Attention in Belgravia

I watch almost no TV.  We cut the cable last year and haven’t looked back.  However, I occasionally watch a show on Netflix.  This weekend, I greatly enjoyed A Scandal in Belgravia from the BBC Sherlock series, and I noticed that Sherlock Holmes and I have something in common. (It is not arriving in Buckingham Palace covered only by a bed sheet).  In the series, Sherlock sometimes drifts off into thought and loses all track of time and place.  He may “come to” several hours later and claim that he was just talking to someone a minute ago.  Sometimes when I run, the same thing happens.  After five minutes of running, my mind becomes so engrossed in some topic that when I get back to the house I have little or no recollection of the physical world I just ran through.  I think it is because my brain starts working on something with such incredible focus and attention that I am totally oblivious to the world around me.

I have been paying closer attention to attention after starting Chade-Meng Tan’s book, Search Inside Yourself.  Chade-Meng Tan started his employment at Google as an engineer, but has shifted his focus to helping his colleagues and others gain emotional intelligence through mindfulness.  His current job title with Google is “Jolly Good Fellow.”  Tan writes a lot about attention in the book and how we can all grow our ability to attend.  One type of attention that he describes is where focus is intense on one thing, like a spotlight shining on one object.  I believe that this is the type of focus that Sherlock and I experience when lost in thought.  The other type of attention that he describes is one where the focus is everywhere, a light shining from one place to another, taking in everything.  Perhaps an example of this type of focus is when Sherlock Holmes observes a crime scene.  Tan believes that by practicing, anyone can refine and improve the ability to attend in both ways.  I’m interested to find out as I attempt to practice his techniques. After all, the more I can control my attention, the more I will learn.