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Attention We spend so much of our lives trying to get it. Coworkers recognizing our input, bosses acknowledging our effort, our other half appreciating our actions. Social media is driven by the desire for attention. Sandeep Swadia recently wrote about what can happen if we invert everything and GIVE attention instead. His story is about showing up to an appearance with an umbrella that had broken earlier in the day. Following the appearance, he was unexpectedly, and seemingly unnecessarily, given a brand new one. Someone had noticed. A seemingly menial action that made Swadia’s day. And that’s really the point of his piece. What can happen when we pause, become fully present and connected, and make someone feel seen and/or heard. Especially in everyday life. A gesture so very small, but with an effect so very huge. Paying attention to the person in front of us. Today, “how are you?” is often less of a question and more of a greeting. Let’s bring it back to being a question. Sandeep Swadia gives us his HAT principle: Help, Appreciation, Time. But I’ll let you read that. On Losing Attention Before we can give someone our attention, we have to stop losing it. A paper I came across this week starts with the question, “Do you expect to read this [article] without interruptions [caused by your smartphone]?” Probably not. Task interruptions are part of everyday life, and always-on connectivity has become normal. Notifications certainly have benefits. Communication, collaboration, feeling connected. Timely business activities. But they’re also interruptive and increasingly frequent. And every time our attention shifts, there can be a cost. The authors looked at how these notification-caused interruptions affect strain and performance, and why turning them off might affect different people differently. Overall, reducing notification-caused interruptions improved performance and reduced strain. But there was some nuance. The performance benefits of reducing notifications may be smaller for those high on FoMO. The authors suggest anxiety when notifications are disabled as a possible explanation.  Which brings me to another study that coincidentally showed up on my feed this week: Attention hijacked: How social media notifications disrupt cognitive processing. This time participants performed a Stroop task while being exposed to smartphone-style notifications. Essentially, the authors wanted to know how much a notification can pull us away from something we’re already doing. The main finding was that cognitive processing slowed for roughly seven seconds following a notification. Even more so when the notifications were personally relevant. Though they can still capture your attention when they’re not. One of my biggest takeaways was that notification volume and checking frequency mattered more than total screen time. This was interesting. Because we always harp on screen time. Maybe it’s the distractions that actually matter more. And maybe that says something about just how fragile our attention can be. So rather than continually harping on screen time, which is pretty much a useless endeavour anyway because no one likes a nag, perhaps a simpler place to start is turning off most, if not all, of the notifications on our phones.  On Listening Which brings us back to what all of this attention is actually for. Dr. Aubrianna Jones recently wrote a short yet important reflection about the difference between understanding a clinical presentation and appreciating how and what that clinical presentation means in someone’s life. The unspoken expressions of someone’s condition and the silences between their words can sometimes tell more of their story, if we’re listening. If we’ve given them our attention. Our full and undivided attention. Dr. Jones talks about patients as storytellers, and their stories as rarely linear. Stories layered with grief, fear and, at times, resilience. She describes knowing the clinical details of a patient’s chronic pain, yet not necessarily knowing what that pain meant in the patient’s life. And with an ever-increasing trend and movement toward quantitative, objective technology, I fear the subjective is going to get pushed further under the rug. Personally, I believe the subjective is more important. I’ve always believed that one of the greatest gifts you can give someone is the opportunity to tell their story. But in order for someone to tell their story, someone else has to be paying attention. Downstream Effects And this is where mentorship enters the picture. Dr. Aubrianna Jones also talks about how mentorship was important during her training. Mentorship afforded her the space to sit with uncertainty, interpret what was left unsaid and, perhaps most importantly, learn what it means to care by watching how care was modeled. Those relationships were grounded in humility, vulnerability and shared meaning-making. There’s a cross-pollination in all of this. Her mentorship experiences helped shape how she would ultimately give attention to her patients. But only because those mentorship experiences were themselves grounded in attention. This is the downstream effect. Attention given to someone who then learns to give attention to someone else. Critical Non-Essentials. Again. I wrote about Critical Non-Essentials in the last Cross-Pollination. The little things that aren't necessarily essential, but can still make a difference. Because not everything needs to be essential to be important. Will Guidara recently shared another nice example of this. A family was in an Uber on their way to Hollywood Studios at Disney. The driver noticed their Star Wars shirts and, with the kids getting restless in traffic, put on some Star Wars music. That's it. The driver didn't work for Disney. There was no requirement to do it. Just an unexpected, seemingly unnecessary gesture that made the ride part of the experience. The littlest thing, at the most perfect time, can have an immeasurable effect. But again, only possible with attention. How often do we do things we aren't required to do? Even holding the door open seems rare these days. In our cases, maybe it's turning down the lights or ambient music volume for someone who looks like they've had a long day. Maybe it's telling a patient to book at the end of your day so you can give them some extra time and attention. Maybe it's covering for a coworker when you hear they're having some challenges at home. None of these things are required. And none of them are particularly big. But you have to notice first. All of this lies on a foundation and has a prerequisite of attention. The more we give, the more we can give. Comments are closed.
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