When you pay attention to one thing, there is an opportunity cost – you could be paying attention to something else, like one of your loved ones, a meaningful project, your source of income, or a hobby you love.

When you get sucked into a dumb argument online or read an upsetting news story (that will never lead you to take any kind of positive action), you’re consuming moments of attention that could be better used.

What is less obvious than that, though, is that we can create more moments of attention – because often we’re not doing anything in particular, or we’re just partially paying attention, or we’re letting our minds wander without attention in a pointless or stressful way (rather than in an interesting, relaxing, fun or helpful way).

We can create more moments of attention within our familiar activities to make them even better – like being more present with a loved one or new acquaintance, noticing more fully the delicious flavor of our food, or being more focused during our work (to get closer to peak performance).

Attention is what our life experiences are made of; it’s worth paying attention to what we pay attention to.

Or, as Sam Harris puts it: “How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives.”

This piece was first written on July 9, 2024, and first appeared on my website on September 9, 2024.

A. our theoretical understanding of what things are “really” like (physics, atoms, etc.)

with

B. our direct, first-hand experiences as humans.

Examples:

(1) Ethics – most people experience a visceral feeling that some things are inherently and universally morally wrong (e.g., murdering children). Yet it’s unclear what, in the universe of atoms (or in physics), could make (or explain) something being “wrong.”

(2) Free will – we feel as though we constantly make choices (e.g., picking options that we didn’t have to pick). Yet the possibility of choices is hard to square with the existence of laws of physics as we know them. Where could a choice possibly fit into those laws?

(3) Consciousness – we each know we are conscious (in the sense of having experiences / there being something it is like to be us) because we directly witness our own experiences. Yet it’s unclear how or why configurations of atoms could ever give rise to internal experiences.

(4) Identity – we feel like we have a unique, persistent, indivisible identity. Yet, if we imagine thought experiments involving splitting, copying, or rebuilding brains in the physical world, it’s hard to see how a unitary identity could be maintained in those circumstances.

(5) Knowledge – there seem to be many things we each intuitively know to be true (our own names, what orange juice tastes like, how to tie our shoelaces), yet it’s hard to explain what the state of “knowing” these things corresponds to in the world, or to define what “knowing” is.

(6) Mathematics – we all know it’s true that 1+1 = 2 and that the number 2 “exists” in some sense. But it’s hard to say in what sense this is true/existent because numbers and addition don’t seem to exist in the physical realm the way that, say, a particular sandwich does.

This piece was first written on December 23, 2020, and first appeared on this site on April 17, 2023.

If like most people, you think of yourself as continuously having free will in the future, you may have thoughts like:
(1) “I’ll have an hour to do this project tomorrow, so I don’t need to do it now.”
(2) “Once I’m back from vacation, I’ll start going to the gym every day.”
(3) “I don’t need to make this decision about where to invest my money now; I can make it at any time.”
(4) “I’ll choose not to eat these delicious cookies that I’m leaving out on the kitchen table.”

When you start thinking of your future self as having free will only intermittently, you instead ask yourself things like:
(1) “Do I expect that during that hour I have available tomorrow I’ll do this project? What does my past behavior imply about whether I will actually do it?”
(2) “Based on what I know about myself, will I start going to the gym daily when I’m back from vacation? If I had to bet money on it, which side would I bet on?”
(3) “If I don’t make this investment decision now, when do I predict I will make it? Will it be later this week, or more realistically, months from now?”
(4) “Even if I successfully avoid eating the cookies on the table a few of the times that I pass them, do I expect that I will avoid it every time? Or will I eventually give in and eat them?”

Additionally, when you think of yourself as having a reliably controllable free will for only the next 5 minutes, and start, therefore, viewing free will as precious, you may say to yourself things like:
(1) “Since I don’t actually expect I’ll spend that hour tomorrow doing the project, I’d better do it now.”
(2) “Since I probably won’t start going to the gym daily when I’m back from vacation as things currently stand, I’d better use the next 5 minutes to begin tweaking the situation to increase my odds of success, such as by picking the gym I’ll go to, and asking a friend that lives nearby if he wants to go to the gym with me regularly “
(3) “Since this investment decision will never feel urgent, I know I’ll probably by default put off making it for a long time, but since I don’t have time to make the decision thoroughly right now, I should set aside 3 hours on Saturday to do it, which I can block off in my calendar right now.”
(4) “Since I am in control of the decision right now, I should put the cookies into a jar that is out of sight, so that I won’t be tempted over and over again every time I pass the table.”

A second way to think of this:

If you almost always drink more than you want to when you go out with your friend Don, you’ll almost certainly do it next time, too, unless something about you or that situation is significantly different next time around.

More generally, if you almost always do action A1 in situation S1, why would you assume you’ll now instead do a different action A2 in the same situation? The fact that you can “choose” to do A2 instead of A1 is not convincing because last time and the time before that, you could have chosen A2 instead, but you didn’t, you chose A1.

The causes of you doing A1 last time will likely cause you to do A1 again. If you want to do A2 instead of A1, then you should do what you can right now (while you have awareness and control over the next 5 minutes) to change the future situation from S1 to S2, where S2 is a new situation that pushes the balance towards you doing action A2 instead of A1. It could be that the change from S1 to S2 is a change you make in the surrounding environment (e.g., moving the cookies), or it could be a change in yourself (e.g., reminding yourself regularly about why you care about going to the gym), but, whatever it is, it had better be a change. Otherwise, you’re stuck doing A1.

A third way to think of it:

It’s often useful to predict the behaviors of your future self, much like you’d predict the behaviors of other people, adopting the “outside view.”

You have 5 minutes of free will available to you right now, at this moment, if you choose to use it. It’s precious. What will you use it for?

Note: I highly recommend that you don’t just read this list of steps, but instead, that you actually do them! Reading these steps will not give you any benefit, but doing them might!

Step 1 – Think for a moment about the person who is the best influence on you, or the person in your life you don’t see that much that you most admire the traits or actions of.

Step 2 – Visualize something great this person did or said, or think of a trait of theirs you admire.

Step 3 – Ask yourself: are you sure you don’t want to make an effort to spend more time with this person than you do now? Consider sending them a message now to make plans to see them.

Step 4 – Think for a moment about the person who is the worst influence on you, or the person in your life that you see regularly whose actions or personality you least respect.

Step 5 – Visualize something distasteful this person did or said, or think of a trait of theirs that you don’t respect.

Step 6 – Ask yourself: are you sure you want to spend as much time with this person as you have been spending?

It’s as accurate as it is cliché: your choice of who to spend time with shapes what sort of person you become and what you value.

So why do we behave in these strange ways? Well, here’s my list of reasons we so often fail to act in our own self-interest. As you can see, the reasons are numerous.

Note: the items listed are neither mutually exclusive nor collectively exhaustive. Some reasons are connected, and sometimes multiple reasons apply in the same scenario.

(1) Misinformation – believing an action is in your self-interest when it isn’t, or that an action isn’t in your self-interest when it is (e.g., taking useless nutritional supplements daily, because you’ve heard they are helpful but are unaware of the significant risk they pose to your liver)

(2) Temptation – choosing a tempting, short-term benefit over a larger long-term benefit (e.g., eating the chocolate cake that you know you’ll regret tomorrow)

(3) Avoidance – avoiding a certain choice based on its short-term consequences, even though it could be better for you long-term (e.g., staying in an unhealthy relationship to avoid a painful breakup)

(4) Anxiety – avoiding a beneficial action out of fear of possible consequences (e.g., avoiding public speaking opportunities because they cause anxiety despite enjoying public speaking overall) [This is similar to Avoidance, but different because Avoidance is based on a real consequence, as opposed to irrational fear.]

(5) Altruism – acting in a way that is beneficial to a person or cause but harmful to you in some way (e.g., donating a substantial portion of your income to an effective charity) [this is a positive reason but included for comprehensiveness] 

(6) Forgetting – simply not remembering to act on something that is beneficial (e.g., forgetting to take your medicine)

(7) Confusion – not knowing how to carry out a beneficial action properly (e.g., you want to lift weights weekly to be healthier, but do not have sufficient training on the correct form to avoid injury)

(8) Distraction – intending to carry out a beneficial action but getting sidetracked during the process (e.g., sitting down at 6 pm for daily journaling but being called away to help your child)

(9) Delaying – pushing a beneficial action into the future since it has no clear deadline (e.g., you know you really should get treatment for your sleep problems that are ruining your happiness, but you’re busy and plan to address it next month)

(10) Helplessness – you’re convinced that attempts to take a beneficial action will inevitably fail, so lack the motivation to try (e.g., you feel that you’re dumb and will get bad grades no matter what, so you feel unmotivated to try in school)

(11) Unmotivated – knowing a certain action is good for you, in theory, but not feeling driven to do it (e.g., you know your current job is not a good fit for you but never feel motivated to search for a different one)

(12) Habits – you fall into harmful, subconsciously triggered routines of behavior or perpetually behave in a way that inhibits beneficial outcomes (e.g., you have a habit of fixating on negative traits of other people, and this makes it hard to develop deep friendships)

(13) Unequipped – you lack the ability or resources to carry out a beneficial action due to a lack of practice or training (e.g., you know it’s important to communicate honestly with your romantic partner, but struggle to put your thoughts and challenges into words)

(14) Love – making a sacrifice for a person with whom you have a close personal relationship (e.g., a parent who works an extra job so as to send their child to a better school they couldn’t otherwise afford) [similar to altruism, but more personal than acting out of general goodwill]

(15) Punishment – you punish yourself because you feel you deserve it, or to harm others indirectly (e.g., a teenager who engages in self-harm because they believe they are worthless or because they know it upsets their parents)

(16) Overwhelm – you have too many choices or too much information related to a certain action, so you shutdown or stick with the first or easiest choice (e.g., you know you should carefully select details of your 401(k) plan but, after reviewing three dozen options, you get frustrated and leave it at the default setting)

(17) Reactance – you resist outside efforts to control you (e.g., an employee who intentionally takes three cups of coffee per day in order to flout the two cup limit)

(18) Freedom – you choose to act contrary to your self-interest solely to demonstrate (to yourself or others) your freedom to choose (e.g., a person who makes a minor bad decision to show they could do so any time, if desired)

(19) Impulse – you feel a strong, subconscious-rooted urge to carry out certain harmful actions (e.g., a person who feels a strong urge to curse constantly)

(20) Expectations – you are expected to or pressured to act a certain way, and you are either used to satisfying expectations or desire social acceptance (e.g., an unbelieving person attends weekly religious services long-term solely because the community views them as devout) 

(21) Over-optimizing – you expend so much time, attention, or effort toward improving on a process or decision that you end up losing more than you gained (e.g., someone who changes projects every year because they want to find the very “best” project but actually accomplishes little because the projects are all left unfinished)

(22) Fatigue – you do not have the cognitive resources to make a good judgment at that moment [resulting from lack of sleep, burnout, drugs, etc.]

(23) Misjudgment – you misjudge the relevant probabilities or values involved in a choice and so choose the wrong one (e.g., making a bad stock market investment because of misanalysis of the relevant factors) 

(24) Uncertainty – you avoid options that are uncertain or ambiguous because certainty makes you more comfortable (e.g., someone who passes on a new interactive theatre experience, something they have no previous experience with, to instead watch a movie they’ve seen fifteen times)

(25) Inertia – you stick to the decision you previously made, or the path you’re already going down, even though it is clearly no longer beneficial (e.g., you’ve finished the first year of law school and, even though you don’t like it or want to be a lawyer anymore, you don’t withdraw) 

(26) Haste – you make a decision under time pressure and therefore don’t consider all the options or don’t consider the options thoroughly enough (e.g., a deer runs into the road, and you decide to swerve left even though it would have been a lot safer to swerve right)

(27) Prioritization – you expend effort or resources to make good decisions in some areas but not in those that are less important to you (e.g., a person chooses to focus their entire energy on getting healthy but neglects interpersonal relationships)

(28) Morality – you think it would be immoral to take the action that is most in your self-interest, or you feel guilty thinking about taking it (e.g., you really want a stereo and know you wouldn’t be caught stealing it, but you won’t take it anyway) 

(29) Emotion – you are experiencing intense emotions that alter your perception of what a good decision would be (e.g., you are really pissed off, so you punch the person that you’re talking to)

(30) Complexity – the decision is too complex for you to reason about effectively or too different from previous decisions you’ve made for your intuition to be reliable (e.g., you’ve just been elected president, and now you have to make decisions involving hundreds of factors and hard to predict second-order effects in areas that you’re not an expert in)

(31) Identity – you think of yourself as the sort of person who does X, so you choose to do X to maintain this self-identity or as a shortcut in decision-making (e.g., a person who thinks of themselves as a non-drinker and so doesn’t even consider the option of drinking in cases where they could potentially benefit)

(32) Attention – you make self-harming decisions because you want others to notice you, step in to help you or show that they care (e.g., a person who burns themselves with cigarettes so that others will notice the burns and feel concerned)

(33) Myopia – you think that your options are more limited than they are or you fail to fully consider what your best option is (e.g., you quit your job because you think of your options as either “stay” or “quit,” whereas you would have actually been better off renegotiating your role without quitting)

(34) Normality – you don’t want to take any action that may be considered strange, odd or weird (e.g., even though you are confident you would be better off having an open relationship rather than a monogamous one, you would not consider it because in your culture that would be a “strange” lifestyle)