Transitions, Transformations and a Little Photography
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Focus - Attention and Savouring Life
How many times have we heard this phrase as we were growing up - attending a boring event or classes at school. I’ve just finished reading a book titled Rapt by Winnifred Gallagher and I must say that it has been very impactful and not really what I expected. That’s a great combination in my mind and it makes it easy to recommend this book for those interested in attention or living a more focused life.
Early in the book is a quote by Ellen Langer who says that “the term mindfulness wouldn’t be necessary if most people didn’t have such an impoverished, static understanding of what ‘paying attention means’.” Let me start off by saying that I am rather envious of Langer’s ability to put together words and the way she turns a phrase - it tickles my brain.
Doing Deep Work
I’ve been doing some reading (shocking I know) about a concept referred to as Deep Work. Cal Newport digs into this concept in his book of the same name and I found myself fascinated with exploring this further (there’s some irony in doing deep work on deep work, but I digress).
The idea of deep work is spending focused and significant time on substantial efforts of craftsmanship - and the idea of craftsmanship is not restricted to things that you make by hand - it refers to any endeavour. In our current culture there is so much emphasis on productivity and efficiency with praise going to “multitaskers” and those who can juggle multiple projects or concepts at the same time.
I have come to be quite skeptical of multitasking - I used to think that I was proficient at juggling and completing a variety of tasks simultaneously,