On Attention

Today, I was reading Deep Work by Cal Newport in order to learn about focus, attention, distraction.

In the third chapter of the book, there are ideas on how the allocation of attention is responsible for how we feel instead of the circumstances.

There's a case study given about a cancer patient who dedicated her time focusing on how she'd get to enjoy a martini at 6:30 everyday. The argument is that because she chose to direct her attention towards something pleasurable despite being affected by cancer, she had a more satisfactory time.

Reading the argument made me think how we escape sadness by choosing to get busy and looking for challenges. That is a way of allocating attention towards something that may be long-term helpful and in the short term, it's taking your mind completely off whatever wrong that happened.

Escapism.

Good or bad?

Context can tell you that. Not a newsletter post, not a tweet but you yourself are capable of identifying if seeking distraction helped.

We cannot entirely accept that escapism is a bad thing. I think that it depends upon the intention of engaging in distractions.

In the example of the cancer patient, it helped her live happily by ignoring the truth of the dark side going on in her life.

To solve a problem, confront it. However, you cannot always and immediately do that and those are the moments we resort to work, social media, and other usual distractions.