Look and see

What we pay attention to is a reflection of our values

Hello friends, welcome back to another edition of Letters from Ximena. This month I dive deep into the practice of paying attention.

Photo by Nong Vang on Unsplash

Like many writers, as a kid, I was a voracious reader. When you read a lot of books, you start to think differently. Not just about the world and what you’ve learned about it, or about people and what you now understand of them, but in how you compose your thoughts. Observations shift from matter-of-fact to exquisitely detailed. Metaphors crop up when you least expect them. Even passing thoughts suddenly have color and texture to them. 

For years I had a habit of keeping notebooks filled with beautiful and intriguing lines I loved from books—the kind of sentence that stops you in your tracks for its vividness and emotion, where language is at once revered and made to work at its hardest. This practice of paying attention to language, and inscribing it to hold onto it, began to seep through my subconscious. Unprompted, my brain invented lines of dialogue, descriptions, and details for stories and characters and places that didn’t exist yet. By the time I was a teenager I kept two notebooks—one for inspiring lines from authors, and a second for my own occasional stroke of writing insight. At night they sat at my bedside, ready to catch an image or idea just as I fell asleep. It didn’t matter that these sentences didn’t add up to a clear plot or narrative arc, or that they never amounted to a Real Book. It was the practice of creating space in my brain, allowing it to craft descriptions seemingly on its own that was important. I didn’t know it then, but I was developing the mind and muscle of a writer.

Something happened, though, when I arrived in corporate America years later. At night, in the shower, in my dreams—in the space between thinking, where my mind could go wherever it wanted to—I found myself mentally crafting… emails. Gone were the metaphors, the rich descriptions, the intriguing one-liners that entire stories could have been built around. Now, I was dreaming about paperwork.

What we pay attention to becomes the core of who we are and what we do. Most of us don’t think very hard about the practice of paying attention, but it is a practice. Where has our attention gone? Mostly online. We fall down the rabbit hole of email, social media, gaming, or breaking news, and when we emerge are surprised by how much time has gone by. These lost sessions make us feel like time travelers. Where was I? Oh, yes, Instagram. This kind of attention doesn’t feel like much. We experience it as scattered, distracted, and fragmented. We forget that it is also absorptive, time-consuming, and relentless.

But what if we were deliberate and intentional about where, exactly, we focused our attention? Substack, the company powering this very newsletter, is making a bet that many of us want out of the attention economy. Rather than submit to the look-at-me-ness of social media, the thinking goes, we can invite fewer but better content creators, writers, and journalists into our inboxes. This is a power-to-the-people vision of a changing media landscape, where writers like me can be supported by readers like you. 

The jury is still out on whether writers (beyond a select few) can truly make a living off of their newsletters. But it’s a sign of a broader movement—a growing understanding that what we pay attention to matters. Businesses are interested in this because attention equals money—yours, mine, theirs. But us mere mortals could benefit from thinking about this, too. What interests me—more than the hypothetical monetization opportunities and business model—is more broadly what our attention says about our values. If where our attention goes is a reflection of what we prioritize and therefore value at any given moment, well, what do my hours of emailing say about me? Not very much, I’m afraid. 

If, like me, your attention habits don’t feel reflective of your values, it’s time to practice redirecting your attention. When we think differently about attention—what it means about us, how we can steer it in support of our values—we can do much more with it. Here are five ways to practice paying attention and ensure your attention reflects your values.

1. Attention as resistance. In How to do Nothing, Jenny Odell explores the idea of attention as resistance—we can choose where to focus our attention, and in so doing opt out of the attention economy and the game social media companies want us to play. We can protest their efforts by looking away. “Simple awareness,” she writes, “is the seed of responsibility.”

   Odell orients her attention to nature, and specifically to birds, as an entry into bioregionalism, “an awareness not only of the many life-forms of each place, but how they are interrelated, including with humans.” The goal is to bring a renewed awareness to what we are focusing on and why, and to ask ourselves whether our attention is directed in the service of a greater good or not.

2. Attention as understanding. There is a reason anthropologists leverage observation and ethnography in their work—paying attention to what and who is in front of us can lead us to discovery and meaning. Observing others can teach us about their norms, rituals, customs, and behaviors. 

   With an anthropologist’s eye, we can uncover the gap between our world and theirs. What makes this person so interested in this topic? What’s driving their response? When we take in our surroundings, we realize how little we know about them. 

   This feeling of being of the world and equally bewildered by it is reminiscent of what the French call dépaysement, the feeling of not being at home. It refers to the disorientation we experience when we are traveling or living abroad. Dépaysement is usually the result of a geographic change, but it can also be used as a technique: we can cultivate this same sense of displacement in our very own backyard, simply by paying attention. We can become strangers in our own environment in order to see and understand it more clearly. 

3. Attention as a form of play and creativity. “Paying attention, making a habit of noticing, helps cultivate an original perspective, a distinct point of view,” Rob Walker writes in The Art of Noticing. He encourages us to look up (literally, up towards the rooftops and into the sky, for a new perspective), to draw instead of photograph (notice how the depth and detail of what you see changes), to “detect imaginary clues” (ask yourself a question and seek an answer from your surroundings), and “make an inventory” wherever you go (notice and log objects, feelings, or sounds in the waiting room, during your commute, etc.) These generative exercises awaken our senses, inspiring us to think, reflect, play, and create. All we have to do is notice—to look at something long enough to be intrigued by it, to become aware of what’s in front of us even if we don’t fully understand it.

4. Attention as rest. We often think of paying attention as an act of willpower, discipline, and concentration. It is these things, and yet, there is relief in letting go of context-switching and multitasking, and simply focusing on one thing at a time. If I can train my attention long enough on a single object, person, or idea, I might even find myself transfixed—caught in a meditative state that restores and expands the mind. Deep in this kind of observation, willpower is not needed. The process is active, but also calming.

5. Attention as empathy and care. If I stop to listen and observe you—to take in what you are saying, how you are saying it, and understand why you are saying it—I begin to remove myself from my own experience in order to understand yours. What is it like to be you? I learn by paying attention. 

   To make the space to understand someone is a form of care. (Etymologically speaking, “tenderness” shares a root with attention.) When I set aside distractions and give you my undivided attention, I signal that you are important to me. If I allow my attention to wander in your presence, my affection is diluted. It is akin to inviting a third party into the relationship. My inattention creates a messy love triangle. 

We all look where we shouldn’t—in person, it’s called gossiping, rubbernecking, spying, and sticking our noses in other people’s business. (Online, it’s called doom scrolling, inbox zero, rage-tweeting, and incognito mode.) But we can learn to be more intentional about where we focus our attention. We can remind ourselves that what we choose to read, watch, and listen to is a sign of our support, love, values, and priorities—whether we are cognizant of our behavior or not. The story of a life is not made by simply looking at whatever is in front of us, but by all the small but selective choices made along the way—which add up to big choices, shifts, and decisions later on. We can remember that where we look matters, so we would do best to choose wisely.

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There are so many other things you could be paying attention to right now, and yet, you’re here. Thanks for reading and supporting 💜