Habits of Attention

Sometimes a habit is a placeholder for attention.

The habit of daily tracking a budget through a smartphone app can keep us attentive to our financial obligations and goals.

The habit of keeping a food journal can lead to a better diet and weight loss simply through creating attentiveness to food.

The habit of reading the verse of the day can keep us pegged to the Word of God.

Each instance of the habit is technically dispensable. A budget does not require daily tracking. A food journal is not actual eating. And one verse a day is hardly a revelation.

Because one instance of the habit is dispensable, we might be tempted to think the habit itself is dispensable. But…

The habit, as a whole, is necessary. Even when it does not seem necessary. Perhaps especially when it does not seem necessary. Because it can assure our attention.

The succession of moments, the stacking on of instances over years, the steady on of monotony, can focus our attention, and that drives real change.

So we might be wise to embrace the long arc of a habit when the individual instances feel flat because that habit can drive our attention. And our attention shapes our souls.

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” – Jesus (Matthew 6:22–23, ESV).