Withdraw Your Attention and Fight

It’s pretty clear that most of us have an attention problem, and while I’m busy scrutinizing and putting limits on the screen time of my children, I haven’t put those same restraints on myself — until recently.

Despite having left the United States 12 years ago, I still find myself enmeshed in the politics of the current administration, and it’s global impact. The antics of the current U.S. president feels like whiplash sometimes. I realize that I have become a pawn in someone else’s game — that of the media.

That’s what Burkemen is speaking to in today’s “meditation.” The fact that the media outlets are “in an arms race for your attention.”

He goes on to say that living inside the news and being knowledgeable about the world makes us feel like we’re doing our duty and being a good person. But is it really?

In my work, I talk a lot about the importance of putting ideas into practice and that reading a leadership book alone doesn’t change your leadership. It’s you, putting the ideas into practice, that makes the ideas come to life. It’s why I am somewhat anti-book club, at least for non-fiction books. Book clubs maintain the illusion that you're learning, but really you’re just becoming a better theorist.

I can see the hypocrisy in my own ways of relating to the news. Sure, I can talk about how immigrants actual reduce the deficit because they pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits, but how is that actually helping the immigrants who are currently being rounded up in the US now? It’s not.
It’s a case of cognitive dissonance — I want to believe I am a good person, and so I use “being in the know” as the evidence that I am good, when really I am passively sitting here across the Atlantic, doing nothing to change what’s happening. It feels “icky” just writing that here.

It’s why I’ve recently deleted many apps from my phone, and installed my own “parental controls” on myself to reduce my media consumption. I’ve let my subscription to the NY Times go as well. Doomscrolling the news isn’t helping anyone directly. So what will?

Next month, I am headed to the Netherlands for my Level 2 training in Deep Democracy. That’s an action that I can take that I think will have a benefit on our world. That’s action, not just theory.

As Burkeman writes,

 In an age of attention scarcity, the greatest act of good citizenship may be to withdraw your attention from everything except the battles you’ve chosen to fight.

I’m choosing to withdraw my attention and fight.

Will you do the same?

Originally posted on Substack with comments.

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