Start as you wish to go on
The best days are those with the least fragmentation. If I start the day by watching half an hour of Reels and a few YouTube videos on various news items, for instance, my focus is obliterated, and it takes a while to bring things back to centre.
Attention is sacred. Philosopher Iain McGilchrist describes the process of directing one's attention as a moral act. There is something of divine importance in the relationship between our consciousness and the world. We have been given the responsibility of deciding the meeting point between our focus and the material world. We direct the beam of light that leaves our features and meets thought and object. We are human-sized, autonomous lighthouses, passing our attention over the landscape, illuminating certain things and ignoring others.
Attention is always being focused somewhere. Much of the time it is dissipated over numerous thoughts and objects. But it can also be channelled. The more concentrated its beam, the more likely the object of its focus will be brought into existence. Some days, my beam is all over the place, and I feel dissatisfied and deflated; that day’s ship crashes over the rocks. On others, it is purely and clearly focused, and I arrive back at port in the evening satisfied. Those are the best of days.
I find it difficult if I try to focus my old brain on to many things beginning of the day. One thought at a time is about all that it can handle and then its usually well focused, otherwise.. chaos.