Zen and the Art of Paying Attention

I am almost finished with "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," which I started a few weeks ago. It has been slow going, and by almost finished, I mean still 100 pages shy. Which brings me to tonight's topic, which relates to one of my bigger concerns recently: my attention span is deflating rapidly, to the point that full-scale books, and even longish articles fail to hold it.

I have been talking to a lot of people about this, because I know it's not just a problem I have. It is clearly a result of the internet, and the type of interaction people are allowed and encouraged to have with it. We don't read newspapers anymore, we read news aggregator sites (I usually read Google news.. and I write for a paper!) We check blogs daily for bite-sized information of some sort, be it political or social or scientific or personal. People look at Twitter--which enforces this tiny attention span with character limits--and get their information in snarky, packaged comments. In between we bounce between.. play little mindteaser games, update our Facebooks and read other peoples' status updates. But nothing lengthy. Spending an entire afternoon on one thing, whether it's a book or a painting or a piece of writing, feels like an excessive investment. We're used to quick leaps, with very shallow dabbling in each bit of information we acquire. It's about maximum consumption, minimal absorption. And it feels like static.

I'm certainly not the first to point this out. Over the past couple years, numerous articles and books have been published on the deterioration of the modern attention span. This excellent Atlantic article comes to mind. The author himself brings in a legion of friends who've felt the same problem. No one I've talked to has identified with me with quite the level of disturbed obsession I've been harboring, but I'm sure a lot of people out there do.

(Authors have been calling it for years. There is a mammoth novel by David Foster Wallace called "Infinite Jest" that serves as something of a sad warning against a reliance on being diverted. I haven't read it, but from what I know, the title refers to a film, or video game, or something, that's reputedly so entertaining that people who come into contact with it never stop watching it. It was published in 1996, but right now that thought seems eerily prescient.)

Wallace hit on something that frightens me more than just the idea of a shorter attention span--in conjunction with it, I am finding my self-discipline to be in such decline as to be almost nonexistent. I made up a reading list at the beginning of the summer. From it, I've gotten barely 300 pages into "The Brothers Karamozov" until, citing Thoreau's convenient quote (something about not reading any book you don't want to be reading) I dropped it straight away (without saying goodbye, because I cling to the idea that I will pick it back up sometime before summer ends) and relaxed into the comfort and ease of a Nick Hornby book. Then I joined a book club whose meetings I can't even attend and I'm now where I started this--near the end of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." And the only way I got here was through a minimal self-discipline. Because now, when I read a book, I spend the first 10 pages ripping my eyes away, or they dance erratically about the page, like I'm about to bounce to the next object on the screen. Eventually (maybe around page 15) I start to relax into it. My speed increases and I have regained an ability to focus. Despite how pleasant and calming it is, I still find the idea of bite-sized information tempting, and have to convince myself again and again throughout the reading that I want to be doing it, that it is more substantial and valuable. And that's ridiculous, considering I'm reading a book about Zen. Granted, the narrator is somewhat obnoxious, but still.

Like I said, I cannot stop thinking about this, both the shrinking of my attention span and the lack of self-discipline to address it. These issues have a set of corollaries that deserve their own attention (ha), but this post is not for them.

I have been considering how to deal with my self-discipline problem (which I believe arises out of my attention span problem, although maybe it's more of a chicken-and-egg dilemma) and radical thoughts keep entering my mind, but they all involve using self-discipline to improve my self-discipline. Read a single book every three days. Watch no internet-TV (an addiction that is growing the more entertaining television shows I find). Wake up early and go for a run in the morning. Study X amount of Hindi. Etc.

Distressingly, I become a mirror of my environment. All of the interns are gone. I have made no friends and cannot figure out how to. My meals have been less fresh, not more, as I cook for one and try to save money, and the grocery store is five miles away. And I watch TV and use the internet maximally.

Last week I had some success--I bought paints and supplies, and spent several hours one night painting. It's sad, but I was astonished at how much thinking I had to do. And how active the process was. And how little I feel I've been experiencing that on a day-to-day basis. The infinite jest, it feels, is on me.

If I work up the self-discipline (perhaps the correct term is "motivation") I'll write about this more in the coming weeks. If not, well...