Genuine attention is the repeated return of wandering thoughts to an object.

Evidence

For him, the genius of real attention is the ability, again and again, to bend the path of those moving thoughts back around to the object. In other words, genuine attention, the phenomenology of human attention, is a kind of centripetal distraction. Imagine the lovely looping rings of a spirograph, as it petals out and away and then again back to whatever is at the center of its attentional whorl. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 503

Categorization

• DEFINE: James’s reframing of attention as ‘centripetal distraction’ — a looping return rather than dead-eyed focus — is the core positive definition ATTENSITY builds on.
• XREF: This centripetal-distraction model is the phenomenological groundwork the ‘human fracking’ critique assumes: if attention is inherently wandering-and-returning, industrial extraction of it is an attack on a living process, not on a static resource. — connects to: Genuine attention is centripetal distraction, bending thoughts back — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 503; Sustained attention is really repeated willful returns to the same object — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 398; Sustained attention is a series of willed returns, not a steady state — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 396

Broader Connections

• Sustained attention is really repeated willful returns to the same object #corroborates (0.95) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 398
• Sustained attention is a series of willed returns, not a steady state #corroborates (0.92) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 396
• Genuine attention is centripetal distraction, bending thoughts back #expands (0.90) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 503