The Ethical Use of Attention

We speak easily about protecting our own attention. We speak much less about the ethics of requesting other people's, which is a thing all of us do many times a day and almost none of us examine.

A request for attention is a request for a portion of a finite life. That framing sounds heavy until you apply it, at which point it becomes merely practical: it produces shorter letters, fewer meetings, and a marked reduction in the sentence 'I just wanted to run something past you.'

The Institute has a specific exposure here. We ask a great deal of attention from our members — observances, correspondence, review, the long apparatus of participation. Each request is defensible individually. I am less sure about the sum.

An organization is entitled to ask for a person's time. It is not entitled to arrange matters so that the request never has to be made again.

I have proposed to the stewardship that each house publish, annually, the total hours it asks of a full member. The proposal has been received warmly and referred to continuity review, where warm proposals go.