How the Present Attention and Happiness Matrix works

Every post on this blog uses one map. This page explains it once, in full, so that no post has to. It is the model from my book, The Return of Attention. It is not a theory of the brain and not a treatment. It is a way of noticing where attention is, built from watching my own mind for a long time and checking what I saw against what helped.

Two questions, nine positions

The map asks two questions of any moment of attention.

When is it about? Past, present or future. A memory, a sensation, a plan.

How does it feel about it? Liking, disliking or neither. Wanting it, pushing against it, or just noting it.

Two questions with three answers each give nine positions. In the book they are named plainly, by their coordinates: Past + Likes, Future + Dislikes, and so on. On this blog each one also carries a one-word name in brackets, because the word is easier to remember than the coordinates.

Some examples from the book: remembering a pleasant holiday is Past + Likes (nostalgia). Worrying about a presentation is Future + Dislikes (worry). Regretting a mistake is Past + Dislikes (regret). Daydreaming about success is Future + Likes (anticipation). Noticing the breath is Present + Neutral (presence).

Only one position is quiet

The book's central claim is simple to state and takes practice to see: eight of the nine positions pull attention away from what is actually happening, and only one, Present + Neutral (presence), does not. In that position you are in direct contact with reality through the senses, without a story on top. Everything else is a thought about reality: a memory, a projection, a judgment.

This is not a claim that the other eight are wrong or bad. Planning is Future + Neutral and you need it. Memory is Past + Neutral and you need that too. The claim is narrower: each of the eight has a cost, and the cost is paid in the present. My book describes the cost of each one. Nostalgia diminishes the present by comparison. Regret colours it. Worry contracts it. Anticipation pulls out of it. Even holding, the pleasant one, distorts it, because you are gripping a moment instead of being in it.

Visited often, a position becomes a disposition. Regular worry builds an anxious person; regular regret builds a resentful one. That is the book's account of what we usually call personality, and it is the reason the map is hopeful: a disposition is a habit of attention, and habits can be seen.

Thoughts come in chains

The second idea is about how thoughts move. One thought is rarely alone. It starts the next, which starts the next, and the chain runs until something interrupts it. My book calls this auto-genesis, and gives an everyday example: you hear someone's raised voice. The sound itself is Present + Neutral, just hearing. The second thought, "they are angry with me", is already about the past, with dislike. The third, "what did I do wrong", and the fourth, "this always happens to me", build a story. The voice lasted two seconds. The chain can last the afternoon.

Two things follow. First, the moment after a sense impression is the point where attention can be caught before the chain runs, which is why the practice is about noticing early rather than arguing late. Second, the subject of the chain does not matter. Pleasant chains run the same way. A compliment can lead, in four thoughts, to the fear of disappointing someone. That is why the map treats liking and disliking symmetrically, and why this blog has as many posts about good feelings as bad ones.

The practice

The practice is one question, asked anywhere: where is my attention right now? Then three moves, in the book's words: recognise the position, understand what it does, and return to Present + Neutral. Not reject the thought. Not replace it with a better one. Recognition is not rejection; fighting a thought is one more thought, usually in Past + Dislikes.

This is why the posts here end with a small thing to try rather than a programme. The programme is in the book, and it is slow: sitting still, then watching where attention goes, then catching it earlier. The blog is the map applied to one problem at a time.

How it relates to familiar ideas

If you know some psychology, you will recognise parts of the map. What is called rumination is mostly repeated visits to Past + Dislikes. What is called worry is Future + Dislikes. What is called savouring sits in Present + Likes and, the book would add, becomes a pull the moment you want it to last. Mind-wandering research has found that people report being less happy when their attention is away from what they are doing, whatever they are doing; one large study put it in its title, "a wandering mind is an unhappy mind" (Killingsworth and Gilbert, 2010). That finding sits comfortably beside the map, but the map does not rest on it. The map's claims come from the book and from practice, and I say so wherever a post makes one.

Where the map differs from most of these ideas is in treating them as one thing. Rumination, worry, daydreaming and clinging to a good moment are, on the map, the same movement in four directions: attention leaving the present. That is the whole of it.

What it is not

It is not a diagnosis, a treatment or a therapy, and it does not replace one. If low mood has lasted two weeks or more, if anxiety has become constant, or if you are having thoughts of harming yourself, please talk to a doctor or a crisis line. The map can sit alongside treatment; it does not stand in for it.

It is not a claim about the brain. It describes experience from the inside, which is where you can act on it.

It is not a religion or a tradition. I write about several traditions on Sundays, as I see their essence through this map, and I keep them separate from it. The map is mine, from my own watching, and every claim on this blog is traced to a page of the book so you can check it.

Where to go next

Start with the nine attention states, then find your own experience on the map, then pick a hub: Overthinking, Anxiety and stress or Happiness.