Up: [[Pay Attention MOC]] Created: 2023-09-20 Updated: 2024-12-26 | Daylight | Starlight | Spotlight | | ---------------------- | ----------------------- | ----------------------- | | ![[Daylight.webp\|200]] | ![[Starlight.webp\|200]] | ![[Spotlight.webp\|200]] | | Clarity | Direction | Action | ## Spotlight Spotlight is the form of attention we most often recognize. And it is important. But not in the way we typically know it. Recall your days in school. Remember the teacher’s command to “Pay attention!” In schools I attended or that I worked in, it was often prefaced by “Sit up straight!” It’s the laser focus idea of attention, the “keep that thing in your sights and don’t let it move” kind of attention. And its wrong. Spotlight attention is rigid and narrow and it actually shuts off thinking. Mindfulness and mindset professor Ellen Langer gave a bunch of seven year olds from different schools a problem to solve. She asked: *There are 26 sheep and 10 goats on a ship. How old is the captain?* Nearly 90% of children from traditional classrooms answered 36. Not one child said that the problem didn’t make sense. Outside of school, there is another form of attention we can call a spotlight. It’s an active, probing attention for the purpose of getting things done, whether those things are actions you are taking, or thoughts you are contemplating. There are at least two other kinds/purposes for attention. ## Daylight We see things most clearly in daylight. So daylight attention refers to the values, the intentions you want to be living in your life. Without clarity around this, chances are good that you’re living reactively, lost in a bunch of minor goals and meaningless distractions. If spotlight is the actions, the thinking you’re doing, and daylight is the values/intentions that determine your actions, we’re missing something in between. ## Starlight The gap is filled by a kind of attention we can think of as starlight. That’s the attention you give to long-term goals and projects, efforts, endeavours. It’s about knowing the goals, habits, and [[Vital Behaviours]] that will take you there. > [!Orbit] Omar N. Bradley > Set your course by the stars, not the light of every passing ship. To not do that can result in **disaster**, a word that I’m thrilled to learn means *to be separated from one’s stars.* ## Super Important Takeaway For both starlight and daylight, we need time and attention that is in the form of reflection and introspection. [[Productivity Fails Without Wandertivity]]. So does a realized life. > [!User] The [[Metaphor]] of the three lights comes from James Williams > > a former Google strategist, now working on the philosophy of ethics and technology at Oxford. He is quoted in Johann Hari’s book, *Stolen Focus*