Where attention swells
Your Treasure will Dwell
So said the
Earth to the Sky
Where wisdom yearns,
a head will turn,
If only it
reads the signs.
Fear not, for
Wisdom will dictate
The longing of
God’s Loving Grace
Live, Laugh, Learn, & Yearn
For the beauty of Love’s Embrace
Attention: What’s it Matter Anyways
Mental Health & Attention Deficit Disorder: A Case Analysis
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, the clock never stops. When every minute seems like an hour, what else could this time possibly devour?
Looking at the clock, this was but a snippet of what raced through his mind as the minutes turned to hours, and the hours slipped by, one after another, in simple boredom, learning what he thought were useless subjects that he would never use as a grown-up.
The subject matter was algebra. A subject he hated. But at least it gave him time to dream. Minutes, if not days, staring out the window, wondering what life would be like when he left this small and insignificant town. “I will show them,” he thought, as the inevitable silence broke his mind’s deafening roar of thoughts, realizing that he had just been called to answer a question.
Luckily, he knew math like the back of his hand. Unfortunately, it was a word problem. He was stuck; while dreaming of life to come, he failed to attend to life’s most pressing question, that of the present moment. With cheeks blushing as the class laughed at his momentary lapse of consciousness, he thought, oh well, not many of them could have answered the question either!
Delimitations of Attention
Have you ever noticed how limited the attention span appears these days? As a social scientist and psychotherapist, I tend to analyze everything. The average attention span of children and the adults who raise them seems to be exponentially decreasing.
Having practiced psychotherapy for over two decades, I see a clear decrease in attention span, which co-occurs alarmingly with other maladies of the mind, including depression, anxiety, and other ailments suggestive of a clear decline in social mental stability. Why is this the case? Is it caused by nature or nurture, or most likely both? Or is there something else at play here?
Objectively observing, I cannot help but turn my attention to the behaviors of individuals who flip through social media posts as if I were watching an addict obtain their next immediate dopamine or norepinephrine fix. When our brain becomes addicted to its chemistry, it regresses, devolves, and denies us the foundation of our capacity to reach evolved heights. To what end do we owe this strange turn of events?
Competition, Instant Gratification, & The Social Delimma
As I toil through the Netflix menu, I cannot help but scroll through the numerous options, each blurring into the next one. Thousands of movies are in a box, right at the push of a finger, but still, I cannot help but notice how difficult it remains to find something to watch. Who knows… narrow it down by genre, actor, or even era. The choices are there, but the immediacy of everything at a fingertip supersedes the excitement I once felt when I went to a local Blockbuster Video store and competed with others to be the first to rent or buy the newest title.
Is there something inherent in the need for competition that activates the psyche to focus its attention? Or, is there an inherent need for even the possibility of a delay in gratification that creates excitement within our choices? You know, even though the newest blockbuster hit may not have been at the store, it did create hope for the possibility of the craved success for next weekend’s movie night, even if it wasn’t on the store’s shelf.
The social dilemma poses just that: a buffet of all-you-can-eat information instantaneously accessible to gorge oneself upon, but to an end that honors more of a glutton versus a connoisseur.
An old saying goes, “Knowledge is King.” Information stands at the forefront of that knowledge. But without direction, information is just noise. It can be sifted, sorted through, shoveled, buried, reacted upon, rejected, or downright canceled. Yet without direction, what did that information give you or your ability to create real movement towards an actual aim of intent your wish to undertake?
Knowledge is king only when honed, sharpened, and acted upon. Owning and honing one’s knowledge requires attention, which creates the potential for inner growth, but only if we know how to focus on its course.
What Can We Do to Focus?
There are a myriad of ways to begin a FOCUS practice. I label it a FOCUS practice because it takes practice and is a lifelong commitment that may get easier over time. This is not a set-it-and-forget-it affair. On a positive note, the more you engage in these new habits, the more you can get to know yourself. The more you become familiar with yourself, the easier it will be to engage in practices such as this as a game of Self-development.
As a child, I was diagnosed with an attention deficit. I did not take medication but instead learned to work with my attention. Not that this is the only method to work with attention deficits. You see, every person differs, and their biology, psychology, and spiritual capacity to overcome such difficulties all differ. The key is, to find ways to practice with your attention, over time, with consistency, and eventually train its capacity to create a dynamic work flow, one that works for you, but at the same time, allows you to get the work done.
FOCUS (Follow, One, Course, Until, Successful). FOCUS is a brief acronym. It will help you orient back to a single point. This is the first step to learning to hone focus. Shut out the external noise. If it is only a minute, see what you can do to elevate that minute to two, and then try to move it to 15 or even 30 minutes.
When you can hone in on one factor for this amount of time, you can easily create workflow of 20 to 30 minutes blocks, 3 or 4 of them, to shift through daily tasks, to create a workflow that allows for optimal success. Even at work, you get a break after 2 hours. That is your time to debrief and re-orient to the task at hand. 3 to 4 30 minute tasks, a break, and then revisiting, allows you to achieve 3 hours of work on two tasks per day. How would your work look with numbers like that.
Step two, is to keep a running list of daily tasks and larger goals that need to be broken up by individual tasks at hand. This list should be living, allowing you to cross of tasks while at the same time adding new. Don’t give yourself too much, for this will inundate you, and the key to this game is small, consistent, and persistent successes, even when FOCUS may be difficult.
Breaking down the day into time blocks and compartmentalizing in this fashion will feel boring to the ADHD mind. However, over time, the rewards will more than make up for the initial boredom. The more you feel at home in the sucessesses you are creating, the more your successes will encourage you to take on increasingly complex tasks and goals that can lead to larger scale dreams you may currently find yourself undertaking.
I hope this little exploration on Attention in psychology its deficits, and ways to overcome its barriers has been helpful. Let me know if you have any questions. As always my friends, may blessings find you on your journey to envision, believe, and advance confidently in the direction of your dreams.
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