Attention is Your Number One Asset

Three Point Essay #20 | Attention Economy, Infinite Information Issue, and Cognitive Limitations

Jeff Sullivan

Oct 11, 2022

Here’s a three-pointer to open your mind.

Read the online version here

The mission of “Three Pointers” & about the author here

At-ten-tion (noun)

The mental faculty of considering or taking notice of someone or something, regarding it as important

Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are.
—Jose Ortega y Gasset

The Attention Economy

Many of the wealthiest companies in the world are media technology companies:

Facebook
Amazon
Apple
Twitter
Netflix
Tik Tok

The more you use these platforms, the better their finances. More users = More growth = More money.

Manufacturing digital addiction is the business model.

Every other media company is doing the same thing. Because they have to, to stay alive.

We live in an economy of organizations (and individuals, like myself) fighting to capture peoples attention. To gain subscriptions, and advertise products or services to whoever is engaging.

There’s a constant competition between corporations fighting for eyeballs.

Your eyeballs.

But you have to control where you direct your magical eyeballs. There is only so much attention stored within them. You don’t want to waste it on trash.

There’s Unlimited Information

Sometimes you need to go on a low-information diet.
—Tim Ferriss

The number of stars in outer space is nothing compared to how much data there is in cyberspace.

According to Forbes, 2.5 quintillion bytes of digital data are created every day. For reference, 1 quintillion is 18 zeros: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.

That’s a lot of information in the digital world. Problem is, most of it is garbage.

So, the most important question for this generation is: ‘how the hell do you decide which data you should download into your brain?’

The best answer to this question is counter-intuitive: Stop downloading so much data for a while.

Go on a low information diet. Take more time away from screens. Away from social media. Away from endless stimulation.

Then you can listen to yourself for once. And over time, figure out what you want to pay attention to.

And because you’re an intelligent person, you’ll realize that you want to pay attention to content teaching you how to improve your health, wealth, and happiness.

And you’ll start reading classic books more often than you absorb mind-numbing political debates, depressing news, and celebrity drama on social media.

Limited Mental Energy

You become what you give your attention to.
—Seneca

Think of your attention span as something made up of units. A limited budget of units, let’s say 100 of them.

Then consider how the only way to become good at anything in life is by spending these units on the right things.

But you spend them every day as if they don’t matter! On distractions that keep you from becoming the person you want to be.

Distractions that drain your attention bandwidth from 100 units down to 30 units…yet when you finally sit down to work, you still wonder why you can’t focus.

It’s because you already spent your precious attention on nonsense.

Imagine if you used your attention budget wisely instead. Imagine if you had 80 units of attention per day to use on your work instead of 30.

How much more knowledgeable and skilled could you become?

Be Ruthless About What Information You Consume

Again, what you consume every day is a crucial decision. Because there’s unlimited things you could be paying attention to.

The quality of your attention use = your mind quality. Your mind quality = your life quality.