Commitment- the act of saying you’re going to do something and then sticking with it until you’ve done it.

Attention - the act of allocating some of your finite capacity to focus on something that you might or might not have committed to. 

Commitment and Attention are coworkers. Commitment can’t accomplish anything without Attention. Without Commitment, Attention can’t do anything important​​​. Commitment is the ambitious one. Attention, the energetic. Attention provides the fuel and Commitment the discipline. When they’re working together, they’re unstoppable.

Commitment enforces the decision to get a college degree. Attention does all the studying. Commitment is the one who understands which distractions to say ’no’ to and why. Attention has a little bit of ADHD, prone to chasing shiny objects. Commitment has to reel Attention back in from time to time.

This dynamic duo shows up not just in the big things but also in the small. Oldheads love to pine for the days of Blockbuster Video. When you left Blockbuster and drove home with the movie you chose, Commitment rode with you in the passenger seat.

Turns out, when we got instant access to information at our fingertips, it affected Commitment’s ability to do its job. 

You already know the scenario I’m about to describe. You’re sitting on your couch. You pick up the remote and launch Netflix. Commitment has left the building. Attention is unmoored. Attention keeps riffling through the genres. It’s taken 20 minutes to “decide” on a movie. Attention taps play. Eight minutes later, Attention is restless. Maybe Instagram? Maybe we didn’t pick the right movie? Is this movie even good? It turns out Commitment was the one who was making you watch the movie from start to finish. This is what happens when Attention runs amok. The experience suffers. So, oldheads pine for the days of Blockbuster. 

What if I told you Commitment is still with us? 

I find it interesting that Commitment seems to be clawing back some of its territory lately. As of this writing, people are flocking to the theater to see Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. The movie theater seems to be back in the zeitgeist this summer more so than recent years. I suspect this is happening because people are rediscovering Commitment.

I recently hired Commitment to pick out an album for me to buy. Yes, you just read that right. I purchased (with money) a music album. And then I proceeded to listen to that album over and over. I gotta say, the experience was a lot of fun. Commitment was ever-present. It reminded me of the iPod days. (Commitment thrived on the iPod just as it did at Blockbuster.) Ultimately what I got out of it is the reason why we listen to music in the first place - enjoyment in its purest form.