Three Minutes

How many times have you watched, listened to, or read something without fully watching, listening, or reading it?

How many times have you started something under the shadow of something else that you had to do next?

I don’t know what works for you, but I’ll tell you what works (and doesn’t) for me when it comes to my attention.

What doesn’t work is telling myself that I want to read an eight-minute article, when I don’t really have eight minutes, or, when I just want to get done with it as quickly as possible.

Then, I don’t really read it well at all, and perhaps even feel doubly disappointed that I read poorly, may have to read it again, and did not use my own time to the best of my ability.

What does work is, when I decide that I want to pay attention to something, to fully pay attention to it for the duration. To commit to investing the time, and not to shortchange it, or anything else, by dividing it.

Then, when you watch a three-minute music video, you get back the best three-minute experience possible, because you didn’t split it with anything else.