2024-05 May - How We Use our Gift of Attention

May 5, 2024 family history attention priorities agency fulfilling

Read time: Summary 0.4 minutes | Expanded section: 17.5 minutes | Appendices: 4.1 minutes

From your Ward Temple & Family History Consultants:

Summary Message

• An observation
• Opening story about a realization on a subway ride
• The Gift of Attention
• A few data points about attention
• A caution about spreading too thin
• Priorities
• Closing story about Ricky Woods and his celebration after 42 years
• Appendix A - Current Workflow for Family History & Temple Work
• Appendix B - Ideas for “Bite Sized” (short) Temple & Family History Work
• Appendix C - Patterns from Good Books
• Appendix D - 2024 Ward TFH Coordination Meetings

Expanded Message - How We Use our Gift of Attention

An Observation

Have you noticed how when we try to relax by flipping through TV shows, streaming services content, YouTube videos, or social media feeds it is actually unfulfilling, and most times is not even relaxing?

To contrast, for me anyway, when I serve in the Lord’s vineyard, I feel more engaged because the activities are more meaningful, impactful with eternal purpose. Afterwards, I feel I made a difference in both the short and long term with the time I spent. I have found that feels more “relaxing” even when it’s hard. Isn’t that ironic? I’m still working on better consistency in choosing good, better and best. I suspect you may be too. Sometimes I’m helped to better use my time when I work towards near-term goals.

Opening Story - A realization on a subway ride

For this month’s message, I want to start with a story I read about a man standing inside a very crowded subway train while commuting.

As a quick aside, in trains in Tokyo, Japan people are so squished together that when the train car leans around a curve the people near the windows get pressed up against the glass as all the riders lean into each other. Thankfully, we don’t have subways in this beautiful valley. Now back to the story.

While jammed uncomfortably close to everyone else, this man ended up with a view over the shoulder of a lady using her mobile device. With all the passengers jammed together so tightly, he couldn’t help but see her screen in her hand. He observed that she flicked from video to video, watching each only for seconds, and swiping to another before one finished. She then did the same for images she saw on her social feeds, scrolling and flicking to another after mere seconds. The man uncomfortably felt as if he’d just looked into a mirror because that is often how he behaves with his own mobile device too. He went on to lament recent studies with data that indicate that people’s attention spans have been dropping in the last two decades. He lamented the loss of concentration, of focus. Next, he worried for his children’s reduced attention spans, thinking of others.

At this point, I flicked away from the subway story. Ouch. Did you also notice how my aside about being on a train in Tokyo disrupted your attention on the story? Disruptions to our attention are everywhere. To our dogs, a squirrel rips their attention away. For me there are too many ways to describe that disrupt my attention.

Could access to so many people’s voices on our devices be contributors to the effects of the spacious building Lehi saw and that he tried to describe in his vision? How can we filter and focus? Elder Bednar offers a solution, heed not.

The doctrine of Christ written “with the Spirit of the living God … in fleshy tables of [our hearts]” increases our capacity to “heed not” the many distractions, taunts, and diversions in our fallen world. For example, faith focused in and on the Lord Jesus Christ fortifies us with spiritual strength. Faith in the Redeemer is a principle of action and of power. ~ Elder David A. Bednar, Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, April 2022 [referencing how Lehi heeded them not, about the voices from the spacious building]

That man in the subway story began to think about others, which reminded me of when Enos prayed, was forgiven because of his faith in Christ, and then immediately he began to pray for others too. Enos 1:9 says he “began to feel a desire for the welfare of my brethren, the Nephites; wherefore, I did pour out my whole soul unto God for them.” Turning our heart to others is a pattern in the Gospel. It is a pattern for Temple & Family History work too. When we turn our heart to our fathers and our children, we also turn the gift of our attention to helping others.

The Gift of Attention

In an April 2023 Liahona article, David A. Edwards said “Your ability to pay attention is a gift from God.” I pondered that for more than a couple of seconds. Attention is a gift from God. Doesn’t that imply we can magnify it too?

Elder Niel A. Anderson added to my thoughts when he quoted Alma during Apr 2023 General Conference, “As my mind caught hold upon this thought, I cried within my heart: O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me.” Alma’s attention caught hold on that thought.

Alma “caught hold upon” the truth of Jesus Christ. If we were using the words “caught hold upon” in a physical sense, we might say, “He caught hold upon the guardrail just as he was falling,” meaning he reached out suddenly and tightly seized something solidly cemented to a secure foundation.”

~ Elder Niel A. Anderson, Apr 2023 General Conference

Elder Anderson continued, “In this mortal life, our mind and spirit need exceptional attention…to understand what the Lord would have us do and become.”

In English we “pay” attention. In Spanish we “lend” attention. In German, we “gift” attention. To what degree does that sound like tithing our might and mind to you?

Our current prophet has asked us to get better at seeking and responding to personal revelation and to help gather Israel. Seeking personal revelation requires our gift of attention to be focused in a particular way beyond a few seconds. Gathering Israel, for the living or the dead, requires that we focus our attention to be effective. We as Alma, can “catch hold upon the thought”, the prompting, or the personal revelation.

When the words of prophets seem repetitive, that should rivet our attention.

~ Elder Henry B. Eyring, Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Apr 1997

The very real adversary would have us be distracted away from the influence and revelations of the Holy Ghost. Like an enemy soldier creating a diversion to help his own army’s main attack succeed, the adversary uses many ways to draw our gift of attention away from good, better, and best towards not good, bad, and worst. The adversary wants to influence the “numberless concourses of people, many of whom were pressing forward” to let go of their clinging hold to the rod of iron.

If we pay too much attention to the 24/7 waves of the if-it-bleeds-it-leads negative news that tends to drains our spiritual strength or numb us, are we as capable to empathize with, reach out to others and lift them when they need lifting or some extra hope?

David A. Edwards went on to say, “Modern life can be filled with many things vying for your attention. Under these conditions, a couple of things can happen: (1) you may have trouble sorting out what’s important and what isn’t, and (2) you may have trouble paying attention to any one thing for very long.”

David A. Edwards continued, “Satan is pleased with either of these outcomes. He doesn’t want you to focus on what’s truly important, so if your full attention is directed to lesser things, he’s pleased. On the other hand, he’d also love for you to be constantly distracted so that your attention is shifting from one thing to another. Then your experiences aren’t ever that deep and you don’t learn and grow that much.”

By recognizing the adversary’s pattern and its effectiveness against our gift of attention, we can be warned and ready. We can better choose the targets of our attention arrows.

🎵 We are all enlisted until the conflict is o’er.🎶

What does a living Apostle of Jesus say?

Two thousand years ago, the Savior warned that in the last days there would be “wars, and rumors of wars,” later saying that “peace [would] be taken from the earth.” Surely this Prince of Peace, who taught emphatically that contention is of the devil, must weep, along with His Divine Father, over those in the human family in our day who are “without affection,” the scripture says, and who cannot figure out how to live together in love. Brothers and sisters, we do see too much conflict, anger, and general incivility around us. Fortunately, the current generation has not had a Third World War to fight, nor have we experienced a global economic crash like the one in 1929 leading to a Great Depression. We are, however, facing a kind of Third World War that is not a fight to crush our enemies but a conscription marshaling the children of God to care more about each other and to help heal the wounds we find in a conflicted world. The Great Depression we now face has less to do with the external loss of our savings and more to do with the internal loss of our self-confidence, with real deficits of faith and hope and charity all around us. But the instruments we need to create a brighter day and grow an economy of genuine goodness in society are abundantly provided for in the gospel of Jesus Christ. We cannot afford—and this world cannot afford—our failure to put these gospel concepts and fortifying covenants to full use personally and publicly.

~ Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, April 2021

In his unique way, in 2021 Elder Holland exhorted us to come closer to Jesus Christ in these last days. You and I need to stay plugged into spiritual power like our refrigerators need to stay plugged into electrical power.

You and I can improve our effective focus of our gift of our attention for concentration, pondering, or work in the Lord’s vineyard by recognizing the many distracting diversions that at least don’t add spiritual strength, and at worst drain away our spiritual reserves under the continuous onslaught of bad news and worrying trends. The Holy Ghost can help when we heed him.

26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. 27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

(John 14:26-27)

As we build upon the rock of Christ, our Savior, we can strengthen our spiritual power which in turn enables us to be more fruitful in the work in the Lord’s vineyard.

A few data points about attention

• One leading expert on children’s attention problems said, ‘we need to ask if we are now developing “an attentional pathogenic culture” – an environment in which sustained and deep focus is harder for all of us.’
• One small study of college students found they now only focus on any one task for 65 seconds.
• A different study of office workers found they only focus on average for three minutes.
• Some scientific evidence indicates that stress and exhaustion ruin our attention.
• Today, about 35% of workers feel they can never switch off their phones because their boss might email them at any time of day or night.

A caution about spreading too thin

Modern life calls trying to do many things at once multitasking. How does this affect the gift of our attention?

• The software engineering discipline recognizes multitasking’s negative effects and has a name for it, context switching waste. Task/context switching works for computers, and for humans when limited to 1-2 things.

• For people, un-intuitively productivity is dramatically impacted negatively when trying 3, 4, or 5+ things at once.
• Science shows that when a human brain changes gears to deal with a new task, the process is cognitively disruptive as it takes time for the brain to get back into the groove of the previous task.
• The negative impact is higher for more cognitively demanding tasks, like developing software, concentration, writing, or learning a new language.
  • So perhaps I’m safe when chopping up veggies for a salad.
• Studies show it can take more time than we realize to rebuild the mental model of an interrupted cognitive task, and to reload the various parameters in our heads needed to be productive at it again.
• Industry identifies the negative outcomes as: decision fatigue, reduced productivity, reduced motivation, increased errors, increases in delay (and the cost of delay).
• So when you feel like you’re only making a millimeter of progress on 5 things and want to make a meter of progress on one thing, focus your attention on the one thing.
• The solution is to focus attention on one thing at a time.
• This mortal human bottleneck of cognitive capacity means we have to prioritize to be effective.
• When one task is impeded or waiting on someone else (a dependency), start another task. But consciously limit your inventory of in-progress tasks to 1-2 things for better performance: better decisions, improved productivity, higher motivation, less errors, less delays.
• Remember, in-progress means started and not yet finished, not done.
• Businesses find it prohibitively expensive to have a large inventory of partially completed work because they cannot deliver the value of “done” to a paying customer until it is done.
  • Manufacturing inventory of partially completed work is seen (Atoms).
  • Knowledge workers have similar inventory of partially completed work, but it is unseen (Bytes/Bits) without putting work items on visual boards like Jira, Trello, etc. (which is what software engineering does to make the unseen seen.)
• This mortal cognitive attention constraint / natural phenomenon also applies to Temple & Family History and other work in the Lord’s vineyard.

Priorities

Our priorities are most visible in how we use our time. Someone has said, “Three things never come back—the spent arrow, the spoken word, and the lost opportunity.”

~ Elder Dallin H. Oaks, Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, April 2001

Prioritizing our backlog list of To Dos helps us focus our gift of our attention on the 1-2 things that are in-progress.

I suggest this pattern of focused attention applies to spiritual work too (seeking personal revelation, praying for others, pondering, reflecting, counting blessings, Temple & Family History work, etc.)

Yes, the pattern of focused attention can aid Temple & Family History too. All work in the Lord’s vineyard requires bouts of focused attention.

• So too does the Gathering of Israel with the living in missionary work, focusing our attention on the other person during discussions. While engaged in a missionary discussion, imagine stopping to scroll our mobile device. How might that impact our effectiveness in the work for the Lord. To what degree does talking face-to-face with other people make it easier to focus attention?

What about when no one is watching us? Stopping our progress to pursue a diversion reduces our impact when no one’s looking, when we stop Temple & Family History work too.

Reallocation of part of our time spent scrolling?

Can each of us consider tithing 10% of our current time spent scrolling, flicking, channel surfing, video algorithm following, or other wandering paths searching for “relaxation” and redirect that 10% into the work of the Lord?

We are agents, not objects to be acted upon.

For there is a God, and he hath created all things, both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are, both things to act and things to be acted upon. (2 Nephi 2:14)

A little bit of indexing can be rewarding, as our hearts turn to others. If we’re “done” or “stuck” in our own Family History, helping others is doing good too.

Some people in our Ward recently completed a project for getting a page in familysearch.org for each person incarcerated locally in 1950. That may help the descendants of those people to find them and do their work for them too.

We are free agents.

Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness (D&C 58:27)

As we act rather than be acted upon by artificial intelligence algorithms designed to maximize our attention capture (I kid you not, this is a real thing now. I work in the AI field.) in our constant modern struggle against the adversary’s diversions on our gift of attention, we can focus more on good causes.

Is not deciding to focus our attention part of our “might” in scripture vocabulary?

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might (Ecclesiastes 9:10)

Apostles of the Lord tell us we must be agents in directing our gift of attention.

We cannot and we must not allow ourselves to get distracted from our sacred duty. We cannot and we must not lose focus on the things that matter most.

~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf, April 2009

Finding our way through the modern “mists of darkness” to the “narrow path”, we are offered the “rod of iron” to hold. Holding the rod takes attention. As we hold to the rod of the word of God, this year we’re studying the Book of Mormon. I am grateful for this book and its impact on my life. Focusing our attention on the Book of Mormon helps us filter truth from the many voices in the world today. “Written by way of commandment, and also by the spirit of prophecy and of revelation.” and “preparatory to the Second Coming of the Messiah.”

For me, focusing attention on the word of God helps bring me spiritual inner peace in this time of tumult and lack of external peace.

In the Book of Mormon we find a pattern for preparing for the Second Coming. A major portion of the book centers on the few decades just prior to Christ’s coming to America. From the Book of Mormon we learn how disciples of Christ live in times of war. In the Book of Mormon we find lessons for dealing with persecution and apostasy. We learn much about how to do missionary work. And more than anywhere else, we see in the Book of Mormon the dangers of materialism and setting our hearts on the things of the world. Can anyone doubt that this book was meant for us and that in it we find great power, great comfort, and great protection?

~ President Ezra Taft Benson, President of the Church, Oct 1986

God does not leave us without guidance and watchmen on the tower during this time when billions of voices are directed at us that we must filter daily or or unplug from at a frequency of our own choosing to “be still” and hear the Holy Ghost.

The Book of Mormon addresses Temple & Family History in 3 Nephi 25:5-6, “And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers.”

Temple & Family History work is one way we can prioritize and focus/tithe our gift of attention in the work in the Lord’s vineyard (Jesus told the parable of the vineyard in Matthew 20). How many baths will the acreage of the vineyard yield when we labor therein? (2 Nep 15:10) Indexing is serving others. Linking sources serves others (the families and all future generations). Linking our own 4-generations serves those ancestors, all our cousins and progeny. Offering others the chance to be linked eternally to their families serves them as we serve in the Temple.

God asks of each of us to help in His work. With His help we can have hope in trying times. He is willing to help us gather Israel.

The Restoration reaffirmed the foundational truth that God does work in this world, we can hope, we should hope, even when facing the most insurmountable odds.

~ Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, April 2020

May each of us act to monitor our current spiritual strength, and pull away from spiritually draining news or other content when we need to plug into spiritual energy sources to refill our tanks and reserves. I testify that Temple & Family History service work provides spiritual energy blessings and it matters through the eternities. These blessings make it fulfilling. It is worth our time. Like other forms of service to the Lord by helping others, you come away more able when logic suggests you should expect to be tired and less able. Regardless of our past decisions (repentance enables joy), we each get to choose our next priorities and where we will next focus our attention an hour from now, and an hour after that, and after that. For a decade, then another, then another. How much time we get here varies. This is agency. How will we spend our attention and time next?

Closing Story

I close with another story. Ricky Woods was about to retire after 42 years working for United Parcel Service (UPS). On the day before his retirement while driving his route, “Woods was greeted with an unexpected surprise as he arrived at his usual spot. The streets were lined with signs bearing warm messages, colorful balloons dotted the landscape, and a celebratory cake awaited him.”

That community of people Ricky impacted (little by little) came together to celebrate his contributions over his 4 decades of work. His remarkable service over 42 years evidenced Ricky’s priorities as he made his mark with these people. He affected their lives.

Might we experience a gathering or celebration similar to Ricky when we cross through the veil after our decades of small acts of service in the gathering of Israel in the Lord’s vineyard? Even if never noticed, small acts of serving others fulfills our souls.

‘Overwhelmed with emotion, Ricky Woods expressed, “It was very emotional. I saw one sign and I was just like, ‘What’s going on?’ Then I saw all the other signs and I saw a couple more with my name on it, and my heart is full."’

Ricky said ‘my heart is full’. Alma 26 said “My joy is full.” In 3 Nephi 17:20, Jesus said “And now behold, my joy is full.” Even more than work to provide for ourselves and our families, our service in the Lord’s vineyard can make our hearts full too, and I am grateful our joy can be full in Jesus Christ, our Savior.

Our current prophet is announcing and building more temples now than at any time throughout history. President Nelson said in Oct 2022, “I promise that increased time in the temple will bless your life in ways nothing else can.” This too is Temple & Family History work. Soon we will have a much shorter drive to serve in the Temple, the House of the Lord.

As we focus our attention on Jesus Christ and the work in His harvest, we draw near to Him. Then we will want to serve him by serving others. As we agents decide to apply a portion of our attention to others, we can feel fulfilled knowing we’re helping the Lord. That increase of spiritual strength can help us have peace in these tumultuous last days. As you direct your attention, please consider a portion for Temple & Family History harvesting in the Lord’s vineyard too.

Story source: “Neighborhood Celebrates Adored UPS Driver Who Retires After 42 Years."

NOTE: If you made it to here without flicking away, thank you for your attention. It is not lost on me that reasoning together (Isaiah 1:18) in this message requires minutes of your time rather than seconds. Reasoning with the intent to persuade to do good (Ether 4:11) does not often happen in mere seconds. I ask minutes of you, not hours, to read these things, consider, and decide how you will act.

Hours are often needed when working in the Lord’s vineyard, whether your task is in the tower, repairing the wall or hedge surrounding the acreage, pulling out briars and thorns, operating the wine-press, pruning & digging, fertilizing the rows of grapevines, or bringing forth grapes for the Lord of the vineyard. Temple & Family History is a portion of his vineyard and he needs workers there too.

Will you help here a little and there a little? As our ward is more unified in serving the Lord, will he not bless our ward family beyond measure, like the widow’s oil vessel that never ran out? I love you. Thank you for your service to the Lord. Our Father in Heaven loves you dearly. This is His work and he helps us do it too. Each of your “bite-sized” small and simple acts (in minutes or hours) accumulate into a great work our ward, stake, region, and world and helps prepare for the second coming of our Savior.

Sincerely, Your Ward Temple & Family History Consultants,

During Stake Family Search Center posted hours, our Ward’s staffing assignments are posted near the hours on the bulletin board next to the Family Search Center door.

(our contact info is in the tools app, or see us in church)

Appendix A - Current Workflow for Family History & Temple Service Work

1. Historical people’s information first has to be digitized (others do this).
2. We index people’s digitized information so the image can be associated with text, which can be found in computer searches.
3. We link families' data together in FamilySearch.org (each member’s initial target is 4-Generations found and linked. Later we work cousin lines too.)
4. We link people’s information (source data) to the right person to help us and others to get to know them better.
5. Finally, we can get names to take to the temple and offer them the choice of being linked to their families for eternity in our own pattern of regular temple attendance.

Appendix B - Ideas for “Bite Sized” (short) Temple & Family History Work

1. Indexing at familysearch.org
2. Following up on hints as more and more indexed records are added (where familysearch.org recommends looking at a possible connection)
3. One thing I do is spend a few minutes to add a familysearch page to others with my surname. This happens when I search for records with my surname.
   • I find an unlinked source. I create an “unconnected person”. Sometimes this step finds their existing page and link the source; while other times I create a new person page and link the source to them.
   • I originally started doing this to keep all these people straight. I found I was stumbling onto the same person’s source records and taking 2-20 minutes to realize this person too was not my direct line (again).
   • After about the 3rd time of this rework, I thought initially “I’ll just add their page on family search to prevent me from spending more time on a person I’m not looking for.” I thought, in the worst case I’ll just be helping someone else find their family.
   • Then as I did hundreds of these new pages and linked sources to them, new patterns emerged that did link to my family. Many of these people turned out to be cousins that no one in my family had any knowledge about. I am doing this for my surname across the entire country and some other countries.
   • Over time, these puzzle pieces form a much larger picture, a tapestry of the migration of your surname across the country over hundreds of years.
   • It really does help me keep track of who’s who, so I know if this is a 1st cousin or a 7th cousin or in some cases a 10th cousin.
   • Other times, there is no relation, and it just keeps me from reworking that source name multiple times (as originally intended). For lines that are not mine, I do not reserve or take these names to the temple myself, but it may help someone else to do so for their own family lines.
   • The “bite-sized” part is search records for your surname and if no page add it, then attach the source. This takes 1-5 minutes each time.
   • By helping another person, it unexpectedly helps me see patterns that yield more for my own lines research too.
   • And it results in less frustration when the record you “discovered” (again) is not for your ancestor. More importantly, it feels nice to have helped another person find their people.

Appendix C - Patterns from Good Books

• Following D&C 90:15, “study and learn, and become acquainted with all good books,” and D&C 109:7, “seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom, seek learning even by study and also by faith,” I recommend:
• “Liminal Thinking” by Dave Gray, talks about the constraint of human attention:
  • Conscious attention has a capacity of about 40 bits per second.
  • A tiny fraction of what you can perceive : 40 bits out of a potential 11 million.
  • Think of your attention as a very thin sliver of your overall experience
• The principles in a book called, “The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results”, by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan.
• If you need help with prioritization of your one thing, the Holy Ghost can help most. For additional insights, see “The 80/20 Principle”, by Richard Koch.
• For more on the benefits of focused attention, see “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience”, an oldie but goodie by Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow is a blessing when you’re in it. This book shows how to structure your work to include the elements of flow.
• Ironically, books are a type of long-form communication needing greater focused attention and offering less distraction. Tweets are short-form communications. We have to invest our gift of attention to extract the vicarious patterns and correct principles that can help us. As a bonus, we get to take that learning and growth with us beyond the veil. What’s on your reading list?
• Or, we can learn all these patterns and correct principles the harder way, ourselves, by personal experience through the consequences of less effective patterns and principles. We each have agency with which we test, fail, learn, grow, and repeat.

Appendix D - 2024 Ward Temple & Family History Coordination Meetings

The Stake guidance is to regularly hold a ward/branch Temple and Family History Coordination Meeting. So in 2024, we are doing that.

• 2nd week of each month for 15 min in Stake Family Search Center
• 4th week of each month for 15 min in Stake Family Search Center
• Invited: Relief Society counselor over Temple & Family History, Elder’s Quorum counselor over Temple & Family History, Youth leaders over Temple & Family History, Stake Family Search Center Leader, TFH Ward Consultants, Ward TFH Leader.
• Start time: 7 minutes after the conclusion of ward Sabbath meetings
• End time: 22 min after ward meetings (you can go even if the meeting goes longer than planned)