Subtractive, ambient and bifurcated attention at work and when working from home: Towards a geography of workplace attention

Abstract In this commentary, we draw on research on working from home during the COVID‐19 pandemic in Ontario, Canada, to expand on Bissell, Crovara, Gorman‐Murray and Straughan's (2025) paper ‘What does it mean to be present at work? Negotiating attention, distraction and presence in working from home’. We corroborate and add to their analysis of attention in relation to working from home in two ways. First, we develop further how their analysis of attention relates to social difference in working from home settings. Second, we consider through additional examples how attention relates to a working from home politics. These points lead us to push for the importance of the multiplicious theory of attention that the authors outline in their paper, against the declension narratives that often accompany solely subtractive theories of attention that they critique in their conclusion. We emphasise a theory of attention that is ambient, bifurcated, open, complex and multifaceted, as well as one that is, under certain circumstances, subtractive. We see these former ideas of attention as more central to notions of presence and better foreground the broad range of subjective experiences of work and working.