When the World Is Too Much. Fourteen small things to do with your attention when everything is a lot

Every notification is a crisis. You wake, reach for the phone, and by the time your feet touch the floor you have taken in three breaking stories and a war. You know you should look less. You also know you are not going to stop caring, and the advice to switch off feels like a betrayal of everything that matters.

When the World Is Too Much starts from a different place. The answer is not necessarily to stop paying attention. But neither do we have to offer our nervous systems to every breaking story, every notification and every crisis as it arrives. So this is fourteen small things to do with your attention instead, for a minute or two at a time. None of them will fix what is happening. That is not their job. You choose one when you need somewhere to put your attention, do it, and go on with your day. You are not pretending the world is not unravelling. You are remembering that it is not the only thing happening.

What this is: fourteen micro-practices as a downloadable PDF, from The Art of Unravelling. Each takes one or two minutes and uses whatever is already in the room. They are in no order, so this is a card to keep where you will see it and return to rather than work through once. It also says plainly that some days are bigger than small things, and that on those days you reach for a person rather than a page.

It is for you if: the news has you by the throat, you are not willing to stop caring, and you want something you can actually do in the ninety seconds before the next thing arrives.