(A model for attention and agency)

Imagine three circles around your life: one you control, one you can influence, and one that remains untouched by your worry.

Opening Scenes of Misplaced Attention

Coffee Shop

I am sitting at a corner table sipping filter coffee. I see a bunch of men in their forties and older discussing animatedly the latest in Tamil Nadu politics—actor Vijay winning the election, fan clubs, youth power, Dravidian parties losing their grip, horse trading, money for votes, people being stupid, Tamils being movie fanatics, democracy not working for India, and the need for a dictator like Lee Kuan Yew. The irony is that they are expressing their political opinions freely and loudly in a coffee shop in Bengaluru, which they wouldn’t be able to do in Singapore!

Bus

Two passengers in front of me are vehemently discussing freebies offered by political parties and how they are bad for the country. I guess they support different parties with different ideologies. What started as a sane discussion soon derailed into name-calling about the leaders, the leaders’ personal lives, family politics, and other things better left unwritten but openly discussed on public transport. By the time they got off the bus, they were all vexed. I am sure they will patch things up over a drink in the evening and continue their fight in a sober manner.

Train

Train journeys are even more interesting. It starts as a conversation between two passengers, and slowly other passengers in the compartment get pulled in. Topics jump from local to global, politics to celebrities, cricket to religion to God. World leaders get criticized. Everyone has a solution to solve world problems—poverty, hunger, the public distribution system, reservation and affirmative action, freebies, taxes, bad roads, and traffic jams. Once the solutions have been agreed upon, they all hit the sleepers for a good night’s sleep.

Social Media

Social media platforms have their benefits—they are a treasure house of things you need if you know how to use them, like any other technology that came before them. Except that, since access is easy and cheap (since consumers are the products), if we don’t have our guard up, we get sucked into the space without realizing how much time we have spent there. People become social warriors defending and fighting for their favourite celebrities, leaders, policies, and parties with unknown strangers around the world. Hatred and venom spew out. Even if you are not the one posting and getting into spiteful discussions, just browsing and reading them will start impacting your character. Before we realize it, we are swept along by social media algorithms and clickbait. The higher the emotional intensity and nastiness, the greater the pull. Constructive and learning discussions have no chance of survival in that space.

These scenes point to a common habit: people spend a disproportionate amount of attention on things they do not control.

The Three Concentric Circles

A simple way to visualize this is through three concentric circles. The Inner Circle contains what we can directly govern. The Middle Circle contains what we can shape but not dictate. The Outer Circle contains what we must learn to accept rather than mentally wrestle with.

This framing draws on older Stoic ideas about focusing on what is within our control, and on later popularizations such as Stephen Covey’s circles of concern and influence.

• Inner Circle – Control
  • Our actions
  • Our reactions
  • Our decisions
  • Our habits
  • Our preparation
  • Our attention
• Middle Circle – Influence
  • Family dynamics
  • Colleagues and other people
  • Team culture
  • Organizational policies
  • Outcomes we can shape but not dictate
• Outer Circle – Concern / No Influence
  • Global events
  • Economy
  • Past events
  • Random luck
  • Politics
  • Weather
  • Other people’s private choices
  • Large systems beyond our reach

The Inner Circle is our core: the things we can most directly control and how we choose to respond to situations. The Middle Circle is the influence circle—we cannot force outcomes here, but our behaviour and communication can sway them. In the Outer Circle, we don’t have any control or influence—energy spent worrying here is usually wasted; these are external forces that we must learn to accept and adapt to rather than try to change.

The Difference Between Control and Influence

Focusing our energy from the inside out is one of the best ways to reduce anxiety and increase our effectiveness. This distinction is important because many frustrations come from confusing influence with control. A few examples:

• A parent can influence a child, but cannot fully control adult decisions.
• As citizens, we can influence politics through voting or activism, but cannot control policy outcomes.
• A manager can influence team culture, but cannot fully control employee motivation.

Where Attention Usually Goes Wrong

There is no single universal statistic for this, but research across stress, burnout, anxiety, media consumption, and locus of control suggests that people often spend disproportionate attention on things outside their control and influence. For example:

• Politics they cannot affect
• Worrying about markets and macroeconomic fears
• Replaying past conversations
• Social media outrage
• What others think of them
• Uncertain future scenarios
• Organizational decisions beyond our control or influence

Modern media ecosystems amplify this because attention is naturally drawn to uncertainty, threat, and novelty.

Locus of Control

When attention drifts toward uncontrollable events, rumination, stress, anxiety, and anger tend to rise, while effort on controllable actions declines. As a result, we either underestimate our personal agency or feel a lack of agency.

The concept of “locus of control,” developed by Julian Rotter, shows that people who focus more on controllable factors generally have:

• Lower stress
• Higher resilience
• Stronger academic performance
• Better career outcomes
• Better health behaviours

Not because they control more of reality—but because they allocate attention differently.

Julian Rotter proposed that people differ in whether they believe outcomes are mainly driven by:

• Their own actions — internal locus of control
• External forces — external locus of control

People with a stronger internal locus tend to believe:

• My choices matter.
• My effort influences outcomes.
• I can improve through learning.
• My actions affect my future.

Focus stays on controllable factors. People with a stronger external locus tend to believe outcomes are driven mostly by:

• Luck.
• Fate and destiny.
• Politics.
• Unfair systems.
• Powerful people.

Sometimes external explanations are true. But when overused, they reduce agency.

Locus of Control: A Necessary Nuance

This doesn’t mean internal locus is always correct and external is always wrong. In reality both play a role. Some things in our life are genuinely unfair, systemic, random, and outside our control. For example, in a country like India, the probability of a student getting through entrance exams like JEE and NEET is low—odds are against the student considering the number of seats available and number of students taking the test. Hard work and preparation are the only factors students can control. How the system is set up is beyond their control.

Too much internal locus can become:

• Self-blame.
• Perfectionism.
• Guilt.
• Illusion of total control.

Too much external locus can become:

• Helplessness.
• Cynicism.
• Disempowerment.
• Passivity.

We should avoid extreme versions of either side. The concentric circle model expresses that clearly. Human wellbeing depends partly on experiencing agency. We need to feel this: our choices matter, our effort has meaning, and our actions produce effects. Without that, our motivation declines. A healthy mindset is to internalize the mantra—”I do not control everything, but my actions still matter.”

Using the Model in Practice

Circle	High Stress / Anxiety / Low Agency	Low Stress / High Agency / Resilience
Control	Low attention	High attention
Influence	Moderate emotional investment	Strategic investment
Concern / No Influence	Very high emotional investment	Limited monitoring

Growth as Movement Between Circles

The circles are not fixed. Things can move:

• From no control to influence (learning, networking, organizing).
• From influence to control (building systems, authority, skill).

Growth, then, often means:

• Expanding the influence circle.
• Strengthening the control circle.
• Emotionally detaching from the uncontrollable circle.

The Balance Worth Seeking

The task is not to control more of life, but to relate wisely to its circles: to act where we can, influence where possible, and remain inwardly free where we cannot. A healthy life depends on placing our attention in the right circle.

Further Reading

If you’d like deeper context, I explored a few self-improvement ideas earlier.

1. Self-improvement:Goals, Mindset, Habits, Focus, Practice, and Self-help books
2. Habits: Discipline and Habits – How to Build Habits
3. Practice: Practice vs Deliberate Practice
4. Passion:Passion and Skillset
5. Hard Work: Hard Work–Privilege–Luck–Myth of Merit
6. Success Trap: Success Is a Trap (Here’s The Exit Ramp)

Some books and ideas that influenced my thinking:

1. Peak by Anders Ericsson
2. Mindset by Carol Dweck
3. Grit by Angela Duckworth
4. Deep Work by Cal Newport
5. Tyranny of Merit by Michael J Sandel
6. How Minds Change by David McRaney
7. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
8. Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb