Well written! I can relate to most of the article. However, I find that
> To focus on one thing deeply, to give it your full attention, is to experience it fully. And when we do this, something remarkable happens. Time, which so often feels like it is slipping through our fingers, begins to slow.
doesn't really apply to me, or to many people I know and have worked with - it is when I focus on one task that "time flies", and it's distractions that end up throwing men out of the zone.
What you're describing is a state of flow which is good for things like work but the article seems to be talking about time metaphorically.
For example, imagine you're going to your daughter's piano recital and spend the whole time thinking about work. You would be missing out on the experience of watching her perform and grow. If you become mindful of these habits and say "My mind is focusing on something that I cannot change right now, I should be present" then you'll be able to fully experience a moment in your child's life. So rather than feeling like life is passing you by, you're able to experience it in the moment. The surrounding sentences of the line you quoted don't read like the author's describing time like you are:
"But in this process, we must remember something important: life is not meant to be rushed through. It is not a race, nor is it a problem to be solved. It is an experience to be lived, and living well requires presence. ... Moments become rich, textured. Even the simplest of tasks takes on a new significance when approached with care, with attention."
Author describes experiences that myself can fully confirm. Everything said in this article resonates very strong, including how time slows in observation. This incredible essay is a very organic, honest summary, yet without all the esoteric, of what a mindful presence can be (whenever achieved). A bliss retold in few paragraphs.
Indeed to let go of the worldly rush is truly liberating. What a pity it is not allowed to complement the scriptures with such insights.
It is my experience that "flow" is not the same as "mindfulness" or "attention".
agree that the "clock of life" is a strange beast, when compared to the clock on the wall. i try to quit paying too much attention to the latter, and time becomes more nuanced and textured.
What I think he meant is that time slows down for him in the way that time around him speeds up while he can stay focused on one thing.
Now of course I’m not the author so I’m not sure but yeah the way you’re describing it (real time flying when you’re locked in on something) is how I feel it goes for most people
Yep that’s my reading too. I like to see it from a dynamical systems perspective: as a system approaches an attractor, the phase flow slows down, while the wall time marches on steadily. If we consider the “perspective” of the system, which is wall time divided by phase flow, we get the time speeding up part.
Well put, but I think you’re using “focus” in a different sense than the author is.
The article discusses internal (intensional!) focus on the substance of experience itself as it’s presented to your unified Ego, and you’re discussing the much more common idea of external (extensional!!1!) focus, which is almost the exact opposite since it typically requires quieting your inner monologue to the greatest extent possible and letting your subconscious faculties act autonomously.
Yeah, it's more like time taking a backseat than slowing down.
Stoicism explores these ideas. One of the basic premises is that all external events are out of our control and to focus on what is, basically what is in our mind and our actions. Then we should try to discipline our ideas around virtues which are always good instead of outcomes and externals. That summary doesn't do it justice, if interested in exploring further. There are some good books on amazon or check out dailstoic for a quick overview. https://dailystoic.com/what-is-stoicism-a-definition-3-stoic...
Buddhism explores these ideas too.
For a modern approach to this mindset I highly recommend "Seeing That Frees" by Rob Burbea.
https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/08772fe1-564c-4a95-9a5d-...
Great article. The physics and neurophysiology of Nowness and attention are also complex.
Toward the end of his life Einstein had a conversation with Rudolf Carnap (ca 1953-54):
“Einstein said that the problem of Now worried him seriously. He explained that Now means something special for men, something essentially different from the past and the future, but that this important difference dies not and cannot occur within physics.”
Einstein was still struggling with counterpoints made by Bergson in their famous 1922 debate on time and the meaning of duration.
Neuroscience is just beginning to give us more insights into Now and I am reasonably confident that we will find solid (satisfying) physical explanations for human temporality (more so than those of Bergson, Husserl, and Heidegger). But this will not remove the personal mysteries of attention and being in the flow.
It's a bit heavy on the purple prose (though I was guilty of a very similar writing style in my 20s, and as I got on in life the purity of the idea became more important than its surrounding ornamental structures).
The gist of the article reminds me of a quote from the famous pianist Clara Schumann who would admonish her more virtuosic students for striving to play through passages as rapidly as possible.
"Why hurry over beautiful things? Why not linger and enjoy them?"
> It's a bit heavy on the purple prose (though I was guilty of a very similar writing style in my 20s, and as I got on in life the purity of the idea became more important than its surrounding ornamental structures).
I can see that.
The ornamentation I think is necessary to let the reader recreate something so ethereal to explain. Like a koan. It benefited me at least.
So you're saying that Attention Is All You Need? (badum tss)
Yes, and if you want the verbose version, an LLM can generate that.
This is a really great description of why a meditative practice is worth taking time on and also why it’s worth railing against todays constant attention deficit and lack of empty, quiet spaces, both mental and physical. Excellent writing!
> Each small effort, each moment of renewed attention, builds upon the last. Over time, these moments accumulate, and what was once difficult becomes second nature.
This! One thing is to find an oasis of attention from time to time, but the goal should be to fill it so that it becomes the sea, and that is extremely difficult (for starters due to the traps of modern attention seeking algorithms, but not only...).
Good read. For anyone interested in how to actually pay attention, Buddha taught mindfulness (Satipatthana in Pali) by focusing on four areas: Body, Sensations, Mind and Mental objects.
Cognitive control is one of the most important issues of our era, IMHO:
https://vonnik.substack.com/p/how-to-take-your-brain-back
There are many techniques to increase our CC. The ADHD community is a trailblazer in this respect.
The universally accepted ADHD community’s technique seems to be called Adderall. It is difficult to pinpoint another universally accepted technique. Breathwork is not always good for ADHD from my personal experience and is not universally accepted. So really wonder what this trailblazer thing is about.
Another very apparent shortcut to ADHD treatment, also not universally accepted, is called endogenous adrenaline - the simplest drug molecule as somebody (Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash if memory serves right) designated it, and extreme sports provide a lot of it for free. This article though, does not seem to be about any of these - adrenaline or sports. Extreme sports such as snowboarding, downhill biking, paragliding (not really a sport), motorbiking, etc… are all about said state of flow and attention. No other activities I can think of that impact ADHD so quick and profound. Cause you loose your attention only once with these things.
In Denmark where I am from mindfulness is actually a rather big part of ADHD mastering (or whatever they call learning to live with it these days). Exercise and medicine are also part of it, but learning skills to help you function are bigger. I think breathwork as you point out is individual. Here they tend to have you try out various ways of gaining focus through mindfulness though. The one which worked best for me is holding hands under water, like washing hands, others meditate, others again so the whole breath focus thing and so on.
I do think this article plays a little light on what you can do, and how much of it you’ll need to do, to actually tame your attention. I do a lot of things. I don’t keep my mobile phone near me when I don’t want to use it. I do mindfulness. I plan to head out at 9:00 if I’m really supposed to head out at 9:15 because that means I’ll get out at 9:13-9:17 and not stress about it leaving more energy to focus my attention. I do the drugs, in my case Lisdexamfetamin is the least shitty. I ride my bike everywhere. I walk in the woods. I do a lot of things like that and it helps, but it’s not like it’s quite as simple as this article might make it sound. Even if you do it in small steps.
I think the biggest difference between how we deal with ADHD and attention here and the article is that we don’t focus on attention. We view ADHD as an “energy deficiency”. This is because you pay attention to too many things with ADHD, which means you run out of energy sooner than regular people. At which point you can’t pay attention to things that aren’t interesting to you. What is worse is that you’ll hyperfocus on things that, are, interesting and that will drain your energy as well. You’ll probably also forget to eat because you don’t really feel hunger, again draining you. Anyway, to live with ADHD in Denmark is in large parts about managing a fuel tank which is simply much smaller than everyone else’s. Because you need the fuel to pay attention.
Attention is good. Building the habit of paying attention is hard. Many people who get good at meditation underestimate the effort required. Highly recommend BJ Fogg's Tiny Habits for more on how to get started on anything important. Similar to the OP's separate article on kaizen:
I used to think that once I started browsing the internet, it was time for a break. One technique I've implemented, which I haven't seen mentioned is "walking pomodoro technique": for every 25 minutes of work, I get up and take a brisk 5-min walk (or lately, a jog) and come back. One of the most surprising things is that by mandating my own breaks, I browse the internet a lot less.
I suffer from RSI and definitely do not move enough when I am invested in some piece of work (personal or professional). I recently installed workrave[0] and have noticed marked improvements in just a couple weeks of actually taking breaks when it indicates.
I take a 25 second break every 5 minutes, and use this time to do one hand and wrist exercise (I keep some resistance bands and hand exercise balls at the desk). I take a 5 minute break every 25 minutes. I will either do some stretches, or a quick chore (e.g. vacuum one room).
Fun article, thanks for sharing! It always blows my mind how much work people will put into this stuff without consulting/citing the thousands of years of cognitive scientists that have been working on the problem, but that’s more of a systemic problem; it’s what we get for describing the history of science as “first there was silly philosophy, and then in 1600 we finally figured out empiricism and actual/real/true science started”. I absolutely agree that cognitive science in general is about to take the world by storm as we learn more about our neurology (Google “DeWave”), and systematize philosophies.
The DOJ recently filed the first big post-Covid telehealth suit against a California ADHD treatment company (aka Adderal distribution) called Done, and it’s honestly fascinating to read the blog posts written by the founding doctor. His professional and philosophical opinion is that ADHD is a wildly underdiagnosed neurological state that can come and go over a lifetime, especially in reaction to attention-degrading “exocortices” as your article calls them. Obviously his credibility is damaged by the fact that he made ~$2.5M off that stance, but still, I think there might be something there. His favorite citation is Hippocrates, though I’ve never actually looked for the primary source he’s referring to.
The big exception to my complaint above is, in 2024, of course Stoicism, probably because it’s so damn cool (a book by an ancient general on how to be stronger? Sign me up!) and can be downright utopian when summarized in the right way, promising you eternal control. The article above clearly takes the general Stoic framework for granted in the very first paragraph, so I was more than a little surprised not to see it cited directly.
tl;dr: more talk about “dopamine” and addictive devices. I prefer the submission.
In one of the stories of Sherlock Holmes he asks Dr. Watson how many steps there are in the stairs leading up to their door. Watson replies he doesn't know and Sherlock gives the exact number and says "You see but you do not observe".
Sherlock Holmes seems to have read this article as well :-)
Check out The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer. He talks about his discovery of and relationship with his inner voice / consciousness. He's also the tech founder of a public EMR startup. Super interesting read.
Wow, great piece, thanks for sharing it! While reading it I was absolutely sure I've already heard it. For the first part I thought it's the transcript of the text they read in Vipassana retreat, and for the second I thought it must be from Alan Watts. But from the rest of the blog and from the comments here I understand that it's neither, and that it's just your thoughts. It reads really nicely, like a river.
I also noticed that your previous blog's name (stormrider) is somehow similar to mine (cyclinginthewind) haha.
Great read. Reminds me of "The Miracle of Mindfulness"
While I like the premise of this piece of writing, I quite strongly disagree with the title and this line:
> the only thing we truly possess, the only thing we might, with enough care, exert some mastery over, is our mind.
Anyone with ADHD, clinical depression, bipolar disorder, and many other conditions simply do not and cannot have full control of their minds without medical intervention.
That said, there is a lot to be said for learning how to recognize and compensate for one’s foibles. Meditation and therapy can be helpful for ADHD and some other conditions.
It’s not surprising to me that these same things can help people from all walks of life feel more centered and empowered over their own destinies.
I will note that you are not responding to what you have quoted, but to an extreme re-interpretation.
The OP says "exert some mastery over", which is a far cry from the "full control" you say some people cannot have.
> Anyone with ADHD, clinical depression, bipolar disorder, and many other conditions simply do not and cannot have full control of their minds without medical intervention.
Who are you and how are you privy to what I can and cannot do without intervention? Where do you get off?
I'm speaking for myself (ADHD) and anecdotal experience from people in my life with these conditions (clinical depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD). I don't claim to speak for anyone.
Your experience may be different, and that is fine and valid. The point I'm trying to make (and that you're also making) is that things that are fundamental truths for some are not always applicable or valid from the context of another person's lived experience.
> I'm speaking for myself (ADHD) and anecdotal experience from people in my life with these conditions (clinical depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD). I don't claim to speak for anyone.
Now you say that. But you made a very clear, absolute statement that these people “cannot have full control of their minds without medical intervention”.
And everyone’s lived experience is eventually respected with some back and forth in these exchanges. But making absolute statements about what people can or cannot do cuts both ways. So it’s best to make your vantage point clear from the start.[1]
I’m personally much more offended when someone says that my “type” cannot do something. Compared to assuming that I can.
Thanks for the clarification.
[1] For all we knew you could have been a medical researcher.
As someone with severe, often debilitating ADHD, I understand not wanting to depend on medication. It was forced upon me under threat of punishment as a child and heavily exacerbated my OCD and tic syndrome, which led to further punishment anyway.
Learning to be okay with medication has taken a long time. But the last couple decades of research have made a few things clear. Importantly, ADHD has been shown to be a genetic disorder, wherein your brain simply doesn't produce the same amount of dopamine receptors as a normal person.
This has a profound impact on your mood, executive functioning skills, motor function and more. Drugs which increase the dopamine available in your system can have negative effects (some extra dopamine gets shunted to your motor cortex and causes motor dysfunction/aggravates tics) but when you consider that 60% of ADHD sufferers are also diagnosed with depression, or in my case a large comorbidity with OCD and bipolar disorder, it becomes clear how valuable medicine can be.
ADHD is beginning to be understood as a reward-deficiency syndrome [0] and in this light, meditation/mindfulness and good habits are only coping mechanisms for an underlying condition which is ultimately genetic and massively aided by dopaminergic drugs. The result is literally night and day for many people, especially those who did not get diagnosed until adulthood and never developed coping mechanisms.
> But making absolute statements about what people can or cannot do cuts both ways.
I just lost one of my best friends last year because I moved in with him and experienced incredible prejudice around my disorder, which he was convinced was made up and not real. He would wax on and on about mindfulness, and constantly get defensive and aggressive at the slightest, most inconsequential manifestations of my disorder, and it rapidly deteriorated my mental health at a time where I was already in dire need of a safe space. His bias and increasingly erratic response to my disorder made me feel unsafe until I had no choice but to leave. The entire experience was very traumatic and reminded me of all the times as a child that my disorders lead to punishment and physical abuse. Some people have mild ADHD and it might be a slight convenience for them, but in my case it has been a major defining aspect of my life with a long list of consequences over the years.
You're right, but it's a bit of an uncharitable take on the post. Nowhere does the it say that medical intervention is unnecessary for people with conditions requiring it.
The title, and quoted passage, are fully applicable to those with the listed conditions and without. The advice from the post supplements medical intervention for folks requiring it.
> Anyone with ADHD, clinical depression, bipolar disorder, and many other conditions simply do not and cannot have full control of their minds without medical intervention.
Right - hence "might", not "do"; and "some", not "full".
You know every time someone mentions walking, they’re not obligated to mention some people cannot walk right? Can we stop moralizing and grandstanding everything, it gets so tiresome.
I read no moralizing or grandstanding in GP’s comment. It’s a valid point - most humans on planet earth will experience some form of mental disorder in their lifetime.[0]
[0] https://hms.harvard.edu/news/half-worlds-population-will-exp...
My intent was to point out that personal experiences differ and that things the article points out as given are not so given for everyone.
My intent was not to moralize and I'm uncertain to what part of my original comment could be interpreted as a moral stance.
You know, the entire point of this website is to comment on articles with our own thoughts, experiences, and opinions - even if it's moralizing and/or grandstanding.
Can we stop discouraging comments in the comment section? It gets so tiresome.
People largely understand that folks who can't walk can't walk. There is still a lot of moralizing around mental health and treatment. "ADHD is not a real thing, they just need to stop being lazy"/etc/etc.
The two situations are simply not comparable.
You're getting disproportionately criticised and having uncharitable replies but, you're right.
Any serious psychiatrist will confirm that medication is immensely helpful to the majority of ADHD cases if not all. Our brains are just different, chemistry-wise.
I don't know why people get so offended by this notion.
People have already responded with their reasons. You can try to hammer on with further digressions from what the submission is about (not even wrong), complete with that inflamed/emotionally charged interpretation, but what’s the point in spilling more bytes on this.
Please refrain from gatekeeping or trying to limit what I, or anyone else, can or cannot do.
The world isn't limited by your imagination.
I don't even understand what your point is.
Honestly the bigger problem is probably that creating lasting habits is hard. Everyone knows that exercise is important but how many people maintain a consistent routine?
With mindfulness it's even worse because there is no way to track how strong your equanimity is. You can't know if you are making progress or just deluding yourself.
My meditation book (The Mind Illuminated) divides everything into stages. And the strength of one’s mindfulness is discussed.
People are creatures of comfort. That's why I'd disagree with your first sentence. I think creating long-lasting habits can be easy, in fact sometimes you don't even realize it happened until it's too late.
Now getting rid of the bad habits and keeping only the good ones, that is the hard part.
To the author : I find your article really insightful. I want to read more but I realize this article is not on your homepage. There might be more stuff that you have written and is unlisted. How can i find it all.
I can recommend the Waking Up app. It has a well paced and well done introduction to mindfulness in a very similar style to the linked article. If interested, I can share a link for a free 30-day trial.
I have no affiliation and get no kickback. It has simply been quite useful for me.
I was reminded of my all-time favourite book on meditation / mindfulness: Mindfulness in Plain English by Henepola Gunaratana. The article had a similar style. Gunaratana’s book is full of humour and beautiful writing and I’d recommend it as a brilliant guide to anyone interested in this stuff.
I had the exact same question. I was able to locate the contents with a code search on github: https://github.com/billwear/billwear.github.io
Thank you kind person.
OP is in large degree one articulation of foundational mindfulness concepts that have been written about for centuries.
What about the OP specifically appeals? Happy to point you at some other things if I can.
i usually post here first, and then add to the homepage later. i'll fix that next couple of days.
The Mind Illuminated is a book with a similar style.
This article is not listed on the homepage. That’s what I said.
The first paragraph reminds me of the following from The Joy Luck Club.
It started to rain again, just a light rain. The people from downstairs called up to me once again to hurry. And my thoughts became more urgent, more strange.
I asked myself, what is true about a person? Would I change in the same way the river changes color but still be the same person? And then I saw the curtains blowing wildly, and outside rain was falling harder, causing everyone to scurry and shout. I smiled. And then I realized it was the first time I could see the power of the wind. I couldn’t see the wind itself, but I could see it carried the water that filled the rivers and shaped the countryside. It caused men to yelp and dance.
I wiped my eyes and looked in the mirror. I was surprised at what I saw. I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind.
I threw my head back and smiled proudly to myself. And then I draped the large embroidered red scarf over my face and covered these thoughts up. But underneath the scarf I still knew who I was. I made a promise to myself: I would always remember my parents’ wishes, but I would never forget myself.
For a more elaborate, complete take on the value of attention, I can't recommend the work of Sir Iain McGilchrist enough.
I'm grateful for this advice. Will put into practice immediately. Death being a certainty, it is difficult to determine what time is actually worth using for. From an individual perspective, religion and knowledge are part of a conceptual world that will end with death. If there's actually anything post-death, it has to do with what it is here being called attention. Something beyond memory and thinking.
The mind is not the locus of peace and contentment. It is the heart.
I appreciate coming across writings like these. For me I easily forget to just chill out, one day I’m full of whatever mindfulness i gain from nowhere in a quick hit of inspiration then as quick as it came I’m back to step one lost, until I come across something like this.
Did smoking help on attention and make it a habit ?
> the only thing we truly possess, the only thing we might, with enough care, exert some mastery over, is our mind.
And our bodies.
The power of Being (simply existing mindfully) as opposed to the Doing we feel compelled into.
When you Are who you are, you will Do what you do, and likely find greater success because it comes from who you are, not what someone is telling you to do…
It's a very hard topic to write or even talk about but what you wrote rings true.
... and the simple discipline of DE (Do Easy) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4Aio-lrVo8
(Gus Van Sant's first short movie, definitely HN worthy)
excellent article!
one of my favorite books about this that i can not recommend enough is “the miracle of mindfulness” by thich nhat hanh.
"As we grow in this practice of attention, something else becomes clear: much of what occupies our thoughts is unnecessary. The mind is cluttered, filled with concerns that seem urgent but, on closer inspection, do little to serve our deeper well-being. Simplification is not just a matter of decluttering our physical surroundings—it is a way of thinking, of living. As we quiet the noise within, we see more clearly what truly matters. We focus, not on everything, but on the essentials. We pare down, not by force, but by choice."
Our information-technology driven culture does not help; the algorithms and shiny objects they push undermine our attention-ability.
This is why I don't wear a smart watch. My phone is always on silent. Sometimes i Ieave it in a different room. There's nothing good on here. 99% of notifications are just trying to sell me something or bad news. Go do something you enjoy and put down the devices, the notifications will still be there in the morning. That is to say, dedicate a block of time for that stuff if you must, but otherwise tune out the Internet.
This may be the culture, but one can largely choose to not participate in it. E.g. not having social media accounts and curating your news sources with a focus on unsensational, fact-based reporting.
"curating your news sources with a focus on unsensational, fact-based reporting" -> curious how you do this!
News Minimalist [1] is one way, where it aggregates stories across outlets and uses LLMs to remove clickbait from titles. It also assigns loose 'scores' to each story to approximate how 'important' it is, which I've found to be directionally useful.
Ultimately, it comes down to why one consumes news at all. If it's to have something to discuss around the water cooler or dinner table, that's a very different use case than someone trying to pattern match on world events for trading stocks or selling their wares.
I’m working on this as a personal project so I’m interested in other’s solutions!
I’m not working on it toooo hard. This is something I think some AI software tool might swoop in and solve before I can build something I’m happy with.
yes.
The “attention economy,” defined.
It’s why sensory isolation is valuable.
Shut out the world and hear what’s being drowned out by the mad scramble to control our attention…
As much as I love the sentiment, these sorts of pieces (written or verbal) always contain contradictions, usually important ones relative to the claims.
These contradictions (?) may be rooted in the reader’s assumptions about the world: the writer says A and B, but to the reader B implies (not A) because of their world view. In short they might not be actual contradictions.
This might seem very vague but a discussion on something so first-person as the mind is ripe for that kind of thing.
Which is resolved with dialogue. If the contradictions are brought up.
> Which is resolved with dialogue. If the contradictions are brought up.
In my experience noting contradictions usually leads to evasive memes and anger/unhappiness.
For me contradictions are unavoidable when speaking about the mind. Usually the aim is not to give you specific objective truths, but to evoke something in your mind that feels evidently true to you. That is why usually the most effective communication tools that are used are metaphors. And communicating that way correctly is very very difficult. That means that most of these sort of pieces are going to be very bad... But I actually think that this one is not that bad
> For me contradictions are unavoidable when speaking about the mind.
"It (seems like it) is my opinion that {some opinion}" has very few ways of going wrong, and has the side benefit of reminding one that they're dealing with a subjective map, which is in part the goal of most authors of such pieces, imho anyways.
I think mindfulness gang could up their game.
It's a writing choice at the end of the day. If you have to spend so much time reminding people that this is your opinion, you're going to get the same criicism of pacing and meandering that any other fruity prose does to people who want to get straight to the point.
Sometimes you just need a footnote in your profile of "thoughts are of my own" and to not worry about the peanut gallery.
I've found cannabis to be extremely helpful. It adds a tinge of paranoia - so if you're paranoid about not reaching your potential, it can kick you into gear.
Ads Industry would rather not you to have any control over your attention. Indeed, if ads can't distract you, can't steal your attention, then those ads can't make money.
I like the message of the article overall. And I am skeptical when “liberation” and “freedom” are used when not clearly defined because where I am from (US) these words are thrown around flippantly. If I follow this approach of quietness and attention, will I be free from hunger (ie have food)? Free from fear (eg security from violence)? No, clearly not. There are other freedoms.
Also, a left out item that we have direct access to sense, manipulation, cultivation: our bodies.
my read on it is that it’s liberation and freedom in a very buddhist sense.
you won’t be free from hunger, but it may reframe our relationship with food so there is less compulsion and mindless consumption.
it won’t take away fear in the face of imminent danger (that’s a good thing, we have to survive) but it may reduce background anxiety that’s present in our daily lives.
If I am free from a shackle, does that mean that I am free from hunger? Clearly not. Hmph, then why say that I am “free” from a shackle.
good points. the first could have been a better choice, or a better explanation. the second? that's a much longer piece about the three brains and how we integrate them.
I'm going to be That Guy and say I didn't particularly care for this piece. it reads like every single self-help or mindfulness book I've had the misfortune of skimming or having pushed down on me.
That isn't to say I fully discount mindfulness but rather the art of people being able to say a lot about ultimately nothing.
Surprisingly the amount of praise it is getting here, consider how low on substance the post is.
really depends on your stage in life. If you see self-actualization advice but you are still trying to work 18 hours/day to pay rent and keep a roof over your head, this advice won't resonate as much compared to a well off a cushy tech worker who may still feel a bit satisfied with their life projections.
tl;dr?
You can train your attention.
What billwear said first is true. Also, what is the endpoint of oversimplification?
It’s okay if you’re waiting for the comic book edition, but I don’t think it’s on the horizon.
that's the point: sometimes there is no tl;dr.
There are however a great deal of things people can do to make the same information available to a wider audience.
Formatting, fonts, colours, structure of argument, visual aids.
Clicking [reader view] on this article aided me immensely in being able to take it in. As one of the many ADHD people who encountered this, the white on black, wide page, and a serifed font were all non-informational aspects of the page that made it difficult to take in.
You are wrong that sometimes there is no tl;dr In the absence of someone putting in the work to make content accessible the emphasis merely falls upon the dr of tl;dr.
No-one requires you to make things for everyone, but you cannot expect to reach everyone without consideration of them either.
http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/
or
https://perfectmotherfuckingwebsite.com/
if you're feeling venturous.
>You are wrong that sometimes there is no tl;dr In the absence of someone putting in the work to make content accessible the emphasis merely falls upon the dr of tl;dr.
On a technical level I agree.
>But how does one begin? It is not with grand declarations or bold, sweeping changes. That would miss the point entirely. Rather, it is with a gentle attention to the present, a deliberate shift in the way we move through the world.
That's a pretty good TLDR right there.
But on a cosmic level, I see nothing more ironic than asking for a TL;DR on how to take back your attention. Showing you have some interest in a topic but not enough to fully read it without shifting to yet another topic your brain runs you to. Thus failing the "gentle attention to the present".
> And it is then, perhaps, that a subtle truth begins to emerge: the only thing we truly possess, the only thing we might, with enough care, exert some mastery over, is our mind
Well, that's not true at all.
When people make sweeping simple statements about matters that can't possibly be trivial - it makes me wonder how much most people resemble LLMs.
I'm sympathetic to spiritual matters but the field is littered with people who are deeply confused.