loud noises) and from the inside (internal distractions like urges, thoughts, and emotions). Our minds, awesome little jerks that they can be, often don't help us out because they happily chase any and every distraction unless we have the awareness and ability to stop them. (In writing this post, I've already gotten side tracked several times, once by a text alert and a couple times by urges to look something up online, go get a drink of water, and to think about other topics.)

Being able to consciously direct your attention is an important skill and one that can be developed. Think about the implications here. Rather than having your attention jerked around by any internal or external distraction, what if you could choose where to focus and sustain your attention? What if you could hone in on something and filter out everything else? What if you could stay focused on the things, people, and tasks that you deem worthy. What a difference that would make! Strengthening your attentional control muscle gives you an advantage in virtually every area of life.

Get Intentional with Your Attention 

One of my favorite authors, Mark Manson, introduced the concept of our attention diet, comparable to nutrition. If we eat the super appealing, highly addictive, easy junk foods like candy and chips, we may find momentary pleasure. But at what cost? Repeatedly, over time, eating junk makes our bodies incredibly unhealthy. Manson argues it's the same thing with our minds. If we repeatedly consume junk, there will be a negative impact on the quality, strength, and health of our minds. That makes sense to me.

Now don't get me wrong, I love a good Netflix binge. But, if I'm being honest, what actually happens after more than a day of heavy TV watching is that my motivation goes down. It's that much easier to hang out on the couch the next day and to lose steam on the projects that are actually important or value-adding to me. What's more is that the quality of my thoughts and mood are impacted, too. My enthusiasm is dampened, and things in general feel a little more blah. I know this isn't just me. 

Guarding Your Attention

In addition to having the ability to control our attention, being intentional about where we choose to direct our attention is critical. Here are a few tips for protecting and maximizing this precious psychological resource.

1. Take up a mindfulness practice. 

Mindfulness, a core element of psychological strength, is essentially attention training, and I believe that's part of why it's such a beneficial practice to cultivate. There are a ton of ways to build mindfulness, and I'd encourage you to experiment until you find some that work for you. If you're interested in a deeper dive into this topic, join us at our next Quarterly Workshop (it's virtual), Mindfulness: It's Not What You Think, in July 2022.  

2. Be ruthless with distractions and notifications.

You expend less energy and waste less of your limited attention if you set yourself up for success. Be brutal when it comes to notifications. Ask yourself, do I really want to let this app interrupt me and hijack my attention at any point? Do I really need these notifications on my watch? Put your phone on silent or do not disturb when you need to focus or, better yet, leave it in another room. Same thing goes with being available online for direct messaging. Remove distractions and attention hijackers from your environment when possible.

3. Reflect on what you take in.

Spend some time regularly reflecting on what you're taking in and the quality of your attention diet, so to speak. Are you gorging yourself on junk information and relationships or are you taking in high quality, nutrient rich ones? 

Bottom line: It's important to consider how your attention shapes who you are and what your life is like. Being able to intentionally direct and control your attention can make a big difference in the quality of your life.

"Remember: What gets attention is not always important. And what is important rarely gets attention."

 - Mark Manson

Written by Dr. Ashley Smith

Peak Mind Co-founder