Why You Need To Treat Your Attention as a Commodity

Attention is one of the worlds most valuable resources.

It builds business, sells books, makes YouTubers and bloggers popular. It can also make people quite wealthy. It is also one of the few valuable things in life we actually don’t bother to track. If I asked you a question about where you spent your attention the previous week could you answer me?

Before you answer, realize whatever your answer is, it’s just a guess.

You have no real clue. What you think your giving your attention to vs the reality of what you actually pay attention to will have stark differences. I secretly suspect that this difference is not in the favor of a young hustler trying to make the move, or the brazen careerist attempting to buck the status quo, or the new working professional seeking stability through secure employment.

Last week I had a conversation with an EOD subscriber about my contact page.

On it I state “attention is the worlds most valuable commodity, so use it wisely”. I use this statement not to discourage those from contacting me, but rather for anyone intending on doing so to understand that my attention is valuable. It is valuable because I do not have an unlimited supply of it to give. I need to give my attention to:

Writing content for this blog
My own personal development
Meditation
Half an hour to listening to music
Guitar playing
Consulting clients
Doing excellent work to build my reputation
Marketing this site via my SEO strategy
Maintaining my physical well being
Unplugging from the static age occasionally
Working on projects that generate revenue as this site only makes $100 a month because it’s just a baby

She wanted to know what I exactly I meant by it…

So I decided to explain how in this post-geographic society that is emerging from the rubble of the factory economy…we can really reach out and touch anyone anywhere in the world with our ideas. This is an incredible shift from the days of my parents. In fact the world of my parents is just about dead. I have subscribers from India, Brazil, to Australia, and places in Europe. I am able to reach these people with my ideas even while I am nestled in the quite state of Connecticut located in the beautiful North East of America.

This simple fact is not only blows my mind, it also puts a premium on attention. My attention in particular.

When the world was simpler, there was less distraction. Focus and concentration were easier to hold onto. Patience was a virtue. Now, much of that has been shattered. We have so many things we want to give our attention to, what we think we should give our attention to, versus what we are actually end up giving our attention to.

This was a breakthrough for me and it can help you.

If think my attention is so valuable why don’t I start tracking it? So that is what I actually did…I tracked it for a whole week on paper. What you pay attention to is basically a summation of what you value. So I broke up this piece of paper into three sections:

What I did.
How much time I spent doing what I did.
Things I think I value and want to spend my attention on.

Things I want to spend my time on…

are this site, growing my income, spending time on my personal development. Reading, staying fit. Spending time away from the computer/Twitter/Facebook. This is where I would like to be spending most of my attention on.

So my week typically broke down like this:

8 hours writing content for this site
5 hours promoting this site
2 hours dealing with email
1 hour spent on POF
2 hours reading the Huffington Post
2 hours reading other blogs
35 hours “working”
1.5 hours working out
2 hour reading an actual book
5 hours playing Team Fortress 2
1 hour meditating
10 hours spent with friends, family, activities
2 hours for guitar
1 hour managing my finances
1.5 hours for errands

I think I should spend more time promoting this site…

but I actually only spend 5 hours a week. I can get that up to 7. I think I should spend more time meditation and reading books…but I only spend 3 hours a week! There are about 12 hours in a day to do stuff or about 84 hours a week. So what you spend your attention on is limited by this.

By actually tracking what I spend my time on I can see from a broad view, where I waste the most time and get no results. So if I want to spend more time in one area than I currently am doing, I need to take it from another area where I spend more time.

It’s all about prioritization, and it matters…

because it’s your life. Why would you waste your time and your attention on things you don’t really want to be doing? It’s partly because you don’t know any better, and partly because you have no idea where your attention goes week after week. Instead of saying “I would like to spend more time with family” or “I would like to spend less attention on TV” or “I would like to spend more time working out” actually track where your attention goes day by day for a week or two. Once you track your time you can make the conscious decision to spend less in one area that is wasted and more in another area that you would like to value more.

Where you spend your time and attention is a reflection of what you value, so spend wisely because attention is the worlds most valuable commodity.

-David

–