text. Don’t forget: date picker!
A lot of people seem to be speeding up their favorite podcasts so they… I don’t really know why. There was a time when I accelerated movies; I especially remember when things weren’t going so well for me. Johann Hari would probably think his own. I first read about Hari in a story by Koen Haegens in The green† I am familiar with the term ‘time thieves’ from Haegens, which refers to the large tech companies that eat into our existence until we race day and night on their platforms between advertisements from incentive to incentive. Grab a date picker. Make an inventory of the agenda. Email dentist.
But: so Harry. In Lost attention he describes how he goes into seclusion for three months to write a novel. Once he escaped the time thieves, he notices that his ability to concentrate, which he feared would have been permanently damaged by the increasingly overwhelming amount of stimuli, was restored. Once back in his old life, that recovery turned out to be temporary. Send text back. Check email. Press releases. Delete unread. Check Junk Mail. Nothing desirable. Check in the Recycle Bin whether they were real press releases. Phone from unknown number. Do not pick up.
Haegens describes how Hari compares his brain to a nightclub whose bouncer has become overloaded, so that the dance floor is now filled with ‘noisy bastards who disrupt normal dancing’. Google Johann Hari. Prepare three articles about Johann Hari, read zero articles. Google ‘Nightclub Utrecht’. Google unknown number.
According to Hari, the collective loss of concentration means that it is becoming increasingly difficult for the individual to get into ‘the flow’, and that humanity is less able to concentrate on the colossal problems that threaten us. Hari is not the first: libraries have been written about the disastrous influence of technology on our ability to concentrate. From Carr via Baricco to – Googling – Spitzer. What I write here you have already read at least a hundred times, albeit seldom word for word and never all the way to the end. More scanning, to the point where you thought, well I kind of know. Set up music. VvE-mail. Agenda for meeting! text. Is there still bread. Twitter like on old column. Why isn’t that guy following me? Who does he follow then? News about D66. Nice song – no eavesdropping, directly in ‘Current Favorites’ list. Hey new follower† Text message. Package (for the neighbors). like. That unknown number again. email (URGENTLY – does not appear to be urgent).
Friends call me “unreachable” because I don’t have a smartphone and usually don’t answer the phone while I’m at work. Apparently ‘unreachable’ already feels terribly accessible. The world is incessantly whining for attention. To meet it, you twist into increasingly strange turns. You become more and more flexible. Not a moment wasted, not a minute uninformed. Oh, how much you know about little, and oh, what a wonderful noise that surrounds you. Minute Dick Voormekaar podcast. Music through it. Old book by Hari in shopping basket. Start new playlist.
In the afterword of friction (2020) philosopher Miriam Rasch writes about ‘positive silence’, which ‘provides creative, relaxing and productive solitude’. Somewhere in that silence is the concentration of which you should be able to recover fragments from the time thieves and the attention robbers to which you yourself now belong.
Once you’ve found it, try to play that silence as slowly as possible.
Until everything stops, just for a moment.
Date picker hello?!