Treasure Your Attention

My commencement address to the NYU Class of 2026.

Last Thursday, I had the honor of speaking to NYU’s graduating class at their commencement in Yankee Stadium. As a member of the NYU community for the last 16 years, I was deeply humbled by this invitation and felt a real responsibility to deliver something meaningful and worthy of the moment as these students go forth into a world with many new challenges.

As a social psychologist, I’m used to speaking to academic audiences, making arguments from evidence. This was different. I spoke to the graduates — members of Gen Z — to offer advice about how to flourish in a world of technologies that raise many obstacles to human flourishing. I drew on the class I teach at NYU Stern, called “Flourishing,” which is my favorite class to teach, ever. Over the 12 years of teaching the course, my students and I have found techniques to make us all smarter, emotionally stronger, and more sociable. These are the key changes to increase one’s odds of success in love and in work. And success in love and work is the best validated formula for flourishing.

I wanted to share a few of those discoveries with the entire graduating class. And now I want to share those techniques and ideas with the After Babel community. I hope it will “earn” your attention. (You can find the syllabus for the course, and the reading list, here.)

– Jon

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Credit: Rattankun Thongbun via Canva Pro

NYU began holding commencement ceremonies here in Yankee Stadium in 2009. Since then, graduates have heard from prime ministers, presidents, Supreme Court justices, movie stars, civil-rights crusaders, and Taylor Swift. So I know what you’re all thinking: Finally, they brought in a social psychologist!

Perhaps that’s why over the past few weeks, as I’ve thought about what I might say to all of you, I’ve felt grateful. I’ve felt excited. But most of all, I’ve felt a strong sense of responsibility. Because I am part of NYU. I love this university, and I love the students that I have the privilege to teach. That’s why I feel a strong responsibility to do my small part to make this the great and memorable day that all of you, and your families, deserve.

Graduates, I see how hard you have worked. And I love how you also throw yourselves into the life of New York City. Because all of us made the same deal when we chose NYU: We traded in the campus quad for Washington Square, and the football stadium for the city that never sleeps.

Here’s something else I know: Most families have stories of struggle and perseverance, many of which began on distant continents. But all our family stories converge here, today, in Yankee Stadium, with a loved one graduating from New York University. So to all of the parents, grandparents, and other relatives and friends in the audience, and to all the teachers or anyone else who helped you reach this day, let us all thank you and applaud you.

As I sat down to write this address, I thought back to my own commencement, in May of 1985. I remember the mix of emotions I felt as I sat with my fellow graduates in our caps and gowns. On the one hand: pride, excitement, gratitude, and love for my friends. On the other, the sadness of knowing that an amazing chapter of my life was ending, and the fear of not knowing what would come next.

Our commencement speaker that day was a former Massachusetts congressman who said that in 20 years we would not remember anything from his speech. He was wrong: I still remember that he said we would not remember anything from his speech.

His words ring as a reminder to approach my role here with humility. So, while I will share several lessons that I’ve learned in my life and my research, if there’s just one thing from my address that you remember tomorrow, next week, and 20 years from now, make it this: Treasure your attention.

In 2014, when she was nearly 80 years old, the poet Mary Oliver wrote a short poem titled “Instructions for Living a Life.” It goes like this:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

It sounds simple. But paying attention is in fact one of the most challenging and meaningful things you can do. Because what you pay attention to shapes what you care about. And what you care about shapes who you become.

Taking control of your own attention has never been easy — which is why it’s one of the many things this university has tried to prepare you to do. In 2005, the writer David Foster Wallace gave one of this century’s best-known commencement addresses, at Kenyon College. He said, “the really significant education-in-thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about.” He was right, and he seemed to anticipate that, two decades later, there would be so many powerful people and big companies trying to take that choice away from you.

They compete with each other to capture your attention. Think about that phrase. It acknowledges that your attention is valuable. But it also reveals that some of the biggest corporations in human history aren’t trying to earn your attention, or deserve your attention. They’re trying to take it from you.

Consider just one example. Meta is valued at well over a trillion dollars, even though few of us have given it any money. How is that possible? Because it invented a business model that extracts attention from nearly half of all human beings and sells it to advertisers. Other industries followed: video games, dating, gambling — even investing has been gamified and optimized to keep us all staring and swiping. We’ve all had the experience of picking up our phone, maybe for a good reason, only to find ourselves, an hour later, mindlessly scrolling. That’s not an accident. That’s our phones and apps, doing what they were designed to do.

Let me tell you what I have learned, from my research and my teaching, about how to resist, how to reclaim your attention. I’ve taught a course at NYU’s Stern School of Business, now for 12 years, called “Flourishing.” On day one of that course, I ask students to do something simple: Turn off nearly all the notifications on their phones. Do you get an alert every time an email comes in? Many young people do, so, turn it off. Alerts for breaking news? Turn those off, too.

A week later, I ask them, “Did you miss anything really important?” The answer is almost always no. Then I ask: “Did you gain anything important?” Yes. Students are amazed at how much better life feels when they remove a hundred interruptions from their day. When they check things when they choose to, rather than giving a company the right to interrupt them as it pleases.

In the third week of my “Flourishing” course, I ask my students to take part in an exercise that they think is going to be a lot harder: I ask them to delete social-media apps from their phones, just for a week. I don’t ask them to stop using social media entirely. Many of them continue to use it through a web browser. But adding that little bit of friction for one week, by having to log in on a web browser rather than just pulling out a phone without thinking, puts us back in charge of deciding where our attention goes.

By the end of the week, most students are surprised by how easy it was. More than that, they’re surprised by how much freer they feel. They got back precious hours each day, and a feeling of agency over how to spend that time.

So treasure your attention more than the people who want to take it from you. Never forget what it’s worth. For Meta, it’s a trillion dollars. For you and your life, it is priceless.

Once you’re in control of your attention, you can start to ask yourself one of life’s most exciting questions: “What do I want to do?”

Of course, the answer to this question is going to be different for each of you. But looked at in another way, I think the answer may be the same for all of you. What should you do? You should do hard things.

This is among the most universal pieces of advice from our ancestors. In the words of two great philosophers — Friedrich Nietzsche and Kelly Clarkson — what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. The psychological foundation of this great truth is that humans, and especially young people, are not fragile. They are antifragile, to use a term coined by NYU professor Nassim Taleb. Fragile things break when they get knocked over or challenged, so we need to protect them vigilantly. Antifragile things grow stronger, so we need to expose them to challenges, diligently.

So how should you live these next postgraduate years, these years of transition? By repeatedly turning your attention toward doing hard things. Throw yourself into your next job, or academic program, or whatever your next adventure is. Take chances. Say yes to anything that will expand your capabilities.

And I’m not just talking about your career. Devote your precious attention to taking chances in relationships, too. You’ve heard it said that “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” That line becomes even more resonant once you understand that your heart is antifragile, too.

Which brings me to my final point. Because along with the question “What should I turn my attention towards?” comes a related question: “Whom should I spend my attention on?”

Once again, the answer is going to be different for each of you. And once again, the answer may also be the same for all of you: You should spend a lot of your attention on real people in the real world.

During your time at NYU, in-person connection was built into the architecture of your lives. You ran into friends constantly. Or maybe someone texted “pizza?”— and 10 minutes later, you were getting pizza. Shared experiences are easily launched in college. That’s part of what makes this place so special.

But today one of the most common experiences of adulthood — especially in ambitious cities, among high-achieving people — is a strange kind of loneliness. You can be messaging people all day. You can see everyone’s lives unfold in real time. And yet, despite all this so-called connection, you may find yourself feeling increasingly alone. Friendship now requires much more intentionality than it once did. So my advice, as you think about what does and doesn’t deserve your attention, is to reach out to others, even when it feels awkward.

Call someone you love just to say hi. Invite someone to dinner. Say yes when someone invites you. Be the one who makes things happen in the real world, and others will be grateful to you.

Think about your most memorable moments from your time at NYU. I’m willing to bet that almost none of them happened on a screen. Most of them probably happened while spending time with people who made you laugh or helped you grow. Keep making those moments happen.

So, NYU Class of 2026, I want to end where I started, with Mary Oliver’s instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

I cannot predict what your future will hold. But I can tell you this: At your age, at this point in your life, with a degree from NYU, you have opportunities that few people in history could have dreamed of. You have the opportunity to become the best, fullest, and truest version of yourself.

Here’s something else I can tell you: The world needs you to seize that opportunity with everything you’ve got. It won’t be easy. You’ll face the universal challenges encountered by all the generations who came before you, and you’ll face the unique ones that have arisen for your generation.

But if you treasure your attention, and then use it to do hard things, with other people, in real life, then — and trust me on this, as a social psychologist — your life is going to be amazing. And the world is going to be a far better place because you’re in it.

Congratulations, NYU Class of 2026. May you all flourish.

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Editor’s Note: You can watch the recording of Jon’s NYU Commencement Address here.