Attention is often compared to a flashlight, or a spotlight. We can’t be attentive to everything all at once — there’s just too much to take in — so we have to be selective. In some scenarios this is straightforward: If you’re crossing the street, you need to pay attention to traffic, not pretty clouds or a funny TikTok video.
But the spotlight idea gets more interesting in more ambiguous situations, when in some sense your attention is up for grabs. Do you want to direct it toward a cloud, a meme, or something else? Are you sure you’re attending to what’s in your spotlight — or are you being drawn to (distracted by) someone else’s?
A lot of what I write about here concerns a kind of goal-related or goal-directed selective focus: making a choice to pay attention to weeds or color or art or the moon or something else you’ve chosen to attend to. By a “goal” I don’t necessarily mean some specific project, I just mean that what you’re doing with your spotlight is a determined choice.
What I don’t talk about as much is the periphery of that spotlight. One of the fun — and useful — things about, say, focusing on color while taking a walk is what it makes you notice, in a sense, by accident.
I wrote about color-hunting the other day, and as I continue to play around with that while I’m out and about, I’ve been noticing what else it makes me notice: unusual ironwork, odd ornamentation, street art, flowers, funny signs people have in their windows or amusing objects on their porches (a pillow that said “Every Day I’m Hustling,” for example), a creative street-number solution, and so on.
I wasn’t aiming my metaphorical spotlight at any of these things — they just got illuminated on its periphery. And I suppose that’s one goal of a directed-attention endeavor, however pointless it might seem: to expand what you’re attending to, and perhaps accidentally reveal things you didn’t know you were looking for.
Pay attention to what’s at the periphery of your attention.
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THE NEXT FREE EDITION IN TWO WEEKS
Dictionary of Missing Words is an exercise in paying attention to phenomena you encounter — sensations, concepts, states between states, feelings, slippery things — that could be named, but don’t seem to be. More here and here.
This week’s missing word is from Lisa Kahn Schnell:
I would love to have a word for those days when the weather is absolutely beautiful, but . . . wrong. A 65-degree day in February in Pennsylvania, when the sun warms your coat-free shoulders, for example. There's that feeling of intense conflict: This feels so good! But this is so deeply, tragically, not how things are supposed to be.
She adds: “I have studied botany, so I have a similar reaction to, say, a meadow full of wildflowers and lovely grasses in dappled sunlight on a spring afternoon, when I know they're all invasive species.”
This is a really great one — thank you, Lisa! (Check out Lisa’s work here, and her newsletter here.)
IN OTHER NEWS
The excellent online mag Flaming Hydra has just launched a Kickstarter, partly to fund an anthology (and restore the online archives) of seminal internet publication The Awl — tentatively including a piece I contributed once upon a time. To support this worthy endeavor go here.
Add your color-hunting finds to this TAoN reader chat thread!
Also to follow up on our color discussion, here’s a brief excerpt from a new book, The Universe in 100 Colors by Tyler Thrasher and Terry Mudge: What was the first color?
Paintings by Amy C. Evans inspired by The Saltville Centennial Cookbook: Delicious.
“By stepping outside, setting aside distractions, and intentionally listening to silence for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, my mind naturally started seeing new possibilities,” writes Ara Coutts. “It was a breakthrough.” She heard me describe a version of this prompt on the Waking Up app; it’s also in the book. Her experience is very cool!
Banana art. I want all of it!
Proust’s masterwork, but with “lol” at the end of every sentence. (“For a long time I used to go to bed early lol.”) Here’s the whole thing.
“Instead of a dopamine fast, what we really need is a dopamine feast — one that makes us want experiences we actually like, rather than compulsively responding to cravings.” NYT gift link.
Jared Friedman photos: fitting in. Via Dan Whittet.
“Don’t let your crop die.” Via WaPo (gift link): “I pulled over to answer a text and saw a farmer on his tractor. It occurred to me that he wasn’t scrolling through Instagram or doing anything but focusing on the task at hand. If he didn’t, his crop would die. That began my purge of time sucks, big and small, that didn’t feed my crop.”
New Maira Kalman book
Reminder: The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has published a book of 20 of my columns for them on cities and technology. City Tech is for an audience interested in urban policy and planning, so if you or someone you know might be into it, more here.
I’m not a TikTok user, but the below came to my attention and . . . I’m pleased!
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As always, I value your feedback (suggestions, critiques, positive reinforcement, constructive insults directed at me, not at anyone else, etc.), as well as your tips or stories or personal noticing rituals, things we need a word for, and of course your icebreakers: consumed@robwalker.net. Or use the comments.
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Thank you for articulating this idea of periphery. I tend to have a “low level of delight” (not my phrase, but I like it!), and I think it’s in part because I get as—or more—transfixed with the periphery as with whatever the main “goal” is supposed to be—so there’s always something interesting going on.
Also, huge thanks for using my missing word!!! I look forward to reading more.
Great post once again, Rob. The "spotlight" concept makes me think of one of my favorite quotes from the photographer Uta Barth. She says, "Painting is an additive practice. You start out with a white canvas and make your marks. Photography is subtractive, you have the whole world and you edit and select a small rectangle or square of it." Love it!