You can spend the whole day solving things and end up feeling you have not had a single moment to think calmly.
I am Nara, the mascot of HR professionals, and these days I have seen a lot of talk about Magnífica Humanitas, the new encyclical of Pope Leo XIV.
Beyond the religious context it comes from, this text shares a very concrete reflection on the impact of artificial intelligence and the need to protect our ability to think clearly.
The encyclical contains an expression that is especially important for those working in HR: the hygiene of attention. Leo XIV explains that we live surrounded by stimuli that accustom us to responding faster and faster. That immediacy ends up generating tiredness, because the mind stays alert to whatever is coming next.
In HR this is especially easy to recognise. When much of the day is spent attending to other people’s needs, every email or query can claim your attention before you have finished processing the previous one. And receiving a lot of information does not necessarily mean thinking better.
That is why the encyclical proposes recovering moments of pause that allow us to analyse more calmly what we receive. It also raises an interesting idea in an era dominated by artificial intelligence: learning to use a tool includes knowing when you do not need to use it.
Something similar happens with attention. Protecting it also means deciding when a request can wait and when you need to finish one thing before letting the next one in.
There are three simple skills that can help you protect your attention better in your day to day.
Skill 1
Distinguishing the urgent from what merely interrupts
When you work in HR, many things arrive wrapped in a sense of urgency. The brain reacts quickly to any new stimulus because it interprets that it may require immediate attention. So, before switching focus, it can help to ask yourself a very simple question:
“Does this need an answer now, or has it simply just appeared?”
That pause of a few seconds lets you recover your judgement before reacting. Protecting your attention starts with preventing every interruption from automatically becoming a priority.
Skill 2
Creating small spaces with no incoming information
The mind needs moments when it is not receiving anything new. When you finish a meeting and open your email straight away, the brain has no space to order what has just happened. Over time, that accumulation generates mental fatigue.
You can start by leaving one or two minutes between one task and the next, especially after an important conversation or before making a decision. That small space can simply consist of closing the screen for a moment, breathing more calmly and asking yourself what you need to keep from what has just happened.
The pause does not delay the work. It often lets you return to it with better judgement.
Skill 3
Closing one thing before opening the next
There are tasks that end on the outside but remain open on the inside. This happens especially after a delicate conversation, when part of your mind keeps replaying what was said while you are already attending to something else. That is why a small closure before moving to the next task can help. Writing a single sentence is enough:
“The next step is this.”
When you record what needs to happen next, the mind no longer needs to keep holding the whole situation internally. That gesture frees up mental space and lets you be present again in what is in front of you.
From Humántica®
Attention does not depend solely on resolving to concentrate harder, but on the internal state you are working from. When the body remains tense, any stimulus seems more urgent. When the mind has spent hours jumping from one matter to another, it loses its capacity to order. And when a conversation is still open inside, it is hard to be present in what comes next.
That is why protecting attention means recovering moments of balance. Humántica® is the approach we integrate into every learning experience, whether it is about communication, leadership or team development. Its very name unites the human and applied technique.
We work on body, mind and emotion so that people can better integrate what they learn and apply it with more clarity in their day to day. And perhaps that is why this reflection from Magnífica Humanitas connects so much with our way of working.
At a time when artificial intelligence occupies more and more space, caring for the human also means protecting attention and the capacity to decide calmly. Because the more the tools advance, the more important it becomes to care for the person using them.
I will still be around, watching closely how you work… and also learning from everything you hold together every day.
And who knows, maybe at some point we will bump into each other at the office. I almost always accompany Berta in her meetings with HR.
— Nara
PS: What do you think is attention’s greatest enemy?
