A term I believe was coined by Andy Matuschak, the concept of Programmable Attention refers to the use of various tools and systems (most notably Spaced Repetition) to “orchestrate your repeated attention over time across hundreds of tiny tasks”.
While such systems are originally designed for learning and productivity, they can also be used in unconventional ways to facilitate habit formation and modification and support creative consistency. I am particularly interested in the idea of using Spaced Repetition to support Incremental Writing.
Similar to how Raph Koster describes Game Design Patterns and being isomorphic to each other at the most abstract level, it seems many systems and patterns for learning and habit modification are as well. According to Andy, Spaced Repetition is no different:
“It’s interesting to imagine a single interface malleable enough that I could define my piano exercises above as one sort of routine, and a SRS memory system as another routine—both special cases of a single general primitive.”
- Andy Matuschak on using SR to program attention.
I somewhat unintentionally accomplished something similar in analog format with my Vision Deck, which helped to surface specific projects, cultivate mindfulness, maintain relationships, and facilitate Habit Stacking by dumping me right into what would normally be high-friction tasks.
Some other Unusual applications of spaced repetition memory systems from Andy Matuschak.