What Deserves My Time and Attention? A Gentle Reflection

The Life I’m Living · Reflection 13

Some days seem to disappear remarkably quickly.

You begin the morning with a reasonably clear idea of what the day will hold, and then an email needs answering, somebody needs something, you remember an appointment you need to make, there is washing to move, a message arrives that you had better reply to before you forget, you go upstairs to get one thing and somehow find yourself doing three entirely different things.

By evening, you have been busy for most of the day but would struggle to explain exactly where all those hours went.

I think our attention can disappear even more easily than our time.

We can be sitting at the kitchen table with somebody we love while mentally composing an email. We can go for a walk while thinking about something we need to sort out tomorrow. We can finally sit down to watch something and spend half of it looking at our phones. We can be doing one thing while our minds are busily attempting to manage another six.

None of this means we are doing life badly. It means we have full lives, busy minds and a great many things competing for our attention.

But after asking What Matters to Me Now? and Who Do I Want to Stay Close To? in the first two reflections of this chapter, there is another question worth considering.

What actually deserves my time and attention?

Not what is demanding it most loudly. Not what happens to be sitting at the top of the list. And certainly not how we can squeeze more productivity out of every available hour.

Simply: of all the things asking something of me, what deserves the best of me right now?

Time and Attention Aren’t Quite the Same Thing

We tend to talk about time as though it is the thing we need to manage better. There are only so many hours in a day, after all, and most of us could quite easily fill twice as many.

But attention is different.

We can give something a great deal of time without giving it much attention at all. We can also spend very little actual time on something and allow it to occupy an enormous amount of space in our heads.

A ten-minute conversation can follow us around for the rest of the day. A decision we haven’t made yet can sit quietly in the background while we’re doing completely unrelated things. An email that annoyed us at nine in the morning can still be receiving our attention at four in the afternoon, despite the fact that we haven’t looked at it since.

And the opposite can happen too. We can spend an entire evening with the people we love while only half paying attention because our minds are somewhere else.

It might be interesting, then, to separate the two questions:

Where is most of my time going at the moment?
Where is most of my attention going?
Are the answers roughly the same, or surprisingly different?
What continues to occupy my thoughts long after I have stopped actively dealing with it?
What am I physically present for but perhaps not really noticing?

There is no need to account for every hour or analyse an entire week. We are simply looking for the things that immediately come to mind.

Sometimes those first answers tell us quite a lot.

Some Things Deserve Our Time Because They Simply Need Doing

There is a version of intentional living that can make it sound as though every part of our day ought to feel meaningful, restorative or deeply aligned with our values.

Real life isn’t quite like that.

Laundry needs doing because eventually everybody runs out of underwear. Bills need paying. Groceries need buying. Forms need filling in. Work may take up a substantial part of the week because that is how we earn our living. People need lifts, appointments need attending, floors occasionally need cleaning and dinner continues its irritating habit of needing to be made every single day.

There may also be periods of life when caring responsibilities take enormous amounts of time and attention. There may be financial pressures, demanding jobs, health concerns, family difficulties or other circumstances that simply require more of us for a while.

That doesn’t mean our priorities are wrong.

Necessary things deserve some of our time precisely because they support the life we are living. There is meaning in looking after a home, earning an income, caring for people and taking responsibility for the things that are ours to manage, even when the individual tasks themselves aren’t particularly inspiring.

But there is still an interesting question hiding in there.

How much of me does this actually require?

Some things need doing, but they don’t necessarily need doing perfectly. Some problems need our attention for half an hour, but not our worry for the following six hours. Some tasks deserve a place in the day without being allowed to spread into every available corner of it.

Perhaps the distinction isn’t between things that matter and things that don’t.

Perhaps it is between giving something what it needs and giving it everything we’ve got.

The Loudest Things Aren’t Always the Most Important

One of the difficulties with attention is that the things most skilled at capturing it are not necessarily the things we care about most.

Messages arrive. Notifications appear. Emails land. News updates. Group chats. Something needs ordering. Somebody needs an answer. There is always another small piece of information available to us and another tiny task we could complete.

Much of it is genuinely useful.

But the things that matter deeply are often considerably quieter.

A person sitting beside us doesn’t flash a notification.

The garden doesn’t send a reminder that we haven’t really looked at it for a week.

A friendship doesn’t always announce that it could do with a little attention.

The half-finished thing we wanted to make, learn or return to waits quietly while more urgent-looking things push their way to the front.

Even rest rarely makes much noise. It tends to wait until everything else is finished, which is unfortunate because everything else is very rarely finished.

Perhaps part of paying attention to the life we’re living is noticing the quieter things before the louder ones consume all the available space.

You might ask yourself:

What matters to me but rarely demands my attention?
Is there something important that I keep assuming I’ll get to later?
What tends to interrupt me most often?
What gets my attention simply because it is there?
What quiet part of my life would I like to notice a little more?

Sometimes what deserves our attention isn’t something new.

It is something that has been there all along.

What Deserves a Little More of Me?

Having thought about what matters and who matters in the previous reflections, this question becomes easier.

There may be something in your life that deserves more of your attention, not because you have been neglecting it or doing anything wrong, but simply because you have realised how much you value it.

Perhaps it is a relationship. Perhaps it is your work. Maybe it is your health, your home, a friendship, an interest or something you are trying to learn.

Perhaps it is yourself.

Or perhaps it is much smaller than any of those things. You might simply want to be a little more present for the ordinary parts of the day you currently rush through.

At the same time, there may be things receiving a disproportionate amount of you. Something you repeatedly think about without getting any closer to resolving. A task you spend far longer on than it really requires. Other people’s opinions. Your phone. A commitment you keep tending out of habit.

Again, there is no need to immediately change anything. Just notice:

What deserves a little more of my undivided attention?
What do I say matters to me but rarely seem to make room for?
What is currently receiving a great deal of my mental energy?
What am I paying attention to mostly out of habit?
Is there something I could allow to be good enough rather than perfect?
Where would a little more attention make a meaningful difference?

These aren’t questions designed to make us feel guilty about how we’ve spent our time.

We are simply checking whether the things receiving the most of us are still the things we want to be giving ourselves to.

Attention Is One of the Ways We Care

We often think of care as something we do.

We make the dinner. Send the message. Drive somebody somewhere. Remember the appointment. Buy the birthday present. Finish the piece of work. Water the plants.

But attention itself can be a form of care.

Listening properly when somebody tells us something instead of preparing our reply while they’re still speaking. Looking up when someone walks into the room. Noticing that something in the garden has finally flowered. Giving a piece of work half an hour without simultaneously checking email.

It can be tasting the dinner we’ve made instead of eating it while mentally planning tomorrow’s. Sitting down with a cup of tea without feeling obliged to accomplish something at the same time. Going for a walk and, for at least some of it, actually being on the walk.

These are tiny things.

But ordinary life is largely made from tiny things.

What we pay attention to becomes part of the life we actually experience. We can technically be present for a great many things without really experiencing much of them at all.

That doesn’t mean we need to become perfectly mindful human beings who gaze appreciatively at every cup of tea. Sometimes a cup of tea is gulped down beside the sink while trying to remember where somebody left their shoes.

But perhaps there are moments worth catching.

People worth listening to properly.

Things worth putting the phone down for.

Parts of our own lives worth noticing while they are happening.

And Some Things Deserve Less of Me

If deciding what deserves more of our attention is one side of this reflection, the other is giving ourselves permission to decide that some things deserve less.

Not necessarily nothing.

Just less.

There may be something you have been worrying about that is largely outside your control. Perhaps you’ve already done everything you reasonably can, but your mind keeps returning to it as though another three hours of thinking might finally produce the answer.

There may be small tasks that expand to fill whatever time you give them. Standards you maintain without ever deciding whether they still matter. Online conversations you don’t particularly enjoy. News you keep checking even though nothing meaningful has changed since the last time you looked.

There may even be something perfectly good that simply doesn’t deserve quite as much of you in this season.

Giving something less attention doesn’t mean declaring it unimportant. It may simply mean recognising that your attention is finite.

And if we give it indiscriminately to everything that asks, there is very little left for the things we would have chosen.

I Don’t Need to Pay Attention to Everything

Perhaps this is the part I most want us to remember.

We cannot notice everything.

We cannot be completely present for every conversation, every meal, every walk, every piece of work and every beautiful ordinary moment. We will get distracted. We will have weeks when we’re simply getting through what needs to be done.

Sometimes the urgent thing really is the important thing.

There will be seasons when one part of life requires so much attention that other things temporarily move into the background. That isn’t failure. It is simply the reality of having a finite amount of ourselves to give.

So this reflection isn’t another invitation to do more.

If anything, it is permission to do the opposite.

To acknowledge that not everything needs your attention simply because it is capable of getting it.

Perhaps the question isn’t, How can I pay better attention to everything?

Perhaps it is:

What deserves my attention in this season of my life — and what can I allow to remain unattended for a while?

That feels much kinder.

And considerably more possible.

Free Printable: What Deserves My Time & Attention?

I’ve created a new A4 reflection page to accompany this post as part of The Life I’m Living Collection.

What Deserves My Time & Attention? isn’t a timetable or a productivity planner. There are no hourly boxes to fill in and absolutely no requirement to account for how you spent Tuesday afternoon.

Instead, it gives you a place to notice the difference between what is currently receiving your time and what is occupying your attention, before considering where you might like to give a little more — and a little less — of yourself.

The printable includes space to reflect on:

what currently gets your time
what currently gets your attention
what deserves a little more of you
what could have a little less
where you would like to be more present
one small shift you could make

DOWNLOAD THE FREE WHAT DESERVES MY TIME & ATTENTION? PRINTABLE

As always, you don’t have to complete every section or arrive at a neat conclusion. You may simply notice one thing you’d like to give more attention to and one thing you’re ready to think about a little less.

The printables in The Life I’m Living Collection are tools, not assignments. Use whatever helps and leave the rest.

Where Do I Want to Be More Present?

There is something slightly sobering about remembering that the life we’re living isn’t only made from the big events we’ll remember easily.

It is also made from ordinary Tuesdays.

Conversations in kitchens. Work we care about. School runs. Walks we’ve taken hundreds of times. People sitting beside us. Gardens changing almost imperceptibly. Meals eaten together. Projects slowly taking shape. Ten minutes alone before everybody else gets up.

We don’t need to appreciate every second of it.

That would be exhausting.

But perhaps there are parts of our own lives we don’t want to be so distracted that we barely notice them passing.

And maybe that is enough to take from this reflection.

Not a better schedule. Not another system for managing our time. Not a promise that we’ll never look at our phone during dinner again.

Simply a little more awareness of what deserves the best of our attention — and permission to give considerably less of it to some of the rest.

Continue The Life I’m Living Collection

Previous: Reflection 12 · Who Do I Want to Stay Close To?

A gentle reflection on the relationships that matter, the people around whom we can most comfortably be ourselves and the connections we might like to tend a little more carefully.

EXPLORE REFLECTION 12 →

Next: Reflection 14 · What Have I Quietly Stopped Making Room For?

A gentle look at the interests, pleasures, people, places and ordinary things we haven’t deliberately given up, but which may have quietly been squeezed out as life became fuller.

EXPLORE REFLECTION 14 →

Or return to The Life I’m Living Collection to explore all the reflections and free printables in the series.

VISIT THE LIFE I’M LIVING COLLECTION →

Chat soon,

Ciara x

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