I like doing laundry. Like showering, it’s a task that requires no special effort. You do it idly and you always succeed at it, and in the meantime your mind is free to wander.

When the washing machine finishes its cycle, I take my freshly laundered clothes to the spare bedroom for hanging up. I hangdry my clothes to avoid the damage dryers do. I hang one article of clothing at a time, balancing each one in its own section of the drying rack and then stretching it gently to allow for quicker drying. The socks I hang in the little slots that exist for them at both ends of the rack. I take my time. Hurry would save an insignificant amount of time at the cost of the unnecessary stress that fuels urgency. And I enjoy the process anyway, so I partake in it mindfully.

This ordinary little ritual bestows on each article of clothing a brief but special moment of attention. During this act of care I find in myself arising a feeling of affection for my clothes. They are for me and I take care of them and because of that they last longer and while they do I continue to enjoy and care for them. Because I value them, to hanging them up I dedicate time and attention which in turn reaffirms their value in my esteem.

How I perceive my things determines how I interact with them. But the reverse is also true. How I interact with them recasts my perception of them. These two tiny processes link together into selfsustaining loops. Positives loops and negatives ones as well.

Perception varies drastically depending on the kind of attention that carries it. To perceive something new, we must loosen our attention. Mindless tasks like showering and doing laundry are perfect for this. A wandering mind picks up fresh leads, it notices subtle things like my quiet feeling of affection. To perceive at all, we cannot be distracted.

Digital screens make it so difficult to remain engaged with the people sitting next to you because they interrupt steady attention before it can develop in its own time. And when a screen is not already on the wall of the room we’re in – be it in a private home or a public house – we produce them from our pocket. We do so not despite but because we know it will distract us. In idleness our minds begin to wander and we sense it intuitively and cut off the stream of thought before it leads us into the whitewaters of anxiety. And it works. We interact with our device, perceive through it like a digital telescope something novel and remote, and find our attention thankfully diverted. We don’t engage with our negative thoughts. We don’t engage with idle thoughts at all.

But idle thoughts are pending items our subconscious brings to us for our consideration. We may reject them, but they will return. And when they do, we repeat our defense. A negative loop.

To care about something we must pay attention to it. Ignoring our thoughts is selfneglect. One way to engage safely with thoughts that seem too intense to handle is to use your body. Don’t just sit there and think. Move. Alleviate some of the emotional burden of confronting your thoughts by diverting some of your attention. Interact physically with the world. Play a sport, play a game, go for a walk, wash dishes, do laundry. Don’t just go on your phone.

From where I am sitting on my balcony I can see the TV out of the corner of my eye and it’s very difficult to ignore it. I keep turning my head away to think of what to write next, but then when I turn back to resume typing on my computer, the flashes of color and light from the TV make it very difficult for me to focus. I just went inside and turned it off, but still my mind keeps diverting attention to the now black rectangle in my peripheral vision. Let me draw the curtains.

Sometimes when I want to be alone I come out and sit here. It’s a lovely little space detached from the living room. However, if Z is sitting at her desk on the other side of the glass where I can see her and if my need to be alone in that moment is particularly potent, I draw the curtains. Her presence remains exactly as it was and I remain aware of it, but it doesn’t intrude on my attention in the same way.

In his book

, Matthew B. Crawford points out that this involuntary aspect of attention makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary standpoint. New information demands attendance. Is it a predator? Prey? Or just a gust of wind? Regardless we must pay attention to it so we can make sense of it and integrate it into our mental model of the current environment.

Crawford appropriates the term ecology – the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings – to describe this fundamental relationship between our attention, our life, and our environment. He describes, for example, the “ecology of attention” in airport lounges where the news stream endlessly on TVs oriented in various directions. Even if the talking heads are muted, the infinite sideways scroll of symbols at the bottom of the screen will hijack the attention of travelers who would rather rest idly.

(Crawford astutely points out that the advertisements shown on these TVs exist to continue the transfer of wealth from these common travelers to the ones in the VIP lounges, who rest comfortably without having their attention exploited by their surroundings without their consent. I find these socioeconomic analyses of technology much more relevant and important than the technophobic ones. The same goes for Artificial Intelligence. I don’t worry that AI will take over the world, I worry that those who already rule the world will use AI to accelerate and automate processes of wealth extraction.)

I think the evolutionary perspective can also help explain why time in nature feels so right. This is the primordial ecology of our attention, the environment in which our brains adapted for us to live and thrive. And yet I don’t think we need to draw purist or atavistic conclusions against technology from this observation. Feelings of connection and coherence arise in us not only from time in nature, but also from time using artificial tools and inhabiting constructed environments.

The humble coffee shop for example is a place where many of us go to read, write, think, converse, and do other things that require our focus. The intricate weave of activity and mixture of sounds create a conducive ambience for our attention. How is it that such a busy, public space is so popular for quiet, private activity? This is only counterintuitive if we think distraction is the only unneutral effect our environment has on our ability to focus. From experience we know that it can be easier to focus in spite of extraneous sensory information rather than in absence of it. Perhaps because our cognitive capacities evolved in settings where total absence of sensory input was rare, our minds focus more easily against a backdrop of mundane information. Certain kinds of technologies are essential here and even computer screens are welcome, but not TVs because they would be too disruptive. A good ecology of attention not only prevents distractions, but encourages focus.

I’ve moved into my apartment now, into the warmth. Out in the balcony my fingers were getting too cold. Above my head the clock ticks and farther away traffic brushes by in irregular strokes. The faint wail of an ambulance emerges suddenly and then fades quickly. Occasionally in the hallway outside our apartment a door opens and then shuts a moment later. Our little dog scurries about the living room looking for amusement. My wife Z works intently at her desk a few feet away in silence apart from intermittent bursts of typing and muted clicks of her mouse. Attention to my writing flows easily despite all these things, except when my gaze drifts over to what is happening on her computer screen. So I adjust my sitting position to make it vanish.

I like doing laundry. Like showering, it’s a task that requires no special effort. You do it idly and you always succeed at it, and in the meantime your mind is free to wander.

When the washing machine finishes its cycle, I take my freshly laundered clothes to the spare bedroom for hanging up. I hangdry my clothes to avoid the damage dryers do. I hang one article of clothing at a time, balancing each one in its own section of the drying rack and then stretching it gently to allow for quicker drying. The socks I hang in the little slots that exist for them at both ends of the rack. I take my time. Hurry would save an insignificant amount of time at the cost of the unnecessary stress that fuels urgency. And I enjoy the process anyway, so I partake in it mindfully.

This ordinary little ritual bestows on each article of clothing a brief but special moment of attention. During this act of care I find in myself arising a feeling of affection for my clothes. They are for me and I take care of them and because of that they last longer and while they do I continue to enjoy and care for them. Because I value them, to hanging them up I dedicate time and attention which in turn reaffirms their value in my esteem.

How I perceive my things determines how I interact with them. But the reverse is also true. How I interact with them recasts my perception of them. These two tiny processes link together into selfsustaining loops. Positives loops and negatives ones as well.

Perception varies drastically depending on the kind of attention that carries it. To perceive something new, we must loosen our attention. Mindless tasks like showering and doing laundry are perfect for this. A wandering mind picks up fresh leads, it notices subtle things like my quiet feeling of affection. To perceive at all, we cannot be distracted.

Digital screens make it so difficult to remain engaged with the people sitting next to you because they interrupt steady attention before it can develop in its own time. And when a screen is not already on the wall of the room we’re in – be it in a private home or a public house – we produce them from our pocket. We do so not despite but because we know it will distract us. In idleness our minds begin to wander and we sense it intuitively and cut off the stream of thought before it leads us into the whitewaters of anxiety. And it works. We interact with our device, perceive through it like a digital telescope something novel and remote, and find our attention thankfully diverted. We don’t engage with our negative thoughts. We don’t engage with idle thoughts at all.

But idle thoughts are pending items our subconscious brings to us for our consideration. We may reject them, but they will return. And when they do, we repeat our defense. A negative loop.

To care about something we must pay attention to it. Ignoring our thoughts is selfneglect. One way to engage safely with thoughts that seem too intense to handle is to use your body. Don’t just sit there and think. Move. Alleviate some of the emotional burden of confronting your thoughts by diverting some of your attention. Interact physically with the world. Play a sport, play a game, go for a walk, wash dishes, do laundry. Don’t just go on your phone.