> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.ariet.net/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Stop chasing focus, choose your attention - URL: https://www.ariet.net/stop-chasing-focus-choose-your-attention/ - Published: 2026-07-14T16:40:18.000Z - Updated: 2026-07-17T19:55:42.000Z - Author: Richard Thackeray - Tags: People and Organisation *Reproduced from a LinkedIn post in February 2026* ## Introduction Architects are not alone in needing to blend domain expertise with great people skills. Of course, I will suggest that, given the disjointed worlds they work in and the need to achieve focus, if not also clarity, they are very much at the sharp end of the need for people skills. Whilst some architects may be forced to tinker with tools, they should also be working and looking out across the stakeholder base to achieve focus and clarity. This means being able to direct attention effectively. Attention isn’t merely something I have that can be manipulated (e.g., by new technology); it is also something I can harness and optimise in the people I lead, work with, and work for. I was directed to [this](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/opinion/attention-world-war-2-technology-nazis.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.K1A.XsHW.kmqiEuVvFiss&smid=url-share&ref=ariet.net) article in the New York Times today. You get one free article a month if you are a free subscriber, so you may be able to read it. It’s interesting and absorbing, and it sparked a cascade of thoughts about how I have been looking at the word ‘attention’ with a narrow focus. I asked my AI assistant to help with some analysis and think about three things: - Can we define these different definitions of 'attention', and how each is of value in its own way? - How can we take this learning and consider how we can interact with the people around us, e.g. at work, to optimise 'attention' in its different forms? - Where does each type of attention matter? AI provided some of the text in the following. The NYT article suggests the problem isn’t only that attention is “getting worse”; it’s that we’ve let one narrow, machine-friendly definition of attention dominate everything else. Attention isn’t a single thing you have more or less of. It’s a repertoire of modes, and modern life over-trains the measurable ones (engagement, switching, monitoring screens) while under-supporting the humane ones (presence, care, immersion, sensemaking). Resistance to the effects of smartphones (especially on our children) has created a moral panic of “we’re all doomed” (and when it comes to our kids, I get that), but it needs to be replaced with something more actionable: design the conditions for the mode you need. --- ## What is meant by ‘attention’ Looking at the first question, defining different meanings of ‘attention’, and why each is valuable ### A: Vigilance / Sustained monitoring (“radar attention”) - **Definition:** Maintaining readiness to detect rare, subtle signals over time in a largely monotonous stream. - **What it’s for:** Safety and reliability when the cost of a miss is high (air traffic, radiology, control rooms, security monitoring). - **Key insight from the article:** Mackworth’s work found performance drops markedly after \~30 minutes (‘vigilance decrement’). - **Value:** It protects systems but is biologically costly and requires careful design (e.g., breaks, rotation, cues). Question: When is this required in the knowledge worker workplace? ### B: Selective attention / “Spotlight” focus (choosing what matters) - **Definition:** Selecting a subset of inputs for priority processing, while suppressing others (the classic “filter/bottleneck” framing). - **What it’s for:** Reading, coding, analysis, careful listening, any task where precision matters and distraction is costly. - **Value:** It turns complexity into tractable work; it’s the basis of accuracy and quality. Question: When is this required in the knowledge worker workplace? ### C: Executive attention and cognitive control (steering the mind) - **Definition:** The control system that resolves conflict, inhibits impulses, shifts set deliberately, and keeps goals on track. - **What it’s for:** Decision making under pressure, prioritisation, staying calm, resisting “just check Teams quickly”. - **Value:** It’s the difference between being interrupted and choosing to switch. Question: When is this required in the knowledge worker workplace? ### D: Alerting and orienting (getting ready, pointing the beam) - **Definition:** In the Posner framework, attention includes (1) alerting and achieving/maintaining readiness, and (2) orienting and directing attention to a location/object (often rapidly). - **What it’s for:** Responding quickly to changes, scanning environments, and situational awareness. - **Value:** It’s how we stay adaptive, which is crucial in fast‑moving work and in leadership sensing. Question: When is this required in the knowledge worker workplace? ### E: Open monitoring and diffuse awareness (presence and standing back) - **Definition:** A receptive, non‑selective awareness of whatever arises (internal or external), rather than fixing on one object. - **What it’s for:** Sensemaking, creativity, noticing weak signals, ‘joining the dots’, emotional harmony and alignment. - **Value:** It builds the picture in your mind. It is the kind of attention that helps with complex problem spaces and strategy. Question: When is this required in the knowledge worker workplace? ### F: Absorbed engagement and flow-like immersion (e.g. lost in a book) - **Definition:** Extended, intrinsically coherent engagement where the task holds you without constant effort. The NYT article points to being ‘lost in a book’, undisturbed walks, and daydreaming. These experiences are attention-based but are not well captured by stopwatch metrics. - **What it’s for:** Deep learning, craft, writing, design, and complex picture building. - **Value:** This is where big problems often yield, not by frantic focus, but via sustained immersion. Question: When is this required in the knowledge worker workplace? ### G: Captured and engineered attention (attention as a commodity) - **Definition:** Externally shaped engagement designed to keep you ‘on device’; the article links this lineage from human‑factors metrics to the attention economy and gives the slot‑machine ‘machine zone’ as an example of engineered, addictive engagement. - **What it’s for** (for the designer): Monetisation, habit loops, time on device. - **Value** (for us): Mostly instrumental (it can feel pleasurable or soothing), but it often conflicts with our chosen goals, which is why the article argues we need to rethink attention beyond measurable engagement. \[ Question: When is this required in the knowledge worker workplace? ### H: Ethical and relational attention (attention as care, responsibility, love) - **Definition:** Attention as a moral act. The article contrasts mechanistic models with traditions in which attention is tied to virtue and meaning and cites Simone Weil on “full attention” as the route to truth/beauty/goodness. - **What it’s for:** Being fully with people; fairness; humane leadership; dignity. - **Value:** This is non‑fungible attention. It cannot be reduced to productivity minutes, and it’s foundational for trust and culture. Question: When is this required in the knowledge worker workplace? --- ## How do we use this learning in the workplace, and how to optimise attention (in its different forms) with people around us A practical way to apply all this is to treat attention as a shared resource with distinct modes, and to make the mode explicit. ### Step 1: Name the mode you’re asking for In meetings and 1:1s, try ‘attention prefaces’: - **Focused attention:** “Can we do 10 minutes of single-thread problem solving?” - **Open monitoring:** “Let’s hold this lightly and scan for patterns and no solutions yet.” - **Executive control:** “We’re getting pulled into details, let’s re-anchor on the decision we need.” - **Relational attention:** “I want to understand how this has landed for you. I’m going to listen, not fix.” This alone reduces accidental mismatches (e.g., someone brings spotlight focus into a session that needs diffuse sensemaking). ### Step 2: Design environments that match the attention type **For deep, selective focus (types B and F):** - Protect blocks (calendar ‘do not book’), reduce fragmentation, and normalise async updates. - Be wary of the modern ‘47 seconds on a screen’ (e.g. Gloria Mark’s research) pattern: frequent switching isn’t a personal failure; it’s a system effect of digital work design. **For vigilance tasks (type A):** - Rotate duties, build micro-breaks, and add supportive cues as vigilance reliably degrades over time in boring monitoring conditions. **For open monitoring and creativity (type E):** - Create ‘solution‑free zones’ (first 15 mins: observations only). - Use whiteboards, walking meetings, or silent reflection to allow pattern‑formation. ### Step 3: Use ‘attention contracts’ in group settings Lightweight norms you can introduce without being preachy: 1. **Single threading by default:** one topic, one decision at a time (supports selective and executive attention). 2. **Timeboxing with purpose:** 10 mins generate options (open), 10 mins evaluate (executive), 5 mins decide (focused). 3. **Device etiquette matched to mode:** laptops open for co-authoring, closed for relational listening. 4. **Breaks as a performance strategy, not weakness:** especially for monitoring and long meetings (noting the vigilance decrement logic in the article). ### Step 4: Help people switch modes deliberately (instead of being yanked) Much workplace friction stems from unmanaged mode switching. Two simple practices: - **Mode shift signals:** “Pause, we’re moving from exploration to decision.” (Executive network cueing.) - **Meta-awareness prompts:** “What just pulled our attention away?” This echoes techniques Gloria Mark discusses around becoming aware of automatic switching and regaining intentionality. ### Step 5 — Re-centre ethical/relational attention as leadership practice The article’s strongest claim is that reducing attention to metrics and ‘engagement’ flattens what makes us human and makes us easier to manipulate. In practice at work, that means: - **Treat attention as respect:** don’t half-listen while typing and don’t multitask through someone’s concern. - **Make space for meaning:** ask “what matters here?” not only “what’s the task?” (This is the Simone Weil line of thought: attention as an orientation to truth/goodness.) --- ## Where does each type of attention matter (a quick map) ![Article content](https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/D4E12AQEGZGwXqrCH8g/article-inline_image-shrink_400_744/B4EZxDEcCXKgAY-/0/1770651763578?e=1785369600&v=beta&t=SFhJs5wQab68-3V4k4UdTELwX67tSaT_W6IyXsPST9U) --- ## Where to invest I don’t think this is an easy ask to address. Where is the biggest pain: fragmented focus (lots of switching), lack of strategic sensemaking, or thin relational attention (people not feeling heard)? Task switching is a significant source of complaint among people in chaotic work environments, and it would be easy to focus on this, but much of it is environmental. How can we address the environmental issues? Some of this is also about capability, e.g. the ability to orient and sensemake, among the workforce and leadership. We should not treat ‘switching is bad’ as the diagnosis. Complaints about fragmentation are real, but they can be (a) an environmental design issue (how work is orchestrated), (b) a capability issue (sensemaking, prioritisation, boundary-setting), or (c) a mismatch of attention modes (trying to do deep focus work in a system optimised for rapid orienting and responding). We should consider this in two roles: as a consultant bringing our client teams together, or as a leader within an organisation. Let’s look at the latter. Where do we want to invest? We can start with a simple hypothesis set (environment vs capability vs mode mismatch) - H1\. Environmental and system design: The work system creates constant alerting and orienting demands (chat, meetings, escalations), so people never stabilise into selective focus or immersion. This is consistent with workplace evidence that screen attention is frequently fragmented (e.g., Gloria Mark’s logging data often cited at \~47 seconds per screen before switching). - H2\. Capability and practice: People lack shared routines for sensemaking, prioritisation, and executive control (the ‘steer the mind’ function). That’s a skills and habits gap, not just a tools gap. - H3\. Attention mode mismatch: Teams are using the wrong attention mode for the job (e.g., trying to ‘decide’ while still in ‘explore’, or expecting vigilance-like monitoring behaviour without accounting for human limits such as the vigilance decrement). - H4\. Engineered capture spillover: Attention is captured by attention-economy mechanisms (feeds, notifications, compulsive checking loops) and imported into work, thereby eroding agency. The article argues that the dominant paradigm measures attention narrowly as engagement and then exploits it, which changes how we relate to our own attention. We don’t need to pick one up front. The aim is to see which hypothesis explains the most variance. From here, we could run an audit to inform where attention is being spent versus where it is needed, and to assess whether the problems are structural, capability-based or normative. What to do next is another piece of work and probably larger than this paper can get. --- ## How to use this as a leader: building an ‘attention operating system’ As a leader, the difference is: you’re not just shaping a workshop, you’re shaping the default ecology. ### Build a team “Attention OS” with four components **Work design: separate work by attention requirement** Create lanes such as: - **Build (deep focus / immersion)** - **Sensemaking (open monitoring)** - **Operate (vigilance / responsiveness)** - **Coordinate (meetings / comms)** Then protect them differently. This is how you avoid asking people to do four incompatible modes simultaneously. **Meeting design: make mode explicit** - Every meeting declares: *Explore / Decide / Coordinate / Care.* - Default: laptops down for relational attention, laptops up for co-author. Relational attention is not fluffy; the NYT article makes the case that real attention is tied to personhood and meaning, not merely productivity metrics. **Boundaries & buffering: reduce involuntary switching** If your environment is the ‘47-second world”’ the leadership move is to **r**educe the involuntary pulls (I am guilty of casting my thoughts out on Teams when they occur and add to these distractions!). - single escalation channel, - clear response time classes (now / today / this week), - quiet hours, - fewer broadcast pings (something I have learned either distracts in the moment, or fails to get noticed) **Capability building: sensemaking as a trainable practice** Treat sensemaking as a skill with routines: - weekly signals and patterns review (open monitoring), - monthly assumptions check (executive control), - lightweight decision records (reduce churn). **Lead with “ethical attention” as a culture anchor** The article’s closing argument is essentially: *attention is moral, civic and human; it can’t be reduced to what machines can count.* **In practice that becomes:** - **fewer “half-present” interactions,** - **visible listening,** - **resisting performative urgency,** - **defending focus for your team when the system pushes constant alerting.** This builds trust, and trust reduces “attention tax” (worry, second-guessing, defensive comms). --- ## Takeaway If there’s one takeaway, it’s this: attention isn’t a single tank that’s running low, it’s a repertoire of modes. We need vigilance sometimes, deep focus at others, and just as often the spacious “standing back” that allows sensemaking, creativity and human connection. When we treat “switching is bad” as the diagnosis, we risk prescribing personal discipline for what is often a systems and design problem. We miss the chance to cultivate the modes of attention that make organisations wise, not just busy. Here’s the call to action: design for the attention mode you need. In your next workshop, meeting, or week of work, try two things: - Name the mode (“we’re exploring” vs “we’re deciding” vs “we’re coordinating” vs “we’re caring”), and - Run a lightweight attention audit for a fortnight to see what’s pulling people around, environment, capability, or mode mismatch. Then pick one change you can sustain: protect a lane for deep work, create a cadence for sensemaking, simplify escalation channels, or rebuild relational attention through device-light conversations. > Small moves, consistently applied, can restore agency and that’s what attention is about.