I base this text’s idea on a concept by the cultural critic Matt Crawford’s concept of attention ecologies that come with craft endeavours. Crafts are activities with clearly delineated processes, working environments, materials, tools and type of finished product. When people engage into these types of activities, they are allowing their attention to rest upon these pre-defined frameworks that, as Cal Newport explains it “specify what matters, what doesn’t, and why.“
I think that the magic of a clearly structured endeavour is that it helps relieve the cognitive fatigue that we can experience in a digitally mediated world that offers an abundant and perpetually updating collection of potential targets for our attention. As I see it, with we sit and work on something that requires attention to the process, but not so much in finding out what the next step will be but just in following the steps of a predefined working process. During that process, the value of our skills is in how we can produce every detail in a way that is the most closely resembling to what the finished product is supposed to look like. We do this with care and ideally enjoying the process. We enjoy at least for two reasons: because finishing each small detail, although not easy, is not an exhausting task, and because with the completion of each detail and ours getting increasingly closer to a clearly envisioned finished product works as a source of constant little rewards, which are nudging incentives to keep us motivated. In other words, we enjoy the process more than the result.
Now, the attention ecology of this craft allows our attention to lay comfortably but still alertedly upon all of its components (for example, components such as knitting the symmetry of the pattern, the adequacy of the shape, the movement of our hands as we manipulate the needle and the good placement of colour). Thanks to the relief that this means for our happily contained attention, we can condense and redirect all that saved energy that we would have exhausted with deciding what to pay attention to next but at the same time feeling the stress of wanting to pay attention to something else that seems equally worthy. Now we have closed-off our alertedness to surrounding stimuli, because we are immersed in our craft activity, so it becomes easier . In fact, if we follow this idea of an ecology of attention, it is as if all the densely interconnected components of this framework helped provide a solid support for whatever new point of attention that we would wish to add to it.
Going back to the knitting example, we can think more clearly about an idea, a problem or a plan that we feel is important while we continue weaving the yarn into the pattern. Anything else that might have occupied the back of our minds is replaced by the little pieces of attention that knitting requires while at the same time, we gain small but continuous bursts of motivation as we advance towards our finished product. The motivation, of course, can be re-channeled towards our thinking process, which will possibly lead us towards a clearer idea of what to do next in this other important endeavour that requires a much deeper level of creativity and analysis. So much for ecologies of attention as support for other more perplexing tasks.
Once we look at the types of activities we commit to within this perspective, it becomes easier to understand another of Crawford’s ideas: that we might have learned how to define our values and rationally explain why we believe in them. But in this day and age it becomes increasingly difficult to know what we should pay attention to in order to express those values in a satisfying manner. The landscape of available stimuli has become too broad and its easy to be led astray by the powerful tide of the bittersweetly satisfying, passive fulfilment of our need to find something to pay attention to (ie. to escape boredom and paradox of choice).
As a result, we are left in a vicious circle. Because we cannot commit to meaningful (value fulfilling) activities in a deeper, sustained level, we are unable to put our values in proper practice and truly explore our relationship with them. This in turn makes us even less competent in choosing what to pay attention to. In short, the vicious circle consists of less ability to find what is worth paying attention to equals a reduced knowledge of your values, this in turn results in an even more reduced ability to realise what are the meaningful things to pay sustained attention to.
The attention ecologies that come together with craft help in this regard. They flip the vicious circle on its head so it becomes a virtuous circle. If what we choose to pay attention to were a variable, if we engage with a craft that helps us answer that question by offering its own attention ecology framework, in a way we can control that variable. By holding most of our attention upon a clear path, we allow more breathing space for channeling the remainder of our attention to something that we think is valuable. So by testing our relationship to this value, we allow them to develop further which in turn would help us better choose what to pay attention to next time. Effectively, this creates the virtuous circle of slowly testing one value at a time in an in-depth, focused, well-supported manner (thanks to the attention ecology of the craft taking care of the rest of our impulses and fueling our motivation with little rewards) which helps develop our judgment for what to pay attention to next time, and then we repeat the process.
To finish this, another interesting real world example that comes to mind is that of an existing Japanese cocktail bar that works like some sushi bars, where you sit at the counter and let the bartender or sushi-master decide what to offer you and in what sequence, remaining constantly present during the whole process. It could be said that in a way we are delegating our choice-making to this craftsman, which allows us to redirect our attention to other aspects of the experience that would be potentially more meaningful. Our perception of sushi or cocktails and food and drinks in general can become richer as we gain more autonomy in enjoying the experience on a deeper level, where we trust our host’s judgment and allow our mind and senses to take in all other previously unnoticed, subtle aspects of it.
References:
https://calnewport.com/from-descartes-to-pokemon-matthew-crawfords-quest-to-reclaim-our-attention/
Matt Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, 2009
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