✏️ Attention is Your Daily Currency
With news, social media, and cellphones glued to our hands, we are facing an information overload. The sheer magnitude of stimuli, with much of it negative, coming at us can be overwhelming. Not to mention the daily troubles of work, family life and the many relationships we have to maintain. Thus, it is crucial to spend your attention on what matters and is of high priority.
No one has the mental bandwidth to concentrate on so many things at the same time. Creating a priority list of the most important things in your life is a good way to start spending your attention wisely. Family and work are integral components of one's life and should be given the necessary time to keep them healthy. The perils of TV and the news is well documented and understood, and I believe watching the news is not worth the time or attention. Anything that is of sufficient importance you will hear about anyways — you don't need to hear about it the second it happens.
It seems social media has become an almost non-negotiable component of one's social life. Whilst I have done full social media breaks before, I find a more reasonable and effective strategy is to curate my content diet. On Twitter, only follow people that post about topics that interest you, not pages or people who simply offer empty calories in the form of booty pictures or hate posts. So when you inevitably turn to browse your phone to kill some time, at least you are confronted with interesting and hopefully useful information that can inspire new thoughts.
Use your attention wisely. It is the oxygen that fuels the fire of your thoughts. If you give attention to negative thoughts, they will grow.
Whatever you focus your attention on will become important to you even if it's unimportant.
Sonya Parker
📸 Photo of the Week
📖 Book of the Week — The Undiscovered Self by Carl Jung
More and more we are feeling the pressures of modern society. The great psychoanalyst Dr. Carl Jung argues that in order to resist the pressure to conform, we must seek to find the undiscovered self, reach our full abilities as individuals and get to know the deep and often dark recesses of our own being. Only then can we “begin to cope with the dangers posed by mass society — the sum total of individuals — and resist the potential threats posed by those in power.”
💭 Quote of the Week
Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.
Immanuel Kant
🔭 Sunday Best
A Guide to the Layout of a Talmud Page — for those interested in the primary text of Jewish religious law and theology.
The Craft of Writing Effectively — a lecture by Larry McEnerney, Director of the University of Chicago's Writing Program.
After D-Day — Erwin Rommel’s assessment of the German military situation after the Normandy landings. In short: not looking good.
💡 Food for Thought
Three life mistakes: Showing off, overthinking, and chasing dopamine.
Thanks!
AT