Science is telling us something we already knew—even if we hadn’t put it into words. We have a limited amount of conscious attention, and when we’ve exhausted it on a task, there’s nothing we can do to immediately replenish it.
But we don’t just exhaust conscious attention on important matters or complex tasks. We squander it bit-by-bit on dozens of things throughout the day. As if that weren’t bad enough, we often squander it on the same darn things day after day after day.
I’ve had an annoying problem with my car for what I thought was the past year and a half but then found out was the past two and a half years. It isn’t as though I hadn’t tried to get it taken care of because I made multiple unsuccessful attempts to do so. In the meantime, I learned to put up with the problem. I didn’t have to think about it unless I wanted or needed to drive my car. But every time I started my car and attempted to drive it, I was forced to put my conscious attention on a routine my basal ganglia normally handles.
Recently, I had to take my car into the shop for an unrelated issue. This time I told the mechanic I didn’t care what it took to resolve the other longstanding problem, I just wanted it fixed once and for all. And lo and behold, it has been fixed! It took about a week before starting the car and driving it stopped snagging my conscious attention each and every time.
The experience led me to notice other things I’ve been putting up with in various areas of my life—things that snag my conscious attention repeatedly. I made a list of various minor but highly visible things that need to be taken care of in my apartment and gave it to the maintenance manager of the complex the other day. These issues all resulted from a series of upgrades that were done about two years ago. At least I thought it was two years ago. Turns out I was wrong about that, too. It was actually three years ago.
I began to notice that every time one of these things-I’m-not-taking-care-of rears its head, I have to give it conscious attention if only to disregard it. That’s true whether it’s something visible in my apartment, something I’ve been wanting to do, something I haven’t finished, or something I’ve been needing to take care of in another area of my life. It’s as if “not now” has become the mantra for these things. Compared to some, my list of things-I’m-not-taking-care-of may be relatively small, but that doesn’t matter. Everything on it still takes up headspace, still snags my conscious attention. There are things in life we do have to tolerate (put up with, if you will), but we don’t have to tolerate these kinds of things. And we do ourselves no favor by tolerating or putting up with them.
So my intention for the rest of 2013 is to clear up every item in my backlog of things-I’m-not-taking-care-of, no matter how large or small. I have only a dim idea of what it might be like to face a new year without these things taking up headspace and without regularly giving my conscious attention away to them. But I can’t wait to find out.
Thinking about my life, this is a profound discovery you’ve made. I know that I have never really considered the cost of those things that are nagging in the background. Taking care of things that are an immediate demand is not so hard to do until you start realizing that it’s the “not now” mantra of the background things that often lead to the immediate demands. To me, it’s particularly significant how long you “put up” with these things, and how the actual time surpassed even your own estimations of how long these things have been wasting your brain resources. There’s a lesson here for all of us who want to live more intentionally. Thanks for sharing!
It seems to be a downward spiral. The bigger the backlog gets, the more attention it takes to notice and decide not to deal with it. That means the attention that’s available overall keeps decreasing, which has to have a negative effect on quality of life. Maybe it’s the backlog and its pull on our attention that we’re all trying to escape from in one way or another. What do you think?
I think you’re on to something. It’s like any aspect of our lives. The more we have to deal with, whether in the form of clutter, a backlog of things that need attention, too many demands on our time, the less attention we have for the things that are truly important. In fact, these issues don’t give us the time and space to consider what it really is that we want. Instead, we let the backlog, or the clutter, or the schedule, call the shots on what happens in the day to day. To me, it’s an urgent call to get out from under all the things that bear us down so that we can breathe and chart a course on which we take only the things that really matter to us. That’s the direction I want to head.
I’ve found a similar problem with clutter in my apartment. My apartment is usually pretty clean – for a man – but I’ve noticed when I am going through a period when my mind seems scattered and I have trouble focusing, my apartment has gotten messy. There are papers I haven’t filed, a dish I need to wash, and books and papers I should read. I think my conscious mind is distracted by these items that need resolved, or at least put away. Cleaning my apartment before I begin a task where I need to focus is very helpful.
I haven’t yet decided if because my mind is scattered I allow my apartment to get messy, or because my apartment is messy I have trouble focusing.
Hi Donald. Maybe the two situations feed off of each other. I’ve noticed the same thing. For me, it’s easier to tackle the environment (apartment) first, too. Much easier to concentrate and focus afterward.