Attention can be practised

On a morning train in Dubai, almost every head in the carriage is bent towards a screen. Most of those people did not decide what they would look at. A feed decided, one item at a time, and they went along.

It is easy to treat attention like the weather. Something that happens to us. We are distracted, or focused, or tired, as if those were conditions outside our control.

But pointing attention is a skill, like writing or driving or cooking. It can be done badly or well, and it gets better with practice. Someone who can read a long article without reaching for the phone was not born patient. They trained it, a little each day, the way a person strengthens a weak arm.

This matters more than it sounds. What we look at shapes what we know, and what we know shapes what we notice next. A month of looking at outrage produces a person who sees outrage everywhere. A month of looking closely at how people choose, buy, hesitate and change their minds produces someone who notices things nobody else in the carriage can see.

The feeds are very good at taking attention, and they get better at it every year. Resenting them changes nothing. Getting better at our own side of the exchange changes a great deal.