Field Note 003: The Economy of Attention

Subtitle: How trauma, technology, and capitalism compete for cognitive bandwidth

Researcher: Megan A. Green
Field location: Mobile workspace / Transit corridor
Date: October 2025

Abstract

This field note explores the economics of focus as a survival resource.
Among disabled and neurodivergent communities, attention operates like currency: scarce, rationed, and easily stolen by systems that were never designed for our cognitive load.
Every ping, feed, and algorithmic notification represents a micro-tax on agency.

Field Context

The researcher is currently operating in motion—airports, rideshares, text threads, remote study sessions.
Mobility creates fragmentation: multiple devices, multiple tabs, competing channels of urgency.
In the same hour I receive a trauma disclosure, a project deadline, and a flight delay. Each demands a slice of the same finite attentional budget.

Trauma compounds this scarcity. Hyper-vigilance makes the brain run background checks on every sound. The cost of safety is processing power.

Observations

Capitalism incentivizes distraction.
Attention is the new extractive industry; our focus is mined, refined, and sold.
Disability reframes scarcity.
Cognitive fatigue turns concentration into a measurable commodity. The more tired the body, the higher the transaction cost of thought.
Tech replicates trauma patterns.
Constant alerts mimic the unpredictability of crisis. Each “ding” becomes a small-scale startle reflex, rewarding hyper-alertness.

Survivor Adaptations

Micro-scheduling: carving ten-minute focus bursts with planned sensory breaks.
Cognitive triage: classifying tasks as life-critical, relationship-critical, or optional noise.
Selective invisibility: deliberately ignoring certain channels to preserve bandwidth. This isn’t neglect; it’s energy ethics.

The disabled body becomes both researcher and lab—testing productivity models that honor nervous-system limits instead of punishing them.

Cultural Implications

When society defines worth by responsiveness, those who pace themselves are labeled unreliable.
But delayed response is often the only sustainable form of participation.
A trauma-informed culture would interpret quiet as calibration, not disinterest.

Reflexive Note

Writing this in transit, I time my focus around noise levels and battery life.
The experiment is embodied: a researcher measuring attention by the charge left in her devices and her nervous system alike.

TL;DR

Attention is currency, and survivors live on a fixed income.
Every scroll, ping, or demand is a micro-transaction.
To spend attention wisely is not laziness—it’s sovereignty.

mindyourmegan