The Always-On

You can't sit still anymore. Reading a long article without checking your phone has become a feat. A two-hour film without pausing is impossible. Even the conversation you wanted to have, you check halfway through. Your attention used to hold. Now it scatters.

Some of this is the phone. Some of it is the constant low hum of one model or another available to be prompted. The combined effect is that your mind has been trained, every minute of every day, to expect novelty as a reward for restlessness. After enough years, it stops believing in stillness. The discomfort of sitting with one thing for a long time becomes physically intolerable. The workaround is everywhere.

Restoring sustained attention is unfussy work. Read one chapter of a book in one sitting, with the phone in another room. Watch one long film without pausing. Sit with one problem for thirty minutes without searching. It will feel intolerable at first. Within a few weeks, the intolerance fades, because attention is not gone. It's just out of practice. The capacity to sit with something is the capacity that makes all your other faculties possible. It's worth the work.