Paying Attention is a book I have written which documents the development of my personal philosophy through lived experience, rather than presenting a predefined system or set of instructions.
It begins with my attempts to better understand myself following recovery from alcohol dependence and a late diagnosis of autism and ADHD. What initially appeared to be an exploration of recovery and neurodivergence gradually became something broader: an examination of cognition, attention, and how understanding can change my relationship with everyday life.
Artificial intelligence has become part of that process as a form of cognitive augmentation. I use AI to help capture and retain thoughts, question assumptions, identify patterns, make connections and support expression. I came to describe it as a “wheelchair for my neurodivergent brain”: technology capable of reducing barriers between intention and expression without deciding where I should go.
Throughout the book and this website, the experiences, observations, judgement, philosophy and responsibility remain explicitly mine.
This relationship introduces one of the book’s central contemporary questions. Discussion about increasingly capable AI often concentrates on what the technology can produce or what human activities it might replace. Paying Attention explores another possibility: what happens when technology is deliberately used to support human cognition while preserving human agency?
payingattention.me is the perpetual continuation of those initial discoveries: an ongoing exploration of my experiences, observations and developing understanding of myself and the world around me.