Small enough to see.

When life gets wider, paying attention to the most important people gets harder.

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This essay was originally published here.

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Most weekday mornings, Jennifer and I are up pretty darn early. Around 5:00 a.m. I pour our coffee, we each grab our books and our dogs, and if weather permits, we head outside to our blue stone patio and plop down on the two chairs that face our backyard. Sometimes we’ll spend that time talking about the day or where we’re traveling or something that’s been on our minds about work or life. Other times, we just read and watch the dogs bark at deer or birds or some wild turkeys or whatever’s moving in the tree line that catches their eyes.

A few weeks ago, Jennifer looked up from her book and mentioned a close friend we haven’t seen in too long. She just sort of said it out of nowhere, almost like it suddenly came to her as her mind was wandering. We sat there for a few minutes figuring out when the last time we saw her was, and when we could make it work again soon.

If Jennifer hadn’t mentioned it then, I don’t know if it would have come up the rest of the day. It couldn’t have happened at noon. There’s always too much going on by then. And it probably wouldn’t have happened in the evening either. We both get too tired, and there always seems to be too many loose ends still rattling around.

It happened in the morning, sitting in those two chairs, because that’s the only time that still belongs to just us.

That time requires us to protect it. But it hasn’t always been that way.

Life was small enough to see

Our first apartment together was a 600-square-foot “railroad style” apartment for two people and three dogs on Waverly Avenue in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. The floorboards buckled into these big “A” shapes along the living room wall. A middle school with a very loud bell was right next door. A jewelry maker lived below us, hammering on metal at all hours of the day and night. And the ceiling leaked anytime it rained.

Back then, we complained about all of it constantly. But today it’s different. Whenever we talk about the happiest times of our lives, those years weirdly bubble up to the top.

For a long time, I chalked that up to being younger, living in Brooklyn, and loving our jobs. But I don’t think that’s the whole reason I feel nostalgic about it.

What I miss from that time period is how little effort it took to be present. How narrow our lives were.

The whole cast of our lives was maybe twenty or thirty people. We had a few close friends, coworkers, some neighbors, and regulars at our favorite bar around the corner. If someone asked what was going on in our lives, I could answer without thinking. I knew what Jennifer was working on. I knew what we were probably doing that weekend. Life was small enough that I could even predict what was in the fridge at any given time.

None of that required a system or “building a second brain” or anything like that. There just wasn’t enough life to lose track of.

We watched The Today Show every morning over coffee on our faux leather couch. Jennifer made me a breakfast sandwich before she left for the day. After work, we’d wander around the adjacent neighborhood, Fort Greene, grabbing drinks and dinner, while complaining about office politics and the subway and our apartment and the noise from the jewelry maker. We’d been apart ten hours, and it felt like forever.

A few weeks ago, I spent seven hours in my office without coming downstairs. We were in the same house, and I didn’t see her the whole day. In Brooklyn, that would have been physically impossible. Now it just happens.

Everything got wider

The life we have now is better in almost every imaginable way. I’m aware of that and very grateful. But somewhere along the way, our lives got too wide to see across.

There are more people than ever to get back to and wait to hear back from. There are more (and busier) calendars to coordinate. A small “yes” to something today becomes a commitment three months from now. A quick check of my email leads somewhere else, and then somewhere else after that. And there’s the group chats, Slack messages, and board seats. Our parents need more of us than they used to. Our friends have fanned out across time zones. Our dogs are aging, which carries its own weight.

Some of them aren’t even what I’d call a problem. And when they are, they’re mostly manageable. But altogether they ask for more than our attention was designed to give. And the result is that our attention spans (and our days) fill up so fast that the people closest to you start getting the leftovers.

I saw this play out a few months ago at a restaurant here in town. The couple in their mid-forties at the table next to us, both on their phones, with their food going cold between them. I’m not judging. I recognize it completely. We’ve certainly done that before. Jennifer and I have sat across from each other and been somewhere else entirely because of work or family or dogs or life.

Of course, the phone is the easy thing to blame. Technology, right? But it’s not really about the phone. It’s about how much our lives are competing for our attention at any given moment. When the voices and notifications and dings come loud, fast, and furious, even the people sitting right in front of you lose.

The part we defend

So, a few years ago, Jennifer and I made a commitment.

We decided that the morning was our time. It was protected. We sit in those two chairs and talk and watch the dogs run around. We allow ourselves the computer only to play Wordle and Connections to keep our brains sharp. No phones, no email, no Slack. To us, the rest of the world hasn’t started yet, and we won’t let them in until we’re ready.

It doesn’t sound like much. It’s maybe ninety minutes, most days. But it’s the part of the day where we’re focused on each other. Where we catch up, talk about things that are important, and discuss all of our plans. It’s the part of the day where she can mention a friend we haven’t seen in a while, and we can sit there and figure it out together.

That conversation about our friend, the one that happened a few weeks ago in our chairs, probably only took about four minutes. And maybe another 15 minutes to figure out how to get some new plans on the books. But it only happened because we have protected time that allows conversations like that to happen. On a normal afternoon or evening, something would have gotten in the way or we would have found ourselves distracted.

The mornings are different, though. They remind me of our old Brooklyn life. The life that was small enough to see and small enough to be inside of without our brains somewhere else.

We never used to have to do that on purpose, but now we do. So we do.

The bottom line

I don’t sit around and pine over that old apartment, or the noisy neighbor, or for being younger, naive, and broker. I just miss how simple it was to pay attention to the person sitting right next to me.

But the reality is that life usually gets wider whether you want it to or not. You collect more people, more commitments, and have more stuff competing for the same amount of attention as you get older. So, to counteract that, the best move I’ve found is to pick a small window and protect it. For us, that’s two-ish hours, two chairs, three dogs, and not much else.

It doesn’t sound like a lot, but, to me, it’s everything worth protecting.

So here’s the question I have this week:

What part of your life are you actually protecting, with your full attention, on a daily basis? If you can’t name it, you probably don’t have one. And if you can, the best thing you can do is continue defending it.

Reply and tell us. While we can’t reply to everyone, Jennifer and I read every response, and we love hearing from you.

That’s all for this week.

See you next Saturday.