The attention crisis is real
It’s all happening at once, and we have to choose.
What to read, listen to, answer?
A spam from a scammer
An @ mention on Slack
A voice mail from the boss
An email from a customer
A DM on Slack
A last-minute sale email from a store you’ve never visited
A year-old blog post
A new blog post
A new podcast
A …
[sorry, got distracted.]
The idea that we can strip mine attention, wasting what we don’t need, is long gone. Like oysters and oil before it, attention is a scarce resource, and we need to use it wisely. Too often, it feels cheaper to simply take what we can get, but when we overreach, the cost in trust is real.
And each of us gets the same amount of attention to spend each day. It’s a competitive advantage to figure out how to focus it to get something done.