Would You Attempt Scaling Everest in Flip-flops?

Time's Limits and Attention's Gaps

Time and attention are the two great currencies of existence, finite, precious, and often squandered. These twin pillars shape the architecture of our lives, governing what we can know, achieve, and aspire to. Yet, they are increasingly under siege in an era of digital excess and algorithmic distractions and human laziness. Generally, we are not good planners, so I ask you: Would you attempt scaling Everest in flip-flops? No, of course not. When we set our minds on such a feat, we plan methodically. Why then do so many of us fail to plan where we put our attention and make the best use of our time?

Nonrenewable Resource

Time is finite. This unassailable truth, deceptively simple yet profoundly complex, is a guiding axiom in my life. Randy Pausch, in his poignant final lecture, reminded us,

“Time is all we have.”

It is the ultimate nonrenewable resource, a fact brought into sharp focus during a recent triathlon training session when my sports watch ticked relentlessly, a cruel metronome marking the seconds of my stamina and my life. Against this ticking backdrop, I was struck by the vastness of knowledge I would never possess, an infinity of uncharted intellectual territory.

Compounding this reality is the sheer vastness of knowledge itself. We live in an age of information, where the sum total of human understanding expands exponentially. This creates a profound tension, time's finitude versus knowledge's infinitude. How do we manage and curate this ever-expanding ocean of information when our capacity to learn is limited by the demands of daily life, work, family, relationships, and the basic necessities of existence? Let alone the ethical dillema for many stratified by circumstance, by factors like socioeconomic background, access to quality education, or geographical location? This question, far from an abstraction, demands urgent attention. We need better methods for teaching attention and effort.

The Enlightenment

With its grand ambition to catalog and systematize knowledge, the Enlightenment, offers both inspiration and caution. Figures like Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, grappled with the boundaries of human cognition, his optimism tempered by an awareness of our limits. Today, the challenge is exponentially greater. The modern knowledge landscape, exponentially expanded by technology, requires prioritization. Here, my triathlon training, balancing swimming, cycling, and running, offers an apt metaphor. Intellectual pursuits demand similar triage: exploration, synthesis, and dissemination. The triad is both a necessity and an art, a way to distill complexity without sacrificing depth.

Yet, what if knowledge asymmetry isn’t merely a problem but a spur? The gaps in our understanding drive curiosity, innovation, and collaboration. If omniscience were attainable, the joy of discovery, that quintessentially human endeavor, would wither. This perspective transforms uneven knowledge from a deficit to a dynamic force, an engine of progress rather than a lamentable limitation.

Attention. Attention. Attention.

Attention, the second axis of my bike time thinking, is no less critical. Danny Kahneman’s groundbreaking work reframed attention as a finite resource, a currency to be invested wisely or squandered carelessly. The “attentional blink,” a phenomenon where rapid stimuli overwhelm our capacity to process information, underscores its fragility. Similarly, the “default mode network,” the brain’s state during mind-wandering, highlights the paradoxical relationship between distraction and creativity. These moments of mental drift, often maligned as unproductive, can be crucibles for innovation and problem-solving.

Arousal

Kahneman, ever the playful provocateur, even links arousal to attention, invoking the Yerkes-Dodson law, which posits that performance peaks at an optimal level of arousal. Too little, and we're mentally sluggish, too much, and we're a frenzied mess. He paints a vivid picture, our pupils dilating, hearts racing, skin tingling, these are not just physiological responses, but the very symphony of attention, focus and effort.

But what happens when the distraction becomes a cacophony? When the demands on our attention become not a gentle hymn but a relentless barrage of noise? Here, Kahneman's insights take on an almost prophetic urgency.

But in the digital age, attention is under siege. The internet, with its infinite scroll and algorithmic traps, transforms attention into a commodity, monetized and weaponized. We are besieged by notifications, each demanding a slice of our cognitive pie, leaving us fragmented and depleted. Danny’s insights, while illuminating, falter in capturing the frenetic nature of online attention, where the battle is not merely for focus but for survival in a maelstrom of stimuli. In our age of infinite scroll and algorithmic seduction, every notification and browser tab is a tiny tyrant vying for dominion over our minds. We are facing an epidemic of attentional depletion. Our brains, bombarded by a ceaseless stream of stimuli, become like overtaxed CPUs, prone to overheating and crashing.

Structure

The history of attention in psychology offers both lessons and warnings. Early thinkers like Edward Titchener sought to structure and define attention, only to see their efforts dismissed as too subjective. Yet, cognitive science has resurrected attention as foundational to perception, ability, and performance. The “cocktail party effect,” our ability to focus on a single voice amidst a cacophony, demonstrates attention’s remarkable selectivity. However, this selectivity comes at a cost, as evidenced by “inattentional blindness”, our capacity to miss the glaringly obvious when preoccupied.

This, then, is the challenge of our time, in an age when literacy is stagnating or declining, to become cognitive stewards, to cultivate an awareness of our attentional limits and to resist the siren song of distraction, just like those dangerous creatures in Greek mythology who lured sailors with their music and voices to shipwreck, the algorithms seduce us with tweets and clicks, wasted time and loss of deep thought. This is no small task. It demands awareness of our innate biases, an understanding of the forces vying for our focus, and a commitment to prioritize depth over superficiality.

Cognitive Stewards

And yet, amidst this digital maelstrom, there is hope. Kahneman's work, while highlighting the fragility of our attention, also offers a method towards reclaiming our focus. By understanding the "enduring dispositions" that drive our attentional biases, our innate attraction to novelty, movement, and the narcissistic over-estimation of our own abilities, we can begin to build defenses against the digital forces that seek to exploit them.

Antidote?

Murray Gell-Mann, the renowned particle physicist, said that "Mediocrity is not a specter. It is a very real threat," and Tyler Cowen wrote Average is Over, I agree with them both. None of us set out to be average, but the proliferation of trillion-dollar companies with algorithms that suck your time and attention demonstrates the exponential noise, social media notifications, streaming services, TV stations and online games, this is the Battle for Your Brain, that is invading our households and stopping us from achieving more, learning more, and ultimately, being healthier and happier.

Ultimately, the interplay of time and attention is less a problem to be solved than a condition to be embraced. It requires proper planning and preparation. When running, swimming or biking, I find solace in the ticking clock, a reminder that each moment matters. In teaching, I see every act of learning and sharing as a contribution to the vast, ever-expanding library of human understanding.

Time is finite. Attention is fragile. Yet, in their interplay lies the essence of what it means to be human, to strive, to question, and to create. The gaps in our knowledge, the distractions that tug at our focus, are not adversaries but catalysts, driving us to ask better questions, forge deeper connections, and live more intentional lives.

Stay curious

Colin

Image created with Google Gemini