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Tag: attentionometer

What is an Attentionometer?

This is a continuation from the two previous posts about David Delp’s talk on connecting with what matters. He encouraged setting goals every week.

The first step is to figure out what your’e paying attention to.

The second step is to then look at what you’d like to pay more and less attention to.

Once you see what’s most important, it’s not about how long it takes. It’s small things. Like a phone call.

“Our attention happens in the smallest moments and they happen in the smallest ways,” said Delp.

In Roman times sports were used to distract citizens from paying attention to what the government was doing.

The Attentionometer was introduced in a short workshop after Delp’s talk. It came in a small hand-sized pouch, like the kind you’d imagine is full of golden nuggets and easily fits in your purse or backpack. Inside were sticks the shape of popsicle sticks that were color coded to represent the various sectors of life, like green for financial, red for love, etc. And to begin using the Attentionometer, we laid out three cards, like 3 headers to three columns in a document. “Not Enough,” “Enough,” and “Too Much” were the three headers.

This was a lovely visual inventory of where time was going. There’s more to the Attentionometer. David Delp’s giving a workshop on Sunday, January 30th in San Francisco: “The Game of Goals, How to Make Going There Even Better than Getting There.” For more details see his site at GameOfGoals.com.

What are goals about, really? Delp says it’s about making a plan, doing it and seeing how it goes.

David Delp on Connecting with What’s Important

Focusing
The energy of the new year inspired me to attend a zealous talk given by David Delp about connecting with what’s important.

A designer by trade and an artist by heart, Delp is creative director of Designing a Balanced Life. He teaches a 10 week course of the same title at a local college and has invented the Attentionometer and The Game of Goals. (See future postings for more about the Attentionometer and information about his upcoming workshop).

“Goals don’t make us happier. What we really want is feeling immersed in something important to us,” said Delp. He referred to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book, Flow.

“Our attention is our most precious resource. Yet we give it freely to strangers who also take our time, money and energy and give little back. Learn to focus your attention and everything else will follow. Learn to lose yourself doing something you care about, and the world is yours again.”

What we are striving for is resonance. And Delp said resonance is when our hearts line up with our minds. Our breath is what gets our hearts connected to our minds. So we took a long pause and a deep breath.

Read my next posting for more of David Delp’s inspirational talk.

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