Attention Bubbles

Jul 9, 2024

If you pay close attention, you’ll notice attention bubbles all around you.

Attention bubbles can be large or small, sharp or diffused. It’s like a boundary between you and the world. A gripping book, or an intense movie, they both pull you into a sharp attention bubble. Your awareness of your problems, the passage of time, even the sounds around you slip away as you get completely immersed.

Nature gives you a very expansive and diffuse attention bubble. There’s nothing in particular clawing for your attention. Nothing wants to suck you in and keep you there. Maybe this is why walks are so restorative. Maybe this is why they help our brains make so many new connections.

Often, the devices we use most are really good at sucking us into sharply defined and tiny attention bubbles. When you go on your phone, have you noticed how often you forgot what you opened it for? Or opened it to check the time and found yourself 10 minutes later in some random rabbithole? Maybe this is why phones are so addictive to so many people. They’re an instant consciousness shift, an instant release from whatever was stressing your mind, even if subconsciously.

On the other hand, there’s many activities that expand our attention bubbles, or make them more happy and colorful. I’ve walked in on people gaming with each other on their phones. And the atmosphere is always subdued. Everyone’s in their own bubble, even when together. On the other hand, walk in on people playing a nintendo switch game, or on the wii, and people are almost always screaming and excited.

A concert allows you to be in the presence of many overlapping attention bubbles. You feel like you’re a part of something bigger when you go to one. The same goes for movies, or plays, or anywhere where many people pay attention to the same thing.

I don’t think either of them is the ‘good one’. You need sharp attention bubbles to study, to enter deep work, to really get anything done. But technology seems to be pushing us towards enclosed attention bubbles almost everywhere.

• Working from home instead of amongst people (and even amongst people, we’re often on our own screens in our own bubbles)
• Searching things up or asking chatGPT instead of asking a person (or being in a place where you can ask a person in the first place)
• Ordering food to your house instead of eating with people.
• Ordering from a QR code instead of talking to someone
• Downloading a book instead of going to a library with other people
• Plugging our headphones in, head down looking at our phone whenever we’re out.
• Doomscrolling social media
• Using dating apps, instead of being in places you can meet people
• AI tutoring, instead of being in classrooms with people, instead of being with adults who share their attention with you.

Spending too much time in small attention bubbles can become incredibly isolating. As individuals, we can obviously push ourselves to be amongst people more. But as an industry, I think tech has a responsibility to make as many shared, overlapping attention bubble inducing products as possible. There’s enough attention sucking, isolating things out there, we should see more products that push you to stay present, that get out of the way.

Sharp, closed attention bubbles, when intentional, are what allow us to study, learn, create. Diffuse, shared attention bubbles, in the right environments, let us feel connected, relaxed, let us have ideas. In a world where so many things are trying to trap us in attention bubbles, maybe the key is just being more intentional with which ones we find ourselves in.