During the first Trump administration, I had a truly wretched doomscrolling habit. I spent almost all of it living with an abusive girlfriend (and later, abusive ex) and my home life was treacherous and exhausting. I felt trapped, but was afraid to take the necessary steps to actually take control of my life. So instead, I kept as up-to-date as possible on what was going on in public life. I felt like I was controlling that. I was doing the right thing by bearing witness.
I wasn’t, of course. In fact, I was even less in control than I was of my living situation.
As the second Trump administration dawns, I figured I had this habit kicked. I left the abusive living situation and moved in with the woman I married. I had largely quit social media habit. For most of the past 100 days, I’d kept my news consumption under control and focused on what I could actually control.
Then came Liberation Day. Something about the sheer chaos, far-reaching effects, and deep galactic irrational delusion grabbed me again. I started to cycle through the same news websites twenty times a day, turning off my website blocker if it ever suggested I stop.
Attention paralysis returned to my life. Was it feeling like I needed to know what was coming so I could react to a threat to my family? Was it a moral obligation to keep track of what was hurting so many people done?
It was all those things, and it was bringing back feelings of anxiety I thought I’d lost. I was distracted from what I needed to do. My ADHD even grew worse, as my thoughts swirled faster. My memory was growing worse as I moved too fast and forgot things in the wake.
I write this article as a call to action to both you and to myself. The tools to recover our attention and focus have been with us for some time, and now we need them more than ever. It may feel like a moral imperative to see every terrible thing that is happening, but it’s actually the opposite.
It’s a moral imperative to focus on what matters, what you can affect. This isn’t privilege. This isn’t about productivity culture or “rise and grinding”. This is an act of resistance, an act of defiance, towards those who would profit from our scattered attention.
The Modern Attention Crisis and Us
The problem of distraction was building long before Trump took office. All evidence is that we’re reaching a real attention crisis point.
Now, this is not a revolutionary thought. People smarterthan Ihave beenmaking thispoint fora while. The gist of it is that algorithmically generated content (especially on social media websites like Facebook or TikTok) and the ubiquity of smartphones have wrecked our attention spans with devastating effects.
I’ll give some stats shortly, but it makes sense. If frictionless distraction and entertainment is as close as your pocket, why ever let yourself be bored? Why develop the muscle to focus?
I could feel this happening in my own life. I used to be a voracious reader and studios film watcher. Now, if I’m at home, I have to resist the urge to play a game on my iPad while watching even a short TV show. I have to read exclusively on Kindle or paperback because it’s just so easy to find something else on the iPad.
In other words, I have to force myself to actually focus because it’s so easy to let myself lose focus. And I’m not alone in feeling this! Time Magazine wrote about a Microsoft study that proved that our average attention span has dropped from 12 to 8 seconds. Less than that of a goldfish. And that was in 2015! It’s only gotten worse since then!
This was not inevitable. It was, in a sense, an accidental design. I don’t think the individuals responsible for this set out to do it. I think they were going where they thought the money was and fell into a bog of their own making.
“Your attention is the most valuable resource you have. Be careful where you spend it.”
Cal Newport, Deep Work.
Attention is valuable, and not just in an abstract sense. I’m a professional copywriter – your attention on my ads equals $$ in my pocket. But whereas I’m just trying to convince you to try a new brand of mouthwash, there are attention vampires and crisis entrepreneurs out there with much less benign ideas in mind.
Almost the entire modern internet is built on keeping your attention by any means possible, mostly by hijacking the parts of your brain that kept us alive in the wild. Flashing colors, constantly changing patterns, the sense that you and those like you are under attack.
Not that you might not be, but you shouldn’t trust that to people selling you something. Take it from me, someone who occasionally makes his living trying to sell you things.
The simple truth is that our brains were designed to keep us alive from large predators and figure out where our next meal is coming from. They’re spectacular at that, and it turns that being good at that had the side effect of being great at other things. Math, science, poetry, all because our brains were so damn good at keeping us alive from predators and that other dude with the big sharp stick who wanted to take our stuff.
But most of us no longer live in that world. Muggings and animal attacks still happen, but for much of the developed world they are not an everyday occurrence.
Our big, beautiful, brains have not hit the point of evolutionary complexity to be living in this world. They’re still living in the saber-tooth tiger world. We have, in essence, built a world we aren’t always well suited to fit into. Our brains see no saber-tooth tigers, but they’re constantly on the alert for them, and anything that fools it into thinking it’s found them helps.
Say, constantly watching the news to see if the President is going to drop a metaphorical saber-tooth tiger onto the economy that could savage you, the ones you love, or the ones you have adopted into your metaphorical tribe.
I get it. I was diagnosed with ADHD at age seven. My brain has NEVER felt like it fit in with the world we made. Ironically, it’s only recently that I feel like more people are thinking like me – but not for good reasons. It feels like our devices are giving everyone ADHD. And as much I’m happy to know understands where I’m coming from, it doesn’t seem to be granting any of the benefits of ADHD, such as hyperfocus.
And right now, that’s a big problem.
Why Focus Matters More Than Ever
So what? You might say. How can I be distracted? There’s an authoritarian in the White House, innocent men being sent to Salvadorian gulags, and the economy is about to snap in half. What’s the point of controlling your focus when the world is on fire?
Because the world is on fire, you hypothetical complaining person! Do you think firefighters save people and put out fires by panicking and trying to fix every problem in the burning building at once? Do you think soldiers and generals win skirmishes and wars by trying to throw all tropes everywhere all at once? No, of course not! Focus isn’t a distraction, it’s what will save you at this moment.
Remember all those people I spoke of that want to keep you distracted? There’s a reason they want that. Attention, entrepreneurs want your money without giving you anything of fair value in trade. Chaos actors want you confused and disoriented so that you cannot push back.
Do not give them what they want.
If you want to come on this journey with me (and I hope you do), you need to start by reframing what you’re doing. This isn’t about cutting the world out. It’s not escapism, it’s not privilege. It’s defiance against a world that wants you so scattered you can’t do anything.
Look at any great movement in history or any war. Victory comes from knowing that small actions compound to great benefit. Change happens because everyone keeps their eye on the ball, with the understanding and trust that others are keeping their eyes on those balls.
I spent the back half of last year reading Eisenhower in War and Peace by Jean Edward Smith. History is a great thing to study in times of great stress – it reminds you that humanity has faced times as difficult as these before and will do so again.
It also gives lessons on how these times can be faced. For my money, one of the most interesting sections is on Eisenhower’s time as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and the run-up to D-Day. One of the most complex, audacious military operations in history when it happened.
You know what’s never brought up? Much of what was going in on Russia, save for getting Stalin’s buy-in on things. The Pacific Front isn’t brought up, despite how bloody and important it ended up being. It’s Europe, Europe, Europe, North Africa for a minute, then Europe
Because Eisenhower had one job – the counter-invasion of Europe by Allied forces. Nothing else mattered, so he had to focus on what mattered. Let other people on other days figure out the Pacific.
From that perspective, choosing where your mind goes is a revolutionary act. It pushes the line forward. It refreshes the spirit with victory instead of weighing it down with defeat. At its best, it inspires others to do the same.
I could spend hours trying to understand every detail of Trump’s tariffs. I can’t do much stop them beyond telling my reps that I don’t like it right now, and they know that! Instead, I accept that hard economic times are coming and build a smart savings plan with my wife and a career plan that gives me the best odds regardless of what happens.
I could panic about the unlawful deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. It’s worth being frightened by – the first step in the disappearing people into black bags without due process and the rule of law.
But I can’t do a lot about it. Calling my congresspeople won’t help – they clearly know. I can’t take direct legal action because I’m not a lawyer. There are already highly skilled and experienced lawyers handling this case, and I have to trust them for now.
What I can do is volunteer to help kids with their homework at 826LA, many of whom are first-generation Americans and potentially first generation college students.
I could fret about how many in this country are treating empathy like a vice, courage like a virtue the bottom line can’t afford right now.
Or I could tell stories that remind people that empathy is no vice, that courage is the virtue that can never NOT be afforded. I could show the dark mirror of where we could go so we do not go there.
Imagine if we all did that. Imagine if we had the focus to actually make a small difference, each and every one of us.
Ancient Wisdom to Combat Modern Chaos
I came to this creed as part of working on my ADHD. Medication, therapy, supportive structures when I needed them, all these things helped get me space in my head to think.
Still, I felt held back. I had the mental space to make the changes I needed, time to build the structures I wanted, but no idea what I wanted to do with it. No philosophy to push forward when those structures toppled over, and no ideas to help me with the crippling codependency issues that lead me to live with the aforementioned abusive ex.
I started looking for a philosophy. I found one in the same place all stereotypical white men do – the Roman Empire.
Specifically, I found Stoicism, the oft-misunderstood philosophy practiced by Seneca, Musonious Rufus, Epictetus, and the philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius. You know – the good emperor who died in Gladiator.
But if it helps, I’m found a second philosophy in Lumbini.
Lumbini (modern-day Nepal) was ruled in the 6th or 5th century by Suddhodana. His son and heir was Siddhārtha Gautama. You know him better as the Buddha.
In the last decade, the two philosophies of Stoicism and Buddhism have gotten me to a place I could never have imagined. They share a distinct core, an acceptance and understanding of the fact that much of life is not within your control. Suffering often comes from wishing things to be different than they are and not accepting this fact.
As the Buddha said, any time we suffer misfortune, two arrows fly our way. Being struck by the arrow once is painful. The second is even more painful, but you can avoid it.
“In life, we can’t always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. The second arrow is optional.”
The Buddha
To put another way – the first arrow comes from us all, and you have no way of stopping it. You can take actions to reduce it, but no one stops it.
But you can do something when you get hit.
Stoics share a similar point of view. There is much in life that is not in your control. In fact, almost nothing is in your control, outside your own actions. Indeed, the results of those actions aren’t even in your control! I can do all the good deeds I want, whether the world is a better place is fundamentally not up to me.
Rather than give in to despair, stoicism holds that instead you must focus on that which is in your control.
“You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
Marcus Aurelius – Meditations
Want it a little more modern? I can do that.
“One of the first lessons from Stoicism, then, is to focus our attention and efforts where we have the most power and then let the universe run as it will. This will save us both a lot of energy and a lot of worry.”
Massimo Pigliucci – How to Be a Stoic
Both stoicism and Buddhism are sometimes misunderstood as philosophies that promote ignoring emotion or non-action. This is not the case – the first arrow strikes us, and you have to acknowledge that first arrow. Pretending you don’t have an arrow sticking out of your chest is a quick way to Borimir-ing.
It’s what you do when the second arrow that comes flying that matters. Accept that this is how things are now. Then, work to change what comes next. Sometimes that means ripping the arrow out and turning to the archer.
Other times, you need to be Borirmir, ignore the arrows, and fight what’s in front of you because that’s what matters.
There’s a concept in Buddhism that helped me overcome my codependency issues. Compassion vs. Empathy.
I used to become paralyzed from addressing my problems, or those problems I could fix because I was so focused on the problems and feelings of others. This left me open for exploitation from those who didn’t have my best interests at heart, who only thought about themselves.
That’s because I was confusing empathy with compassion. Empathy is defined as feeling the suffering and pain and of others as if it were your own. Whereas compassion is expressing sympathy, kindness, and a wish for better circumstances for others suffering.
Empathy, though well-meaning, runs the risk of making it all about you.
Compassion makes it about the person actually suffering.
Feeling empathy can be unskillful at times. It does those suffering no good if all you’re doing is experiencing suffering on their behalf. But acts of compassion, even simple ones like wishing for their suffering to end?
Those add up. Those help. Those win the day in the end.
Conclusion
I recently learned about the phrase “injustice sensitivity” with regard to ADHD. I’ll confess, I was a bit snarky about when I first heard it. I have a long sense of frustration with some ADHDers being prone to label almost anything as being “part of having ADHD”.
Liking reading is not necessarily a symptom of having ADHD. It just means you like reading.
But my therapist surprised me by telling me that injustice sensitivity is actually real. As he explained it – people with ADHD often look for rules and rubrics they can hang on to and value those highly.
I could see that appreciation for rules in my need for cleaning schedules, my study of storytelling structure, and my search for a basic “plan” to work out too.
Anyway, according to my therapist, because those with ADHD place such value on rules and systems, seeing those violated can really get under their skin. Attention entrepreneurs will use this to hijack our anger, keeping our eyes on the platforms that give them money. Chaos actors will use this to keep us exhausted, fighting a total war on all fronts.
This is a call to action to stop playing their games. It doesn’t matter whether you have ADHD or not because those tactics work on all of us. We will not improve things by funding attention entrepreneurs who have not earned our dollar. We will not get rid of Donald Trump by letting ourselves be exhausted, confused, and tired. Every individual person doesn’t need to fight every battle.
Pick a barricade. Man it. Make it your responsibility, and don’t let other things distract you.
Your homework is to sit down and think – what matters to you. What do you want to focus on?
As to how?
Subscribe, space cowboy. There’s a post coming soon.
