intentional Attention and Why It Really Matters
By: Colleen Rivers, MD
My mother passed away when I was fifteen-years-old, leaving me to cherish every memory of her beyond words. In one, I am about nine-years-old and waiting to start our checkers game. The board is set up at the kitchen table and her kettle whistles. (My mother poured herself a cup of tea before she did just about anything.) When she finally sits down to play, the phone (an off-white landline circa 1990) rings. As my mother picks it up and says hello, I get nervous. It’s Rita, her dear friend who loves to talk and can easily derail our entire afternoon. The chatting begins for a few minutes and just when I am about to give up hope, I hear my mother say, “Okay Rita, I gotta hang. I promised Coll I would play checkers with her.”
I share this memory because it illustrates the kind of attention I received as I child while I try to tackle the issue of my fractured attention as a mother in a new world. My mom was by no means the type who felt she needed to entertain a child. (Most of my non-school memories are of being sent outside to play with neighborhood kids.) She was also incredibly busy, running my two older siblings to sports and managing my grandmother who had dementia, among other responsibilities. However, this story highlights the magic behind the attention she gave me: It was intentional. And by that I mean that my mother purposefully gave me her full attention at intervals I can’t even recall at this point. But I know that they left me feeling loved, secure, heard, and seen. And in this challenging game of parenting, that is a win.
As I write this article, I have four children of my own, ages nine, eight, six and five-years-old. I too am busy with a host of personal and professional commitments. However, I also walk around with a device designed to distract me from anything and everything, my iPhone. The way my life is currently set up, I need it to function. It houses my calendar, an app for the ever-changing soccer schedule, the GPS to find my way around, and even my Sonos to play music. These functions are in addition to the standard incessant text messages, emails, and addictive social media feeds that most of our phones have. Whenever I glance at it (which I do over one hundred times a day according to its count), it has the power to completely distract me from whomever I am interacting with, often my children. I worry that over time, this will have an affect and it won’t be as positive as my own mother’s attention was in my life.
I had been grappling with this issue for a while and trying different hacks with varied success, when I picked up a book called Digital Minimalism (1). Its author Cal Newport suggests that we only use the apps that strongly support our deep values. And for those that we must use (e.g; work email, social media for business), we devise ways to prevent them from interfering with the life we want to live. To summarize what this looks like for me, I turned off all my notifications, including those for text messaging and email. Now I look at my messages a few times a day and reply in batches without being constantly interrupted. I also moved my social media apps off the home screen and only open them once a week to post high quality content for my business. And for the times that I don’t need my phone (e.g; out to dinner with my family) — I leave it home.
As with every change we make to try and become better versions of ourselves, we really don’t know what effects it will have down the line. In this case, I can’t be sure that this little tweak has left my children feeling more loved and secure. However I do know that I feel more relaxed and engaged with them them, so I’m taking that as a good sign. My call to action this month is that you take a minute considering whether your technology use is moving you closer or farther from what is most important to you. Then start making changes accordingly. Remember — we only get one chance at this life and we don’t want to miss the games of checkers that really matter to us!
1. Newport, C. (2019). Digital minimalism: Choosing a focused life in a noisy world. Portfolio/Penguin.
Dr. Colleen Rivers is the founder and CEO of Seek, a health and wellness platform that empowers people to take back ownership of their own health. Its overarching philology is that the act of seeking — or taking one small step toward your healthiest self — is in itself transformative. Visit her website: www.seektransformation.com