Human attention is one of the most sought after resources in modern digital economies. Correspondingly, the most valuable skill-set for optimizing executive-function is the ability to perceive, actively track and manage what you pay attention to and how you pay attention to it. One, unfortunately, is often sacrificed for the sake of the other. The truth of our times is that we are suffering, both as individuals and as a society from a profound shortage of attention. Everywhere we turn there is something that would lay claim to our senses, directing our minds elsewhere. There are a host of reasons for this, but it begs an urgent set of questions: what role do businesses play to at least partially ameliorate this issue, and how do individuals address this in their own lives? The path to answering these questions, I think, is to seek a new cultural capacity for reverence and respect for the sanctity of the mind and our ability to place our attention where and how best serves to cultivate a sense of flourishing for both self and other.
When you find yourself no longer "paying attention", look away from your screen, sit up straight, take a deep breath, and see what you see on your own terms.
Warren Thorngate, a professor of social psychology, has been writing about this evolving dilemma since the late 1980's. I have yet to encounter a thinker that does a better job of framing this issue in purely economic terms. In discussing the structure of modern information economies he proffers a theory of Attentional Economics. He says, “because most of us were raised with the expression, when we 'pay attention' we rarely stop to think about its metaphorical implications, yet attention is exactly what we 'pay' for information; it is the primary currency of exchange in our Information Age.” He proposes a set of principles that govern our relationship with the vast quantities of information we now encounter on a daily basis. They largely resonate with the common sense rules of supply and demand that dictate the economic landscape in which we live today. I've found these enormously beneficial to reflect on in my own life. For the sake of brevity, I'll summarize them as:
- Fixed Attentional Assets – human attention is a finite, non-renewable resource. You get at most 24 hours of it a day. You cannot bank it or store it.
- Singular Attentional Investments – attention can only be invested in one activity at a time. Multi-tasking, even well done is really just rapid task-switching.
- Diminishing Attentional Returns – as the duration of focused attention on one thing increases its ability to hold our attention decreases. The longer we are doing something the greater fatigue it has on our ability to hold our attention.
- Expected Attentional Revenues – we expect to gain from the investment of our attention because we always want something, even in an abstract sense, in return.
- Exploratory Attentional Expenses – searching for where to place our attention itself requires an investment of attention.
- Balanced Attentional Budgets – we often direct attention in anticipation of acknowledgment and approval from others for how that attention was spent.
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About the author: David is a Senior Consultant at Accenture, living in Seattle Washington. He is also a student of both mindfulness practices and of western philosophy. After college, he entered the business world with a focus on IT project management where he found a passion for data ethics and philosophy of technology. In addition to his day job, he is currently pursuing a masters degree with a focus on Data Science and Machine Learning at the University of Washington. You can learn more about him at www.davidbeckley.me