Aidan's Infinite Play 18 You Are What You Attend To
Hello players!
You are what you attend to.
Information is like food. You will feel awful if you attend to garbage information like Tik Tok and popular news. But if you attend to quality information like old books, great podcasters, and anything written by Brandon Sanderson (I definitely don't have a fan crush), you might ascend to godhood or godesshood (looking out for my female audience).
That's pretty obvious.
But here's the real kicker: you will perceive the same objects of attention in an environment different to someone else. In other words, you can attend to the same things but perceive them differently because of your unique background, beliefs, education, family, etc.
A couple of days ago, this fact hit me harder than ever. I was sitting between rounds at a speech tournament with one of my speech team members, talking about her ADHD. Up to then, I had thought of ADHD as a disorder given to people with a much more pervasive affliction: Attentional Tik Tok Disease. Lack of an ability to focus that afflicts everyone with a habit of doom scrolling Tik Tok.
But as the team member kept talking, I realized she really did have a severe case of ADHD. She found it very difficult to control her attention. It was like she was in the driver's seat of a car but had to steer with her feet.
Anything could distract her.
If her consciousness wasn't full of something, the slightest novel piece of information could veer her off the road. To do homework, she had to purposefully fill her consciousness with as much information as possible so no new information couldn't veer her off course. Sitting down to do homework, she would pop in headphones, a podcast, and draw with her left hand, all while completing Calculus problems.
Then I asked her, "how are you attending so well to this conversation with your ADHD?" I found out she wasn't just attending to the conversation. While talking to me, she was testing the texture of her sock against her legs, counting the number of lights on the ceiling, checking where the exits were, making sure the next speaker hadn't come into the room, looking at the color of the bricks on the side wall, and playing with her water bottle.
All at the same time.
At that moment, I realized that I had taken my ability to control my attention for granted. About two years ago, I shifted my information diet from one predominantly of YouTube and video games to one filled with podcasts, books, academic articles, and more. I fell back in love with learning.
But this is a privilege. Unfortunately, not everyone has as easy a time attending to the things they know they should.
So what's your excuse?
Here's what I would like to share this week.
📸News From The Channel!
7 Things Professional Chefs Do that Help Me as a College Student: Chefs follow a French cooking philosophy called Mise-En-Place or Everything in It's Place. By applying this philosophy to our lives, we can become better students. In this video, I give a book summary interpretation of Everything In Its Place by Dan Charnas to show how.
Danny Hatcher: How Anyone Can Navigate Academic Research: Danny Hatcher is a Youtuber, Blogger, and Author contributing to the conversation around educational science. He hosts a podcast called The Personal Knowledge Management Podcast, where he discusses topics in the field of PKM, like overcoming perfectionism, assessing note quality, extended mind theory, and more. To help him with all his research and creation, he uses Notion for collaborative efforts and Obsidian for personal notetaking. We talked about how to navigate academic research, the problems with academia, how knowledge is built over time, and the issues in traditional University education. This conversation really made me question the way I teach and learn things. Talking to Danny is profound because he questions you when you say something that conflicts with itself. He made me realize just how much creating a shared definition of certain labels is critical to having a productive conversation. I don't think I will ever come to conversations the same.
💡My Best Insights:
📖Book - The Way of Kings: I have been re-reading the first book of the Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson for the third time. I can't believe how good this series is. It's insane. I'm considering starting a second channel to analyze some of my favorite series from fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, and anime. This will be one of the first ones analyzed if I do.
✍️Blog Post - Tiago's 2022 Annual Review: From Mid-Life Crisis to Reinvention: In this blog post, Tiago shares some of the signs that he was going to go through a midlife crisis. And he explains how he made it out to the other side. This article is helpful for anyone, even if you aren't 45, because Identities are malleable and temporary. You have to know when it's time to shift your identity for a new time in your life.
🎙️Podcast - 156 Jack Kornfield: Finding Inner Calm: 90% of the thoughts we have are recurring. Understanding this can be super helpful because it allows you to ingrain system 1 thinking patterns with system 2 that can help you come to terms with these emotions.
📺YouTube Video - Life Is a Video Game (Here's How You Win): This video goes into the metaphor of life being like a video game. I have created many videos on my channel regarding this concept. But this video takes a bit of a different spin on it by diving into some things I haven't discussed yet, like the flow state. Highly recommend.