You Are What You Pay Attention To

How often do you think about your death? A few years ago, a little book by Matthew McCullough called Remember Death convinced me that awareness of mortality leads to wisdom. The book explores the meaning of Psalm 90:12 (“So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom”) and concludes that realism regarding our inevitable end grants unmatched perspective that helps us see the world and our place within it rightly. God used that book to mercifully plant regular thoughts about my own impending demise into my mind.

Once we’re aware of our own death, we also become cognizant of the limited nature of time. Logically, this makes sense. If I know I only have one hour to write this article, I’m going to minimize distractions and focus intensely on the task at hand. Likewise, if I know I only have seventy or eighty years of life, I’m going to think more reflectively about how I use the limited amount of time I have left. Awareness of time’s limitation should lead us to better use of it.

In a very real sense, what we choose to pay attention to defines our lives. You may even say, “We are what we pay attention to.” It’s really just another way of saying something else that the Bible affirms again and again: we are what we worship, or we are what we love. We will devote our lives to whatever it is we value the most, and taking inventory of what we pay attention to is one measurable way to calculate it. At the end of our lives, what has most shaped us into who we are will be what we chose to give our attention to. What we pay attention to becomes our lives.

Does that cause you to pause? I pray it does.

It’s so easy to read over something like this, pause, reflect, choose to agree or disagree, and then continue on with our busy lives. But this isn’t that kind of thing. This realization should lead us to reflection and change. If I am what I pay attention to, then I need to reflect on my life habits and prioritize only the things I believe are most important. Attention is a finite resource, which simply means that if I give it to one thing, I’m taking it away from something else. And if I’m giving my attention to things I don’t consider important, I need to recalibrate the habits of my life toward the things I most value.

During Lent, I decided to stay off all social media. While I believe social media can be a helpful tool, it’s designed by its creators to infiltrate our lives—to master us. Social media’s algorithms are designed to steal as much of our attention as possible to sell it to the highest bidder—the merchants who invest money in advertising. Social media, by design, wants all your attention. In one sense, then, we might even say that social media wants our lives. It wants our souls.

What I discovered probably won’t surprise anyone. I’m happier when I’m not on social media because I’m not daily encountering content designed to rile me up. I’m also more engaged in the things I want to devote my life to—things like Christ, family, church, prayer, deep study, and ministry. So, I decided to take a break. And now that Lent’s over I’m re-evaluating the normal rhythms of my life.

What about you? How do you use your time? What do you give the bulk of your attention to? Social media, for me, was the low hanging fruit. The truth about the life-defining nature of my limited attention has caused me to ask more penetrating questions about my life. Am I giving my attention to the things that I want to define my life?

What if you sat down and made an inventory of all the things you pay attention to in a given day? You would need to include things you listen to and websites you visit. You would also need to reflect deeply on your thought life—the places your mind automatically goes when you have an idle moment. Are those things helpful? Do they align with your values? Do they help you become the person you want to be?

You are what you pay attention to. It only makes sense to give your attention to things that help you become what you want to be.

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