The Almanack of Good Life is where I share all that I am reading and reflecting upon about living a good life. In this age of constant information overload, I’ve found immense value in taking time to pause and reflect upon meaningful insights about life. This newsletter is my way of sharing that journey with you.Get The Almanack of Good Life in your inboxSign up below to receive The Almanack of Good Life in your inbox. You also get access to my free investing newsletter The Journal of Investing Wisdom, and all the bonus e-books and special reports that come alongwith it. All for FREE!No charge. Unsubscribe anytime.The Gift of AttentionI have been reflecting on a thought that will not leave me alone, that where I put my attention is where my life really goes. And I mean, literally.William James, the father of modern psychology, put it in plain words back in 1890:My experience is what I agree to attend to.He is not saying attention shapes my experience. He is saying my attention is my experience. The life I will one day look back on, the life that will feel like it was mine, is made of nothing else than the things I chose to notice along the way. We all have the same twenty-four hours. But if I spend my mornings scrolling through outrage and other people’s highlight reels, that becomes the actual texture of my inner life. And if I spend them in the sun, or listening to someone I love talk about their ordinary day, that becomes my life instead. The hours are identical, but the lives could not be more different.This is why distraction has started to frighten me a little. There is an entire industry now, worth trillions, built by very clever people to capture and resell my attention, and when I remember what James said, I realise they are not really competing for my time in some abstract sense. They are competing for my life, minute by minute. Every notification feels like a small tug on the thread of my existence. That way, guarding my attention stops feeling like a productivity hack and starts feeling a lot more like self-defence.But the part that has humbled me most is what attention does for the people around me. Simone Weil, the French philosopher, wrote in a 1942 letter:Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.She then writes:Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.If we turn our mind toward the good, it is impossible that little by little the whole soul will not be attracted thereto in spite of itself.When I give someone my full, undivided attention, I am effectively saying, without a single word, that for this moment nothing in the world matters more than them. And Weil calls it the rarest generosity because it costs the one thing I can never make more of. Money I can earn back. But these minutes of real presence, once spent staring at a screen while someone speaks to me, are simply gone. Forever.I have noticed how starved most of us are just to be truly seen by another human being who is fully there. It is such a small thing to offer. It is also the thing I most often forget to give the people I assume will always be around.So this is where I have landed, at least for now. My attention is not something I spend on my life. It is my life, arriving one moment at a time, asking only that I show up for it.Two Books. One Purpose. A Better Life.“Template on how to lead a happier and fuller life.”—Ramesh Damani, Member, BSE“Teaches you how to think, judge, and behave…”—Arnold V. D. Berg, Century Mgt.Click here to buy The Long GameClick here to buy SketchbookClick here to buy the combo (The Long Game + Sketchbook)Notes to MyselfThe next time someone you love is talking to you, put the phone face down and just out of reach. Look at them properly. Give them the one thing that actually costs you something, your whole undivided self for a few unhurried minutes. They will feel it, even if neither of you ever names it.***You do not have to travel far to find ‘wonder.’ It is already sitting on your desk, in the steam rising off your morning tea, and in the way the afternoon light falls across a wall. The world is never short of astonishing things. We are only ever short of the attention it takes to notice them.***Try doing just one thing at a time today. Eat when you eat. Walk when you walk. Listen when you listen. You may be surprised how much of your life you have been half-living, and how full a single ordinary moment becomes the day you finally give it all of you.Book RecommendationFour Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman is the rare book about time management that is really a book about how to live. Its starting point is a single sobering fact. If you are lucky enough to live to eighty, you get roughly four thousand weeks on this earth. That is the whole allotment. It feels shockingly short.Most productivity advice tries to help you cram more into those weeks. Burkeman argues that we will never get on top of everything, that we are finite creatures who cannot do it all, and that the moment we truly accept this is the moment we are freed to actually live. Because once you stop trying to attend to everything, you can finally choose what deserves your attention. And choosing, with all the loss that choosing involves, is what a meaningful life is made of.Read it slowly, maybe a few pages each morning, and it should leave you calmer rather than more anxious, which is not what you expect from a book about mortality. It pairs beautifully with everything above, because in the end attention and time are the same currency wearing two different faces. How I spend my attention is simply how I spend my life, one week at a time.Quotes I am Reflecting OnA wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.– Herbert SimonThe present moment is the only moment available to us, and it is the door to all moments.– Thich Nhat HanhHow we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.– Annie DillardThat’s all from me for today.Let me know your thoughts on this issue of The Almanack of Good Life newsletter, and ways I can improve it. Also, if you have ideas or resources you think I can share in future letters, please email them to me at vishal[at]safalniveshak[dot]com.If you know someone who may benefit from today’s post, please share it with them.Also check out –Online courses on value investing, financial statements analysis, and financial freedom.The One Percent Show – Interviews with legends in investing and businessThe Inner Game Podcast – Monologues on investing, decision making, learning, and living a good lifeBooks – All the books I have written and published so farThank you for your time and attention.~ VishalThe post The Gift of Attention appeared first on Safal Niveshak.