Attentiveness

What Attentiveness means in a networked world

“The museum is free,” says the message you are about to forward. In the original notice, a smaller phrase follows: “on the first Sunday of each month.” You put the condition back before sending the invitation. The short version had offered your friends a month of Sundays; the ticket desk was unlikely to cooperate.

Attentiveness notices what brevity makes easy to lose. A condition, date or limitation can change how someone acts on a statement even when the main words remain correct. Read for the small phrase that carries the scope: who, when, where or under what conditions? Preserve it when passing the information on. This is the work of noticing what merits attention; assessing whether the notice itself is reliable calls for Discernment as well.

Attentiveness gives…

A carefully carried qualification lets people make plans that fit the actual offer. Concise communication can remain inviting and accurate when the reader receives the detail needed to use it.

Finding the balance

In ordinary life

A preliminary result

Keep “in this sample” or “during the trial” attached when those words limit the finding.

A borrowed sentence

Notice whether the sentence states a position, asks a question or quotes an objection before repeating it.

Nearby virtues, different work

Discernment

Attentiveness notices the limiting date. Discernment examines whether the notice supports the claim you want to make.

Candor

Attentiveness can catch the omission before sending. Candor repairs the impression when you have already spread it.

Recognizing a counterfeit

Detail collecting counterfeits Attentiveness when accumulating information replaces noticing which part changes the reader’s decision. Give the consequential condition a visible place.

How to cultivate Attentiveness

• Read the sentence immediately before and after a striking line.
• Look for conditions that alter time, scope or eligibility.
• Reread your shortened version from the recipient’s position.

Try it today

Before forwarding a short announcement, compare it with the original. Keep the qualification that changes how a recipient can act on it.

Questions worth returning to

• What would someone reasonably assume from my shortened version?
• Which small phrase changes the plan?

Choose your practice

These pages offer ideas for reflection and character practice, not professional advice. Choose practices suited to your circumstances and abilities. You may adapt, pause, or skip an exercise; putting yourself or someone else at risk is not proof of virtue.

Quotations and further reading

Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.

1. To formulate requires getting outside of it, seeing it as another would see it, considering what points of contact it has with the life of another so that it may be got into such form that he can appreciate its meaning.

   John Dewey, Democracy and Education
   Chapter I, Education as a Necessity of Life, section 2

   Dewey is discussing how an experience becomes intelligible to someone else. In a shortened announcement, imagining the recipient’s plan helps you notice the condition they need.

2. and to read carefully, and not to be satisfied with a superficial understanding of a book; nor hastily to give my assent to those who talk overmuch;

   Marcus Aurelius, Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius
   Book I, section 7, lessons from Rusticus

   Marcus remembers learning to read beyond a superficial impression. The small qualification may carry the part a quick reading misses.

3. For when a Person is put into a publick Paper by a Man who is angry with him, the real Description of such Person is hid in the Deformity with which the angry Man described him; therefore this Fellow always made his Customers describe him as he would the Day before he offended, or else he was sure he would never find him out.

   The letter-writer in No. 521, in Richard Steele, The Spectator
   No. 521, Tuesday, October 28, 1712

   An angry description can conceal the person it is supposed to identify. Steele’s newspaper writer asks for the description from before the quarrel: wording deserves a second look before it travels.

4. You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room.

   Sherlock Holmes, in Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
   A Scandal in Bohemia, the staircase exchange

   The familiar staircase has escaped Watson’s attention. A familiar announcement can do the same: look again for the condition that changes what it offers.

5. If men will not be at the pains to declare the meaning of their words, and definitions of their terms are not to be had, yet this is the least that can be expected, that, in all discourses wherein one man pretends to instruct or convince another, he should use the same word constantly in the same sense.

   John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
   Book III, CHAPTER XI.; 26. V. Fifth Remedy: To use the same word constantly in the same sense.

   A word that quietly changes meaning can carry a claim somewhere its reader did not intend. Keep the relevant meaning steady as you shorten and repeat a message.

6. For there is great danger in hastily throwing out what is undigested.

   Epictetus, The Works of Epictetus
   Enchiridion XLVI; printed p. 395; scan leaf 419

   Give a statement time to become understood before making it your own message. A fluent repetition can run ahead of noticing what it says.

7. If (in the third place) you understand the English language, but no context suggests itself from your habits and expectations, the word has meaning, but not the whole event.

   John Dewey, How We Think
   Chapter VIII, the example of the word “paper”

   Knowing each word does not ensure that you understand the whole event. A date, setting, or qualification can supply the missing relation.

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