As I write these words, our daughter will be born in 14 days. (Assuming she’s right on time, like her parents usually are!) We’re so excited.
As we prepare for her arrival, I’m doing what I can to cultivate the quality of my attention. As I write in Hyperfocus: “I’m convinced that love is nothing more than sharing quality attention with someone.” The more attention I can cultivate, the more I know I can be there for baby girl and for wifey/mama.
I’ll have more to share about this new project/experiment soon. But needless to say, our collective attention is more fragmented today than ever. And it is especially fragmented in the digital world.
In the analog world, focus comes easier: we can engage more readily and deeply in a conversation or task. In the digital world, focus is naturally more scattered. We bounce between Instagram and email and Reddit and the news and our work, often in a fragmented scattershot mess of attention.
I study attention, and am still finding myself falling victim to such attention traps. And so, for the next month, I’ll be going analog every afternoon. For one month, I’ll be forgoing the digital world—and all of the stress and work and activity that comes with it—to focus on the analog world. I’ll be writing longhand. I’ll be reviewing analog documents, instead of reading them on my iPad. And I’ll be working in a paper notebook instead of a laptop.
So, I’m going analog for as many afternoons as I possibly can. Including—and maybe even especially—when baby girl arrives. I’ll be sharing what I learn from the experiment in this newsletter first, so stay tuned 🙂
If you want to help out with the experiment, I’d love your feedback. There are some things in my life that straddle the line between the analog and digital worlds. For example, where does a Kindle fit in? A digital camera?
So, I worked with Claude to program a little voting widget on my website so you can tell me exactly how to run this experiment.
Where is the analog—digital line?
Some of the devices in my life blur the lines between my digital and analog worlds. Help me define the boundaries of my experiment to do analog afternoons for a month!
Help me draw the line
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Start over
A Freewrite.
An e-ink screen with no browser and no notifications — that syncs your draft to the cloud.
Analog
Digital
Tap one to see how everyone else voted!
I’m starting a month of attention experiments in October. Your votes help decide what counts.
