Hi, I'm Sam and this is The Deliberate. I'm taking a break from the normal format this week to share some thoughts that I've been wrestling with for the last few days. Thank you for giving me the space to explore this and not just carry on business-as-usual.
Experimenting with my attention and then writing about what I’m learning is dripping with white privilege.
I don’t worry about being shot by the police. I don’t have to navigate an inherently racist society that systematically puts me at a disadvantage. I don’t have to carefully protect my attention just to navigate my daily life. Walking out my front door does not put me on alert.
Therefore, I have plenty of attention available for things like personal development and silly experiments like not drinking coffee for a week or trying to run everyday for a week. Creating artificial constraints and challenges to better understand myself and my capabilities has felt like a worthwhile endeavor — until recently.
The past few weeks have made this hobby and intellectual curiosity feel woefully out of touch and more than a little embarrassing.
I’ve always believed that the only thing I should worry about is the way I show up and interact with the world. That if I’m deliberately “not racist” (an admittedly low bar to clear) then I’m doing my part to make the world a better place. This is why I'm so obsessed about attention and what it means to make good decisions about how to use it.
Where I've gone wrong is thinking that the best use of that attention is to direct it mostly inward. To better understand and learn about myself. At best, it’s simply myopic. At worst, it has made me an unwitting accomplice to the construction of the racist society we find ourselves in.
A personal development philosophy built on the deliberate use of attention feels insufficient in this moment. It puts an unfair expectation on folks who rightfully don't have freely available attention because they are using all of it — and then some — just to navigate a racist society.
I don’t know what this means for the future of this newsletter and my other writing. For now, though, I just wanted to say that I’m just starting to scratch the surface of understanding my own privilege and how it permeates everything I do — including writing about meaningful attention and personal development. I’d like to think that this will push me to further develop and improve my ideas to be more accessible and useful for even more people in the future.
For now, though, I’m going to use some of my privileged attention to be quiet, listen, and learn from others who have been thinking about this topic for much longer than I have.
Your friend,
Sam