1. Limit your friends…
The world wants that attention. Only you can decide where it goes.
And it does determine the shape of your life: what you pay attention to becomes your reality. If you watch and read the news all the time, you will become obsessed with the latest crises. If you watch and read about celebrities, your life will revolve around them. If you socialize on social networks all day long, this will become your world.
I found an interesting article today about fighting for you attention. I agree strongly with many of the things the author mentions in her list of reclaiming your attention:
1. Limit your friends. Not real-life friends, but social network and blogging and forum friends. Not that these can’t be good relationships, but having too many makes them meaningless. And each friend will take up a little bit of your attention — when you read their updates, click on their links, reply to their messages, look at their photos, and so on. The more you have, the more attention they’ll require. Limit them to just the essential.
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4. Give up on news. It’s a never-ending cycle. And if you’ve paid attention to the news as long as I have (I’m a former journalist), you know it’s all the same, year after year. Unless your job depends on it, the news is usually a waste of your attention. Let go of the need to stay updated. Even if your job does depend on it, keep it limited.
5. Be brief. Write brief emails, tweets, updates, blog posts. With some exceptions, of course. But make brief your de facto.
6. Give your attention to the important. This is the crucial part: choose what you give your attention to, and do this choosing carefully. What is important to you? Writing? Photography? Design? Coding? Creating a new business that helps others? Your kids? Figure this out, and give this the majority of your attention.
On top of my issues with FB, there is the simple reason that I just can’t deal with a large group of friends on a quality level. The only people I really deal with are the people in my day to day life: classmates, bandmates and friends that live in this city. If it weren’t for having a band of 7 members I’d be able to count the people I interact with that I consider friends on my two hands. I just don’t want to deal with more people in my life. It’s not that I don’t care or love my other friends, but a digital-only existance/interaction gives me no emotional contact. The only thing that really makes twitter, for example, fun is that most of my interactions are with people I see daily already.
As for the news point, I couldn’t agree more. History repeats itself and news is sounding more and more familiar everyday. I’m not saying I cut it out of my life completely, but the news that I can catch up on during the time it takes me to make or eat dinner is probably enough to keep me from looking like a complete doofus. I’m not living in a shitty world. My government doesn’t treat me like crap. I don’t make so much money that I feel like the gov’t is robbing me. I’m no protesting hippy. The news tends to be so sad and depressing anyways…
Number 5 is really my favorite. I think Einstein said it best: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”. I hate feeling like I contribute to the noise of useless blabber that occurs in so many parts of the internet. Taking a quick look here, I’ve been on twitter for longer than most of my friends, and although I keep an active presence on the social network I have less than many of my “younger” friends. I’m still under 1000 tweets where a number of my friends are way above that. Some even try for a large number. I don’t see the point. Say what you need to say, but don’t add to the noise in the world. ‘nuff said
The last one is probably the most import in the list. Spend time in your life doing what you love, what you find important, because in the end that is what will shape you. Without sounding punny, the only thing you can count on at the end of the day is that there are only 24h in a day. Only 365 days in a year. And only a slowly shrinking number of years left in your life. At the end of the day, your memories of what you’ve spent your time doing over the last 5, 10 or 50 years is what will make you who you are on that day. Why not be proud to have been in control of most of it instead of being a slave to someone or something else’s bidding? Not to say that you can’t love your job or anything, just make sure you’re doing what you love somewhere in your life!
Ah hell, what do I know? I’m only 23; so young I don’t even know it.
