The art of listening badly

There is a particular kind of tiredness that comes not from working too hard but from being interrupted too often, and it has become the ambient condition of the age.

We speak about attention as though it were a resource we spend, which flatters us — a spender is at least in charge. The more honest metaphor is a room with a door that other people can open.

The economics of the interruption

Every notification is a small argument that something elsewhere matters more than what is in front of you. Ten thousand of those arguments, unanswered, become a disposition.

What we choose to notice is already a moral act.

The remedy is not discipline. Discipline is what you reach for when the environment is wrong and you have decided to blame yourself for it.