when you switch from some Task A to another Task B, your attention doesn’t immediately follow – a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original task*
(Cal Newport)

Will cannot run very far ahead of knowledge, and attention is our daily bread.**
(Iris Murdoch)

Attention is our food.

So if you control someone’s attention do you control them?

We increasingly live in a world built on distraction – emails, notifications, texts, messaging, open work spaces, being constantly connected.

When we’re distracted and turn our attention from one thing to another, neither the first nor the second is attended to very well. This is “attention residue” and it prevents us from doing our best work – perhaps we can also include building stronger relationships, collaborations, compassionate initiatives … .

Instead of being controlled by distraction, attractive life and work is about drawing near what we’re noticing, enabling us to bring out and to receive the fullness of whatever it is, (from the verb attrahere, from ad- “to” and trahere “draw”).

Now we’re bringing the strongest Self to the game.

(*From Cal Newport’s Deep Work.)
(**From Iris Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good.)