Almost anything you give sustained attention to will begin to loop on itself and bloom Author: Henrik Karlsson Date: September 4, 2025 --- Key Ideas Paying sustained attention often sounds like a chore or sacrifice, but it can be deeply pleasurable and transformative. Sustained attention changes how we experience reality, making it vivid, strange, intense, and sometimes surreal. Complex bodily and neurological systems synchronize over time to deepen and intensify the state of focused attention. Different systems operate and update at different speeds, meaning rapidly switching focus disrupts coherence and vivid experience. When attention lingers, various subsystems feed each other input in escalating loops resulting in altered states of consciousness. --- The Pleasure of Sustained Attention Example: Good sex relies on sustained attention and delayed gratification, which intensifies desire and sensation. Dopamine plays a key role, signaling expectation of pleasure, increasing sensitivity to physical sensations. Sustained attention allows hormonal, neurological, and psychological processes to align gradually. Quick shifts in attention prevent this deep state by leaving “attention residue” from prior focuses. The longer attention is sustained, the more subsystems sync, reaching states where self-awareness fades and unusual thoughts/feelings emerge. --- Attention Beyond Sex: Broader Effects Any object of sustained attention can "loop on itself and bloom," creating escalating feedback loops. Example of anxiety: sustained attention can lead to panic attacks as negative thoughts and feelings spiral. Example of joy: deep attention to happiness can lead to euphoric states called jhanas, characterized by profound cessation of ordinary consciousness. The author shares a personal experience of entering the first jhana by focusing on the joy of lying next to his child. Other examples cited include detailed reports by José Luis Ricón Fernández de la Puente and Nadia Asparouhova on achieving these states. The essay invites curiosity about what happens if you sustain attention on emotions, abstract ideas, or complex phenomena like neural networks or biology. --- Art and Sustained Attention Initially, the author misunderstood art as communication but later saw it as crafting patterns that restructure attention. Art acts as “guided meditation,” shaping the mind through sustained experience. A concert of Sibelius’s 5th Symphony triggered vivid, cinematic imaginations and emotional processing in the author’s mind. Sustained attention on music created deeply coherent states allowing unique insights and emotional resolution. Contrasts with a companion's restlessness during the same performance, showing differences in attentional engagement. --- Scientific & Practical Notes on Attention Visual perception becomes coherent rapidly (under half a second), but hormonal systems take much longer (up to hours). Attention coherence develops and fades depending on skill, mood, hormonal state, and task difficulty. Productivity studies suggest it takes about 23 minutes to regain deep focus after interruption. Extended meditation can deepen attention coherence for hours without decay. Flow and deep work experiences are linked to these attentional rhythms and systemic synchronizations. --- Supporting Footnotes & References Linguistic notes on how different languages conceive of "attention" (e.g., lending it, "being" it). Explanation of how hormonal half-lives impact attention dynamics. Charles Darwin’s observations on octopus behavior illustrate the richness of focused observation. Mental practices embracing loneliness or abstract concepts can transform emotional states. Examples from mathematics and neural net research show how deep intimacy with a topic enriches cognition and insights. --- Community Insights from Comments Comments