Attention Hierarchies Part II
From Helpless to Hierarchies
Anyone here who knows me in real life knows I’m a bit of a data geek. In fact, many of you who might be wondering how you got on this list landed here because you responded to a Social Emotional Learning survey. (link to results)
Embracing data has its pros and cons. First of all, who asked you to go look at the data and interpret it for yourself? Secondly, who knows if you interpreted it properly? Finally, there’s the popular facial expression that says, so what am I supposed to do with that?
My issue is that there is rarely compiled and sorted data that looks at the intersections I’m concerned with, data that focuses on the people I’m trying to give voice to in my work. When I look at the readership of this content, I see your trust (ChatGPT actually pulled that golden nugget out), and I see you interest and a clue that I might be adding value. I want to focus on how to do more of that as I continue to learn your preferences.
My husband and I discovered how we each set priorities the other day, and it was eye-opening to say the least. Some people sort tasks from easy to hard, we’ll call that the running start. Some go from hard to easy (those are the pros). Some sort by their favorite part of the task (the creative door). Some by how many friends they can get on board (the butterfly effect), and so on.
It occurs to me that how we prioritize tasks, energy, and thus attention, has more fingerprint-level customization than not. That means we all do it differently, even though we like to act like it all starts with a list, and ends in completion. Once you add reward or punishment, you begin to have absolutely no idea how anyone gets anything done!
You may notice that I lean less into labels in this forum and more into symptoms. That’s what brings me to this work. Once we acknowledge intersectionality between a number of factors that impact how humans think, we’re rarely talking about one thing, one diagnosis, or one barrier.
My conversations with practitioners and teachers follow that thread. But there remains, at times, a gap between what’s needed and what’s possible. More labeling isn’t going to get us there. Students, and adults alike, need ways to access and retain content.
Let’s start by looking at a very universal challenge of our time: attention.
I used the term Attention Hierarchy in a previous post and I wanted to revisit it to bring clarity to what I mean.
