"Once she got to Brown, Howell found that she attended to the wonder of the hallowed halls of ivy much less than she had imagined. She also belatedly realized how many things she had really liked about Michigan, including friends, festive Big Ten football games, and the fine psychology department. “But I didn’t focus on those things when I was there,” she says, “because I was so fixated on my initial judgment that Michigan was not the school I wanted to go to.” As Howell’s story shows, attention orders but also limits your experience, which can be tricky where big decisions are concerned. Considering the number of fine colleges to choose from, students have to narrow their selection somehow or go mad. On the other hand, by zeroing in on certain criteria—a school’s status, say, or geographical location—and ignoring others, they can end up focused on one dimension of an important experience that might not prove to be as vital as they thought."
"Unlike some venerable figures, he doesn’t treat an interview as a monologue, but attends closely to his interlocutor’s remarks. When a comment questions or differs from his research findings, he says, “Interesting.” "
"Economics is concerned with making better decisions about money, but much of Kahneman’s current research focuses on making wiser choices about the even more valuable resource of your experience."
"As Kahneman says, “You can choose to put yourself in better rather than worse contexts and try to spend more time in the good situations.” "
" “Attention both to what you choose to experience and what you choose to think about it is at the very core of how I approach questions of well-being.” "
"Indeed, you don’t so much recall something that happened as reconstruct a facsimile of it. Moreover, this mental artifact is likely to be either more positive or negative in tone than was the actual event."
" “Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.” Why? “Because you’re thinking about it!” "
"As Kahneman says, “when planning for the future, we don’t consider that we will stop paying attention to a thing.” "
"The tendency to stop focusing on a particular event or experience over time, no matter how wonderful or awful, helps explain why the differences in well-being between groups of people in very different circumstances tend to be surprisingly small—sometimes astoundingly so. The classic examples are paraplegics and lottery winners, who respectively aren’t nearly as miserable or happy as you’d think. “That’s where attention comes in,” says Kahneman. “People think that if they win the lottery, they’ll be happy forever. Of course, they will not. For a while, they are happy because of the novelty, and because they think about winning all the time. Then they adapt and stop paying attention to it.” Similarly, he says, “Everyone is surprised by how happy paraplegics can be, but they are not paraplegic full-time. They do other things. They enjoy their meals, their friends, the newspaper. It has to do with the allocation of attention.”
Like couples who’ve just fallen in love, professionals starting a career, or children who go to camp for the first time, paraplegics and lottery winners initially pay a lot of attention to their new situation. Then, like everybody else, they get used to it and shift their focus to the next big thing. Their seemingly blasé attitude surprises us, because when we imagine ourselves in their place, we focus on how we’d feel at the moment of becoming paralyzed or wildly rich, when such an event utterly monopolizes one’s focus. We forget that we, too, would get used to wealth, a wheelchair, and most other things under the sun, then turn our attention elsewhere.
This attentional myopia is especially problematic when you’re trying to make important decisions about the future. Overlooking the fact that a romance’s honeymoon novelty must fade, an older man leaves a seemingly comfortable union of many years for a young “trophy wife,” only to find that he still faces the demands of marriage and misses the easy family life he shared with his first spouse. An urban couple decides that because they enjoy their country weekends so much, they should move to their rural hamlet for good, then later realize that on a full-time basis, they had rapidly adapted to and outgrown its limited resources. Offering a dizzying reconfiguration of the way we usually think, Kahneman says, “When you anticipate something, what you anticipate is memory more than experience.”
Forgetting that you’ll eventually stop paying attention to a new thing can skew not just big decisions about the future, but also the small ones that quietly but profoundly affect your present well-being. These “comforts,” as distinguished from “pleasures” by the late Stanford economist Tibor Scitovsky, are in fact “pleasures that you’ve stopped paying attention to,” says Kahneman. “The difference between them is clearly one of attention.”"
"Kahneman remarks on research that suggests older people connect more with the experiencing self, which is inclined to pay rapt attention to little everyday delights, like sunbeams dancing on water or music drifting through a window. “That sounds like a survivor’s experience,” he says. “A survivor appreciates life more. I think that’s true of old age, too. There are many small pleasures that I enjoy more now.” FEW THINGS ARE as important to your quality of life as your choices about how to spend the precious resource of your free time, but the different focuses of your experiencing and remembering selves can seriously perturb your decision-making in this regard."
"Why does Professor X agree to contribute a chapter to a colleague’s textbook when he knows that when he sits down to write, it’s going to be a nightmare? To Schwartz, the answer is that when you first think about a long-term project, you focus on the goal—the finished chapter, cleverly written and beautifully annotated—and barely consider the matter of how you’ll get to that point."
"Observing that New York City recently appeared at the very bottom of a list of America’s happiest cities, Schwartz says that one reason is that its infinite number of options for dining, entertainment, the arts, shopping, and everything else drives people crazy. To the argument that New Yorkers live there because of the options, Schwartz patiently responds, “But a lot of research shows that people don’t know themselves very well and are characteristically their own worst enemies.” "
"In an age of constant assaults on your attention, sanity requires that you tune out many of them, beginning with those from your own communications devices."
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grok:
"Chapter Eight explores how attention profoundly influences decision-making, well-being, and the quality of our experiences, drawing heavily on insights from psychologist Daniel Kahneman and real-life examples. It emphasizes that attention not only shapes what we notice but also limits our perceptions, leading to potential pitfalls in both major life choices and everyday judgments.
The Role of Attention in Limiting and Shaping Experiences
The chapter opens with the story of a student named Howell, who transferred from the University of Michigan to Brown University, fixated on prestige and location. She later regretted it, realizing she had overlooked positive aspects of Michigan (like friends, football games, and a strong psychology department) due to her narrow focus. This illustrates a core theme: attention helps us narrow options in complex decisions (e.g., choosing a college from countless alternatives), but overemphasizing certain criteria—such as status—can distort outcomes. By zeroing in on one dimension, we risk undervaluing others that might prove more fulfilling.
Kahneman's Insights on Wiser Choices and Well-Being
Kahneman, a Nobel laureate in economics, shifts the discussion from financial decisions to optimizing the "more valuable resource" of personal experience. He advocates deliberately placing oneself in positive contexts to enhance well-being, stating, "You can choose to put yourself in better rather than worse contexts and try to spend more time in the good situations." Attention is central: focusing on what we experience and how we interpret it forms the foundation of happiness. However, memory plays tricks—recollections are reconstructions, often more positive or negative than the original event, influenced by our current focus.
A key Kahneman quote underscores the chapter's thesis: "Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it." This "focusing illusion" arises because intense attention amplifies significance temporarily. Over time, we adapt and shift focus, explaining why lottery winners aren't perpetually ecstatic and paraplegics aren't constantly miserable. Both groups initially fixate on their new reality but eventually redirect attention to routine joys like meals, friends, or reading. This adaptation reveals why well-being differences between people in vastly different circumstances are often smaller than expected—we imagine extremes based on initial focus, forgetting we'll habituate.
Attentional Myopia in Future Planning
The chapter delves into how failing to anticipate adaptation skews decisions. Kahneman notes, "When planning for the future, we don’t consider that we will stop paying attention to a thing." Examples include an older man leaving his long-term marriage for a younger partner, only to miss the familiarity once novelty fades, or urbanites relocating to the countryside full-time, underestimating how quickly they'll adapt to its charms and crave variety. Intriguingly, Kahneman reframes anticipation: "When you anticipate something, what you anticipate is memory more than experience." This highlights a disconnect between our "experiencing self" (immersed in the moment) and "remembering self" (focused on peaks, ends, and narratives).
Even small decisions suffer from this. "Pleasures" become "comforts" when we stop attending to them, per economist Tibor Scitovsky—familiar joys like a cozy home lose their spark without mindful focus. Older people, Kahneman observes, often reconnect with the experiencing self, savoring everyday delights (e.g., sunbeams or music) more deeply, akin to a "survivor's" heightened appreciation for life.
Challenges in Free Time and Overchoice
Decisions about free time are particularly vulnerable, as the experiencing self (enjoying the process) clashes with the remembering self (prioritizing outcomes). For instance, Professor X agrees to write a textbook chapter, enchanted by the envisioned end product, but dreads the grind when actually doing it. Psychologist Barry Schwartz adds depth, noting how excessive options in vibrant cities like New York—endless dining, entertainment, and shopping—can overwhelm and diminish happiness, ranking it low in well-being surveys. People often misjudge their needs, becoming "their own worst enemies" amid abundance.
Protecting Attention in a Distracted World
The chapter concludes by stressing the need for selective attention in an era of constant stimuli. Sanity demands tuning out distractions, especially from devices, to preserve focus on what truly matters. Overall, Gallagher weaves these ideas into a call for mindful attention management: by understanding its biases and limits, we can make decisions that foster deeper, more sustained well-being rather than fleeting highs."
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