Constraining attention
Why did Noma, a three-Michelin-star restaurant in Copenhagen, Denmark, become the world's top-rated dining destination for many years in a row? One would expect to find the greatest watchmaker in Switzerland, the greatest technologist in Silicon Valley, and the greatest chef in, say, Italy or France.
But Denmark? A nation whose culinary heritage features things like dried fish, salted herring, and liver pate? Associating this country with gastronomic sophistication sounds more like a punchline.
Noma's origin story shows the power of constraining attention. René Redzepi, the co-founder and head chef, made a bold decision to radically restrict his sourcing options. He decided to eschew all imported and agricultural foods as the basis of his menu. Instead, he vowed to serve only wild foods he discovered through foraging expeditions in the countryside encircling his establishment. It took more than 10 years for this contrarian approach to pay off, but eventually it did.
Perhaps, on a deeper level, the Danish have a psychological advantage Redzepi was tapping into. Greenlandic Inuit, the indigenous people of Denmark, were whale and seal hunters who often suffered an anxiety order — kajak angst — on the open sea. Surrounded by nothing but blue sky and water, with no clear landmark in sight, many of them would start to hallucinate. Controlling their focus was a skill his ancestors had to cultivate for the sake of their sanity.
There are parallels we can draw with the virtual world. Technology has created a seemingly infinite range of options. There are no observable limits across the digital landscape of possibility. This seems to have produced what Tiago Forte calls "information exhaustion." For many, it's a world that is inherently anxiety-provoking.
Such conditions compel us to make choices that are analogous to what Redzepi decided. It's usually best to disregard things we can't respond to in a productive way. As much as possible, we need to be more conscious of the scope and direction of our own lives. Like Redzepi, we need to become experts at ignoring things.