Pay Attention to Your Attention

Why protecting your attention is essential to avoiding burnout.

Our attention is precious. We need it to learn and work effectively, make healthy decisions, feel a state of flow, avoid errors, build relationships and solve issues. We need attention to do everything that has consequences, and to feel that we are living authentic to ourselves. Allowing our attention to be driven by external factors disconnects us from ourselves, puts us on a fast track to exhaustion, and eventually burns us out.

Ever had a conversation while you were also checking your emails or scrolling socials? Ok, we all have. This kind of attempted “multitasking” ends up leaving us nowhere — neither fully attentive to the conversation, nor particularly effective at dealing with those emails. You hang up not really sure what the other person said, how they were feeling or even missing the substance of the conversation and having to piece it together later (see how inefficient this can get?).

And it’s a shitty thing to do to the other person, to yourself, and to your relationship with that person, whatever the nature of your relationship might be. Attention is a form of respect and in some senses, love.

“Where attention goes, energy flows.” — James Redfield