I found the ideas suggested by N.Katherine Hayles in her article ‘Hyper or Deep attention’ relative to different forms of balance and priorities.

I always find that if I’m interested by something (for example a good book) I fall into a deep attention span very quickly. The world within the book immediately jumps to the top of my priority list and it takes me no time at all to be sucked back into it. However, turning to books that I don’t find particularly interesting, they’re very low on my list of priorities and it seems that almost anything in the world becomes more interesting and necessary to do before reading it.
But then again, that book (pretend now that it’s a homework book) becomes a lot more interesting and high on the priority list when the due date is the next day…

We, as a generation, are far more prone to hyper attention now as there is now, so much more to do and watch than there has ever been before. We have become a hyper attention society because of the internet and all the wonderful and not so wonderful things we can do on it. This again comes back to priorities. For example, scrolling through your Facebook newsfeed, there is an abundance of videos. Some short, some long, some weird as hell and some funny as hell. Personally, I prefer the comedy. I will click on a video that seems relatively funny and see how long it goes for. I always find there is a correlation between the length of the video and the quality of the video. If it’s not that good, but only a few seconds i’ll watch it. But as that length drags out, the quality has to increase or my attention will immediately be dragged elsewhere.

It’s all about priorities. If there is not one thing in particularly higher above other things on our individual list, we will focus on say, the top ten things. However, as soon as something moves itself up for whatever reason (interest or desperation, for example) I am able to solely focus on that.