David Pennington
@dtpennington
I write stuff. I’d like to write more stuff. Currently: reclaiming my brain.
David Pennington
dtpennington.com
Thinking About Attention -- Walk with Me
youtube.comMost of us have a hard limit on the number of focused sessions we can do each day.
Chris Guillebeau • Executive Functioning and the Limits of Hyperfocus
We live in an age of lexical abundance. More words, more access, more content than at any time in human history. And yet something essential is slipping away. Not reading itself, but the kind of reading that once shaped minds and formed character: slow, immersive, reflective, and richly human. As Harold Bloom noted: “"We read deeply for varied... See more
Carl Hendrick • Ultra-Processed Minds: The End of Deep Reading and What It Costs Us
I think that “doing nothing”—in the sense of refusing productivity and stopping to listen—entails an active process of listening that seeks out the effects of racial, environmental, and economic injustice and brings about real change.
Jenny Odell • How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
“We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them,” she insisted, “but by waiting for them.”3
L. M. Sacasas • If Your World Is Not Enchanted, You're Not Paying Attention
Aggressively uncreative practices such as aimless wandering or birdwatching (or, as she perceptively calls it, “bird listening”) offer “an antidote to the rhetoric of growth” that surrounds us every day. There is ultimately a feminist and environmental case to be made for doing nothing: if we can shift our notion of constructive social behavior
... See moreSamuel W. Franklin • The Cult of Creativity: A Surprisingly Recent History
- Always be smartly dressed, well groomed relaxed and friendly polite and in complete control.
- Make the world to believe in you and to pay heavily for this privilege.
- Never worry assess discuss or criticize but remain quiet respectful and calm.
- The lord chisels still, so don’t leave your bench for long.
THE LAWS OF SCULPTORS, Gilbert and George
It's All Experiments
Or what about a calendar that was simply, as one reader imagined, oriented around protecting time, instead of filling it? What would an un-calendar be?
Anne Helen Petersen • The Diminishing Returns of Calendar Culture
