Attention defies any single fixed definition and demands continual restlessness.

Evidence

But our capacity to ignore is limited by another fact: we are always paying attention to something. If we think of attention as a resource, or even a kind of currency, we must allow that it is always, necessarily, being “spent.” There is no saving it for later. The question is always, what shall I pay attention to? Our brains answer this question with varying degrees of volition, from “shhh—I’m reading this” to letting our minds wander in the direction of whatever might draw it in, whether in the corner of our screen or along some road we are walking. That is where the attention merchant makes his opportunity. But to succeed he must motivate us to withdraw our attention from where it is and surrender it to something else. It needn’t be a thoughtful calculation. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 63 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

IT’S HERE THAT I want to come back to the relationship between discipline and attention from the previous chapter. An element of effort and straining exists in the word attention itself, which comes from Latin ad + tendere, “to stretch toward.” This relationship finds one of its most compelling expressions in William James’s 1890 The Principles of Psychology. Defining attention as the ability to hold something before the mind, James observes that the inclination of attention is toward fleetingness. … Though the spontaneous drift of thought is all the other way, the attention must be kept strained on that one object until at last it grows, so as to maintain itself before the kind with ease. This strain of attention is the fundamental act of will. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 396 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Attention always responds to something else and never rests still.; Attention is a currency that is always being spent and cannot be saved — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 63; Sustained attention is a series of willed returns, not a steady state — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 396

Broader Connections

• Attention always responds to something else and never rests still. #corroborates (0.92)
• Attention is a currency that is always being spent and cannot be saved #corroborates (0.78) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 63
• Sustained attention is a series of willed returns, not a steady state #qualifies (0.75) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 396