Quality of Attention Is the Whole Criterion

People ask me how to know if what they are making is good. I understand the question. But I think it is the wrong question, and here is the right one: how fully were you paying attention while you made it?

The thing you make is, fundamentally, an act of attention. It is you saying: I looked at this thing, or this feeling, or this corner of the world — I looked at it closely enough to find a form that lets someone else feel what I felt.

The quality of the finished work is a function of the quality of attention that went into it. Not exclusively — skill matters, practice matters. But attention is the irreducible thing. The technically skilled work made with divided attention is less than the technically modest work made with complete presence.

The implication for your own work: the question is not whether it is good enough. The question is whether you were present enough. If you were genuinely there — genuinely looking, genuinely feeling the thing you are trying to express — then the work has integrity even if it is imperfect.