The attention crisis is a crisis of lived environments

The growing difficulty to focus, decide, create, or sustain attention isn’t limited to work. It shows up in everyday life: in relationships, in digital technology use, in urban space, in rest rhythms, and in how we inhabit our own bodies.

Cognitive fatigue, attentional scattering, emotional reactivity, or the sense of saturation are not only individual problems or “lack of willpower.” Many studies show that attention is deeply dependent on context, bodily state, and the perceptual environment in which it operates. Talking about attention today means changing the frame:

• from the isolated individual to the nervous system in context,
• from personal effort to the ecology of lived environments,
• from correcting behavior to transforming conditions.

This article proposes an integrative framework to understand how the nervous system, attention, and the emergence of novelty articulate within Umwelten—the perceptual worlds we inhabit.

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The nervous system as an adaptive system

Why attention narrows

(References: McEwen; Panksepp; Sterling) The nervous system doesn’t work like a fixed mechanism that responds the same way in any context. It is an adaptive system, designed to adjust behavior, perception, and attention according to environmental demands.

Allostasis: adaptation and cost

The allostasis model (McEwen) describes how the organism adapts dynamically to external demands. When demands are constant or excessive, the system reduces energy expenditure to survive. This can involve:

• a reduced attentional field,
• less cognitive flexibility,
• a preference for fast, defensive responses,
• difficulty exploring or integrating complex information.

👉 Important: this is not a failure – it’s a functional adaptation that becomes problematic when the environment doesn’t allow recovery.

Affective neuroscience and motivation

Affective neuroscience (J. Panksepp) identifies primary emotional systems, including the SEEKING system-associated with enthusiasm, exploration, curiosity, and motivation. When the environment is perceived as:

• unpredictable,
• too costly,
• threatening,

…the SEEKING system becomes inhibited. The result isn’t laziness-it’s a loss of exploratory drive. 👉 When the nervous system is overloaded, the world becomes smaller.

This leads to the next question: how is that “world” configured, the one the nervous system perceives?  

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Attention as an ecological function

Not only internal: it emerges from the environment

(References: Kahneman; Mark et al.; McEwen)

Attention is not an internal “reserve” that we can simply activate by will. Cognitive psychology shows that it emerges from the interaction between:

• physiological state,
• sensory load,
• interruptions,
• life rhythms,
• relationship quality,
• environmental structure.

Everyday examples:

• constant notifications → fragmented attention,
• continuous time pressure → defensive thinking,
• overstimulating spaces → attentional exhaustion.

👉 Trying to “improve attention” without changing the environment usually fails. This move from the internal to the contextual sets the stage for a key concept: Umwelt.

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The concept of Umwelt

The world as it is lived

(Origin: Jakob von Uexküll; developments: Varela, Thompson) Biologist Jakob von Uexküll introduced the concept of Umwelt to describe the world as perceived and made meaningful by an organism. This is not the “objective environment,” but an active perceptual field emerging from the relationship between organism and milieu. There are parallels between von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory and Richard Dawkins’ theory of the extended phenotype, which-far from strict genetic determinism-places interactions between organism and environment at the center (through central processes).  

  The concept of Umwelt sits at an intersection of biology, communication, and semiotics, in human and non-human animals alike. Jakob von Uexküll’s theory suggests that organisms can share the same physical environment without inhabiting the same lived world, but rather distinct Umwelten – “worlds of their own.” A bee and a bat can coexist in the same space without sharing the same sensory reality. The bee, sensitive to polarized light, and the bat, oriented by echolocation waves-mutually inaccessible capacities-construct radically different perceptual universes. Each accesses the world through the specific prism of its sensory systems, producing its own meaningful reality. Two people can be in the same physical place and yet live in radically different Umwelten, depending on:

• their bodily state,
• their history,
• their attention,
• their relationship to the environment.

Enactive and embodied cognitive sciences confirm this idea:

Experience is not contained in the brain; it emerges from the interaction between body and environment.

Umwelt is therefore the basic unit of lived experience.

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Everyday Umwelten and collective Umwelten

(References: Hutchins; Suchman; distributed cognition research)

As a concept, Umwelt articulates and unifies the full set of meaning-making semiotic processes of an organism. A “world of one’s own” is not a simple reflection of the environment, but the totality of experiences emerging from interactions among functional parts-those enabling perception, interpretation, and action (the five senses in humans). For an organism to sustain its existence, these functional parts must operate in coordinated, coherent ways. From this integration arises a shared species-specific experience: the collective Umwelt. When this unified world-view is altered or fragmented, the organism is directly affected in its ability to orient and act. By contrast, when perceptions are synchronized, the organism deploys goal-directed actions and intentional behavior, revealing an active, meaningful, situated relation to its world. We live simultaneously in multiple Umwelten:

• domestic,
• digital,
• relational,
• urban,
• professional.

Many of these Umwelten are collective, meaning shared and structured by:

• implicit norms,
• technologies,
• social rhythms,
• attentional expectations.

A collective Umwelt shapes:

• what is perceived as important,
• what goes unnoticed,
• how a group coordinates,
• how attention circulates.

👉 We don’t just work in collective environments: we live in them.

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Serendipity: what it is and where it comes from

The emergence of novelty in habitable contexts

(Origin: Walpole; developments: Makri & Blandford; March) The term serendipity was introduced by Horace Walpole in the 18th century to describe valuable discoveries made without explicitly searching for them. In an impoverished, overly controlled Umwelt, serendipity becomes essential: it introduces the unexpected, allowing the nervous system to relax, reopen attention, and restore a more flexible, curious, sensitive relationship to the environment. Contemporary research shows serendipity is not luck, but a process requiring three conditions:

• possible exploration,
• openness to the unexpected,
• the ability to recognize value.

👉 Operational definition: Serendipity is the capacity of an individual or collective system to detect meaningful differences and generate new possibilities of sense-making within its Umwelt. Serendipity depends directly on:

• attention quality,
• nervous system state,
• the lived Umwelt.

Examples:

• in saturated Umwelten → no exploration,
• in impoverished Umwelten → no novelty,
• in habitable Umwelten → attention stabilizes and the new becomes perceptible.

👉 Serendipity can’t be forced: it can be made possible.

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Umwelt as a laboratory for sensitive systems

Learning by changing conditions

(References: enactivism; situated artistic practices) Thinking of Umwelt as a laboratory implies a methodological shift:

• not interpreting first,
• but changing conditions (rhythm, materiality, interaction),
• and observing how experience changes.

Here, artistic practices are understood not as therapy, but as experimental tools that can:

• make perceptual dynamics visible,
• enable low-risk exploration,
• show how attention regulates.

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Working with Umwelt as a laboratory

Within Elevart, practices do not aim to correct people or optimize performance. The goal is to modify Umwelt conditions (rhythm, attention, materiality, interaction) to observe how the nervous system responds and how experience transforms. The central principle is:

We don’t intervene directly on attention or regulation, but on the perceptual environment that makes them possible.

Elevart practices are conceived as situated experiments: brief, reversible, and observable-applicable both individually and collectively.

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Individual practices

Reconfiguring your personal Umwelt

These practices let you observe how attention shifts when you change the environment, without forcing concentration or excessive introspection. Elevart examples:

• Deliberate reduction of the perceptual field Choose a simple task (draw, write, organize objects) and deliberately reduce external stimuli (screens, sounds, interruptions). → Observation: does attention stabilize or become restless?
• Rhythm variation Do the same action at different tempos (very slow, usual, accelerated). → Goal: sense how the nervous system adjusts attention according to tempo.
• Goal-free exploration Manipulate materials (paper, pencil, everyday objects) without aesthetic or productive goals. → Purpose: reactivate exploratory drive (SEEKING) without outcome pressure.

👉 In Elevart, these practices are not psychologically interpreted. We describe changes in perception, posture, attention, and fatigue.

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Collective practices

Reconfiguring the shared Umwelt

In collective contexts (groups, teams, organizations), Elevart works with the collective Umwelt: the shared perceptual environment that shapes attention, coordination, and decision-making. Elevart examples:

• Temporary suspension of dominant stimuli Meetings or work spaces without digital devices for a limited time. → Observation: changes in listening quality and presence.
• Exploration spaces with no productive agenda Structured collective time where no decision or outcome is expected. → Goal: allow weak signals and serendipity to emerge.
• Changing the materiality of the space Alter seating arrangements, light, or access to objects. → Intended effect: make implicit relational dynamics visible.
• Shared-attention practices Simple synchronized activities (observe, manipulate, describe) done in a group. → Goal: stabilize collective attention without imposing control.

👉 In Elevart, the collective is not directed or corrected: it observes how it functions across different Umwelten.

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Umwelt Lab

These practices follow a logic of a lived-environment laboratory:

• change one environmental variable,
• observe effects on attention and coordination,
• adjust without imposing a normative model.

This lab makes visible:

• invisible cognitive costs,
• attentional automatisms,
• conditions that enable or block exploration.

👉 Elevart doesn’t prescribe a “good” state. 👉 Elevart helps you understand which environments make certain states possible.

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Purpose of the practices

Individually and collectively, the practices aim to:

• reduce nervous system overload,
• widen the perceptual field,
• restore more stable, flexible attention,
• create conditions for serendipity,
• improve presence, coordination, and decision quality.

No normalizing. No moralizing. No magical productivity promises. By working on Umwelten rather than on people, Elevart offers an ecological approach to attention and experience, applicable to everyday life, relationships, and collective settings.

Change environments to widen what’s possible

The attention crisis is not only individual, nor only professional. It is a crisis of lived environments. Understanding and working with Umwelten individual and collective can:

• widen perception,
• reduce overload,
• restore exploration,
• create conditions for meaning to emerge.

👉 It’s not about changing people, 👉 but transforming the perception of the worlds they inhabit.  

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Explore your Umwelt and recover more habitable attention

Individual, group, and workplace programs

Individual / Group Sessions

👉 What if your difficulty focusing isn’t “your problem,” but the environment you live in?

If your attention feels fragmented, if sustained presence is hard, or if your environment drains you more than it supports you, Elevart offers a different kind of experience. This is not about “training concentration” or changing who you are, but about understanding how your Umwelt shapes attention and experimenting with conditions that make it more stable, flexible, and livable.

What’s offered?

Elevart Program – Personal Umwelt Exploration A short cycle of guided experiences (online or in-person) to:

• observe how your nervous system responds to different environments,
• identify which Umwelt elements create overload or support,
• try simple practices that widen the perceptual field,
• build a clearer, less forced relationship with attention.

Who it’s for

• creative, sensitive, or highly stimulated people,
• people experiencing digital saturation or attentional scattering,
• people who are not looking for therapy or coaching,
• people interested in an ecological, experiential approach.

This program

• is not therapy,
• does not provide diagnoses,
• does not replace medical or psychological support when needed.

Elevart recognizes that neurodivergence (ADHD, autism, etc.) exists, and that attentional difficulties cannot always be reduced to an environmental issue. Elevart proposals do not aim to normalize or correct, but to offer tools for understanding and experimentation, useful alongside other support-or simply as personal exploration. 👉 Explore your Umwelt. Don’t adapt to an environment that shrinks you.

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Workshops for Companies

Design environments that support attention and decision-making

👉 How much energy does your organization lose trying to compensate for environments that fragment attention?

Modern organizations don’t lack talent or commitment. They often lack habitable environments for attention, coordination, and decision-making. Elevart supports teams in understanding their collective Umwelt and testing concrete adjustments that reduce cognitive overload and improve the quality of working together.

What’s offered?

Elevart Intervention – Collective Umwelt & Attention Ecology Tailored interventions (½ day, 1 day, or short cycles) to:

• analyze the collective Umwelt (rhythms, flows, interruptions),
• identify invisible cognitive costs,
• test alternative shared-attention configurations,
• create conditions for coordination and unforced innovation.

What kinds of organizations?

• teams in complex or uncertain environments,
• knowledge-based organizations (tech, NGOs, research, creative industries),
• structures in transition or experiencing organizational fatigue,
• companies seeking decision quality, not cosmetic wellbeing.

Organizational disclaimer

Elevart interventions:

• are not therapeutic programs,
• do not replace occupational health policies or medical support,
• do not provide individual diagnoses.

The approach focuses exclusively on perceptual and organizational environment design, respecting neurocognitive diversity and without imposing normative functioning models. 👉 It’s not about changing people, but transforming the perception of the world they work in. Contact Elevart for a workplace intervention: we reply within 24h at info@elevart.org

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References

• Kahneman, D. – Attention and Effort
• McEwen, B. – Allostasis and Allostatic Load
• Sterling, P. – Principles of Allostasis
• Panksepp, J. – Affective Neuroscience
• Uexküll, J. von – A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans
• Varela, F., Thompson, E., Rosch, E. – The Embodied Mind
• Hutchins, E. – Cognition in the Wild
• Suchman, L. – Plans and Situated Actions
• Walpole, H. – The Three Princes of Serendip
• Makri, S., & Blandford, A. – Serendipity in Information Seeking
• March, J. – Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning
• Photos: Ivan S., Airam Dato-on, Larisa P., Kássia Melo, cottonbro studio, Google DeepMind, Tara Winstead

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👋🏼 Questions? Contact us at info@elevart.org