Attention with Intention

The Wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials - Lin Yutang

Good morning,

It’s an exciting and busy time heading into September. The kids are back to school and back to reality, and it's time to start adjusting our post-summer rhythms.

I found it fascinating this summer that the uncertainty around the economy seemed to be a hot topic of conversation; not likely a theme for playground chatter, but it’s certainly on the mind of most as we all try to understand and navigate what the path ahead looks like, particularly in terms of interest rates, inflation, and looming elections, all impacting our feeling and emotion as we look forward. Lots of noise out there, making it difficult for anyone to understand where to focus their attention.

Carl Richards, the creative mind behind The Behavioral Gap, asks us to try something…..

“Try to remember a time when you read or heard something about money in the news, you acted on it, and then, with the benefit of hindsight, you were glad you did.

This could include any number of things: the latest IPO, bear markets, bull markets, mergers, and market collapses.

Go ahead, I’ll wait. Close your eyes and think about it.”

Carl says, “I’ve done this experiment hundreds of times around the world, and I’ve only had one person come up with a valid example, and it was news about a change in the tax law.”

Well, isn’t that interesting?

“Think of all the financial noise out there……sure, every once in a while, there is this little, teeny speck of information that might be useful. But you sure have to wade through a lot of garbage to get to it.”

This leads to one obvious question: Why are we paying attention to the noise in the first place?

In the picture above, I’m hoping that my son Bowie wasn’t chatting with his friend Max about the economy on his first day of kindergarten. Hopefully, his attention is being focused on other areas, like surviving the day without a nap, but we are feeling the undercurrents of the current flow of the economy.?

Here in Canada, we are seeing a continued decline in inflationary pressures coupled with ongoing signs of a cooling Canadian economy. As Bowie mentioned to Max, this prompted the Bank of Canada (BoC) to cut its third consecutive interest rate cut last week. It’s widely expected that the U.S. Federal Reserve will initiate its first rate cut at its next meeting later this month…the amount of the cut is now highly debated as we saw the market react to some critical data this past week.?

Our Canadian households face a formidable challenge: a wave of mortgage refinancings. Many homeowners secured ultra-low mortgage rates during the pandemic and are now seeing their fixed-rate terms expire, with many renewals still on the horizon. RBC Economics has estimated that approximately 25% of all existing mortgages will reset in 2025, and a third will follow in 2026. While a decline in interest rates can help, some analysts predict mortgage payments could rise between 20% to 40% depending on the extent of rate cuts, creating a drag on consumer spending as households grapple with higher borrowing costs.

Despite the underlying tension on household balance sheets, the US and Canadian stock market’s strength this year can be partially attributed to the anticipation of rate cuts, which should eventually relieve consumers and businesses.

As it’s our job to monitor markets, it’s a timely month to revisit the concept of our attention. What we choose to focus on is a fundamental tool for us all as we ensure we spend our precious resources, time, and energy in the right places.?

Pay Attention to Our Attention

Jim Morrison once said, “Whoever controls the media controls the mind.”? Morrison was right. Our consumption of information, particularly from the vast and various media sources we choose to attend to, has a large impact on our thinking, how we feel, and the conclusions that we draw daily.?

In today’s era, our access to information can be overwhelming, and it’s easy to believe that our mental lives are now more fragmentary and scattered than ever. The ‘attention economy’ is a phrase often used to make sense of what’s going on: it puts our attention as a limited resource at the center of the informational ecosystem, with our various alerts and notifications locked in a constant battle to capture it.

Our attention requires intention. It’s a critical and vital tool that we must understand and be mindful of how we use it. Attention is the ability to actively process specific information in the environment while tuning out other details. Attention is limited in capacity and duration, so it is important to have ways to effectively manage the attentional resources available to make sense of the world.

In his 1890 book “The Principles of Psychology,” psychologist and philosopher William James wrote that attention "is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what may seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought…It implies withdrawal from some things to deal effectively with others."

Understanding Attention

At the turn of the century, American biologist E. O. Wilson said, “We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom.”? Our busy lives can be demanding of our attention. Our work, family life, and social circles—all elements that seem to pull our attention in different directions—can all be distracting.?

Much research has examined how many things we can attend to and how long. Key variables that impact our ability to stay on task include how interested we are and how many distractions there are.

For the most part, our ability to focus our attention on one thing while blocking out competing distractors seems automatic. Yet the ability of people to selectively focus their attention on a specific subject while dismissing others is very complex.

We can all benefit from using strategies designed to improve attention and focus. Some things you can try include:

????????????????? Avoid multitasking: To improve your focus, try to avoid multitasking. Juggling multiple tasks hurts productivity, so you can make the most of your limited attentional research by only working on one thing at a time.

????????????????? Getting enough sleep: Research has shown that sufficient sleep is essential for maintaining optimal levels of attention. Not only that, the two appear to have a bidirectional relationship; sleep helps regulate attention, but attentional demands can also play a role in sleep.6

????????????????? Practicing mindfulness: Mindfulness, which involves paying attention to the present moment, is sometimes conceived as a form of attention.

While the information age may influence our attention spans, it’s important to recognize that we still can direct our attention. It’s common to feel there are not enough hours in the day.? But as we all know, time and energy are our resources that are equally scarce no matter who you are.

Pay attention to priorities

Effectively prioritizing is vital as it helps us get things done, but more importantly, it helps us make time to do what we want, even if that’s nothing.? Prioritizing tasks effectively also requires us to reaffirm our vision daily.? This month, take a moment to see if the activities taking up most of your time are in line with your vision.? If these don't match, is it your vision or the priorities that need to be altered?? Let's tune in to how our attention, focus, and actions express our priorities and how we re-express our priorities through our actions.?

So, Derek, how can we gain more control over our attention spans? Well, here are a few suggestions…..

1.???????? We can change our environment, even in small ways.

2.???????? We can recognize that attention is task-specific.

3.???????? And ….we can recognize that attention is a limited resource

Give yourself a break—figuratively and literally. Our attention is a limited cognitive resource that depletes as we expend it throughout the day. This means that our attention spans will likely be most robust in the mornings after we have (hopefully!) had a full night’s rest. It also means that if we feel ourselves losing focus, the best thing we can do for our attention may be to give it a break.

As we head into the week, here is a list of questions that you can ask yourself to refine your focus and help you pay more attention to what is winning your attention.?

????????????????? What are my top 5 priorities?

????????????????? What five things take up most of my time?

????????????????? Do these things align? If not, should they??How can they?

????????????????? And, my favorite, but most challenging to answer…..What should I start to say NO to?

An important thing to remember in the battle for our attention is that if you surround yourself with trusted advisors, mentors, and reliable relationships, you can delegate tasks to people and professionals who have the experience to deal with certain aspects of your lives; it enables us to refocus our attention on areas that not only need it but deserve it.

Be well and enjoy the moments.

Derek Henderson