What you filter out may matter more than what you consume.

Every Essay is being written with an album in mind, which is playing at the same time we are writing what you are reading right now, so for full experience we highly recommend going to your music provider and play “Falling Or Flying” By Jorja Smith as you are reading this, promise it’s worth it. Ok back to the topic now!

It hit us in the most ordinary way. We opened YouTube before dinner (a healthy one, right?) and were met with at least twenty creators sharing their advice across everything in life. New recipes, new outfits, new Coscto discounts, new ways to grow an audience. Twenty voices in twenty seconds, all insisting they know what we should pay attention to, And yet none of them talk about the other side of it; about what to ignore. That silence is strange. Because filtering carries the same weight as consuming, maybe even more. That small moment, just staring at the feed, made something clear. Maybe the smarter move is choosing not to take everything in.

Attention used to be a creative skill, something you shaped through practice and taste, but somewhere along the way it turned into a wellness trend. Meditation, journaling, morning routines, they all started framing attention as something you protect for your peace rather than something you sharpen for your work. At the same time, social algorithms kept feeding us more and more, and some more, almost training us to believe that inspiration comes from volume. the urge to scroll more, save more, consume more, as if that is the only way to stay creative. So we ended up learning how to gather ideas but not how to filter them out; And when people did talk about ignoring anything, it was usually about ignoring haters, never about ignoring for clarity or direction. That is the moment where attention stopped feeling like a tool and started feeling like a trend.

We realized it yesterday while watching an interview with the late Nipsey Hussle. He mentioned that he does not listen to music he cannot get game from, and it landed immediately. It showed us something simple. Anything that does not contribute to your process, in whatever field you are in, is something you should probably ignore. Because once you start looking and listening to the wrong things, your attention shifts away from what matters in that moment. You lose grip of your own direction.

It shows up in the way we seek advice too. You create from an inner need, yet the more you rely on outside voices, the more those voices start shaping your idea before it even has the chance to breathe. After listening to twenty people who made it in their own way, you forget the idea you had before you pressed play. Maybe you only needed three, not twenty. And the moment you cap that intake, your attention feels clearer, sharper, and more loyal to your own work.

That was the realization.

Filtering brings you closer to your intention, consuming without restraint pulls you away from it.

so how does overloaded attention looks like today?

It looks less like chaos and more like a quiet erosion of focus! When a creative person is working on something meaningful but cannot hold a single idea long enough for it to develop, their mind starts drifting. It jumps between tabs, notifications, new references, new opinions, and new obligations; And it is not out of curiosity, becuase now they operate out of a habit. They are constantly pulled toward what is new instead of what is theirs; And over time, that pull makes it harder to stay with a thought, trust a direction, or follow an instinct.

This idea of consuming more to get inspired is flawed because it gives a false sense of progress. At that moment you feel busy, understood, and you feel like you are getting somewhere, but none of it brings you closer to the work itself. It might feel good in the moment, almost like a small dopamine boost, and that feeling tricks you into thinking you found clarity. Where in reality, you just drifted further away from your own process. You did not know what to ignore, so the line between useful and excessive intake disappeared. And once that line breaks, it becomes harder to recalibrate and return to the project you started with. Congragulations, Your attention spent the last two hours responding to everything except the thing you were trying to make.

Filtering improves the quality of your ideas because it forces you to be intentional. You choose what enters your attention instead of letting an algorithm decide for you, and when you choose, you naturally gravitate toward the people you trust, the voices that actually push you forward, and the moments that spark something real, and let us tell you something, once you find that one spark, you can roll with it without the noise that usually gets in the way.

Filtering also keeps your ideas honest. When you rely on someone else to interpret a quote or a concept, you miss the parts they skipped, the small details that could have answered your question. But when you listen yourself, when you take the time to dissect something with intention, your attention gets sharper. The information you absorb is clearer too, because you chose it, not someone else.

If someone understood this fully, their relationship to attention would shift from passive to deliberate. They would stop assuming that everything they consume is helping them and start choosing what actually serves their creative progress. They would treat attention the same way they treat their taste, their ideas, and their craft; As something they shape, not something they react to.