First, a metaphor: You know how your cell phone can tell you how much energy each of your apps is consuming at any point in time, even though some of them are running in the background? This gives valuable information about what’s happening in your phone. This is a good metaphor for our minds and is a useful way to think about your attention. 

It is possible, at any point in time, to know what is using up your attention. You can learn to assess how much of your attention each “app” that is running in your brain is consuming. That’s what this practice is about. 

At any moment in time, you can imagine that there are four apps running and consuming or taking up a certain amount of your attention. You will be roughly assessing which one is getting the biggest share.

The four apps are:

1) doing

2) thinking, 

3) feeling, and 

4) sensing. 

DOING is what you’re up to, whatever task you’re performing at the time.

THINKING is what’s going on in your head.

FEELING is what’s coming up, either as an emotion or a bodily state. It is focused inwards.

SENSING is what you are perceiving that’s going on in your immediate environment. It is focused outwards.

It’s important to recognize that all four “apps” are going on all day long! All four apps are running, but some are running in the background. This is normal! But most of the time, we’re simply not aware of how much of our attention is being taken up by each of the four apps.

So we pause and we ask ourselves, 

How much of my attention is being consumed by what I’m DOING?

How much of my attention is being consumed by what I’m THINKING?

How much of my attention is being consumed by what I’m FEELING?

How much of my attention is being consumed by what I’m SENSING?

What’s getting the largest share of my attention? 

Which of the four apps is taking up the largest share of your attention right now? Whichever one is getting more than the others is your FOCUS. 

Try languaging it this way: “right now, my primary focus is X”.

Right now, my primary focus is what I’m doing (writing this post). What’s yours?

The point of this practice is not to judge what’s getting your attention as good or bad, nor to try to change it. For the time being, just NOTICE which one is getting most of your attention.

Why we do this practice

What’s normal is not always healthy. The central issue is that thought is typically taking up TOO MUCH of our attention. The problem isn’t that we’re thinking, it’s that we’re not aware that our thinking is using up too much energy (in the cell phone metaphor) and eating up our focus. Paying attention to our thoughts has become a habit, a not-very-useful-but-hard-to-kick habit, or even an addiction (as in, we really want to stop but we just can’t).

Pausing and doing this practice brings you into the moment, where you can notice what’s getting your attention. Knowing where attention is going is the first step to having control over attention, which is attentional intelligence.