Excuse me, have you seen my attention?

I’m not going to sit here and tell you how social media is killing your attention. You already know that.

The good thing is it seems a lot of people are waking up to it. In 2024, “brain rot” made Word of the Year and daily social media use took it’s first decline since 2012.

Source

But what I will say is that there’s something far greater we’re losing—even more than just our time. That is:

Knowing ourselves.

Handing over our attention to all of these platforms is destroying our ability to focus our attention within and to the gift of getting to know ourselves.

To truly know ourselves.

I’m on my own personal journey at the moment trying to wrangle my focus back towards myself. Not in some self-development-I-need-fixing kind of way. But in a returning-to-an-original-state-of-being kind of way. I’ve got as many things as the next person that I’d like to improve about myself but that’s not what I’m yearning for.

I’m yearning to slow down and to foster my relationship with myself.

This is partly spurred on from spending the last 7 weeks with my family 24/7 and only having shower time (and the 10 minutes on my pillow before I fall asleep) to myself and my own thoughts.

But it’s also spurred on from years of growing tired of social media and the never ending barrage of “content” (more on why I hate that word another day).

I’ve smugly not owned or watched a TV for years yet simultaneously failed to see that the whole time I’d been watching the greatest TV station there ever was: social media.

Instead of hundreds of channels to watch, there’s millions.

Millions of channels means millions of voices. And millions of voices means millions of opinions.

There’s no space for me to think my own thoughts.

Not only that, but there’s no space for me to think my own opinions.

Most of what circles around my brain is the opinions of others and instructions on how to live my life better from people who are literally only telling me how they live their life better.

But I’m stepping back.

I’m looking for my attention again.

And when I find it, I will direct it back to myself.

I will slow down and give myself the time and space to get to know myself. To get to know my opinions. To get to know how I think I should live my life better.

The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying come to mind—as they often do.

If you haven’t heard of them before, they are:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

They’ve captivated me ever since I first read them. I’ve always been curious about ‘figuring out the meaning of life’. Or as I put it; how to live a good life—one where I don’t have regrets when I’m dying.

However, one regret I fear many of us will be adding to this list when we’re older (and one I’m actively trying to avoid) is:

I wish I didn’t spend so much time on my phone.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I’m grateful for the wisdom shared from the people who shared their regrets. I trust in their experience of life and with this in mind I try my best to live with foresight— despite the truth in this quote:

“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards”
— Soren Kierkegaard

In an attempt to direct my attention towards myself more, and to spend less time on my phone, I am opting for a more “offline” life.

I’ve been making small steps towards this over the years through many avenues of digital minimalism and next week I’ll be the happy owner of my very first Traveler’s Notebook—which I’m planning to use more than my phone.

My affinity for notebooks started at a young age. One of my favourite places to visit was Paperchase on Tottenham Court Road, London. It was three floors of stationery heaven—notebooks, pens, art supplies and walls of coloured paper.

Looking back now I realise it was never the pens or notebooks themselves that I loved but the potential within them for capturing the magic of life. And for reasons I am yet to learn, the digital world simply cannot recreate the nostalgia of flicking through an old notebook rediscovering your old thoughts and feelings.

Furthering my search for my attention and quest for offline life, and following the inspiration of a fellow writer on Substack, I created an at-home library the other day which has already become mine and my partners favourite spot in the house.

It’s even better at nighttime.

We made a rule that we weren’t going to fill it with all of our books—only the ones we are currently interested in. We want the space to be inviting and intentional.

That last word there is perhaps the most important—intentional.

We have to be intentional with our attention and where we direct it.

Once you find yours, direct it where you want it.

I’ll leave you with this quote today:

“Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.”
— José Ortega y Gasset

Who do you want to be?