What do you pay attention to? Notice how we say pay attention to, because it’s true: our attention is a form of currency. We often convert it into other things such as money, relationships, or experiences. What we pay attention to profoundly shapes who we are as individuals. For instance, I’ve found that by simply paying attention to my breathing, I’m far less anxious than I used to be.
In the past, we had far fewer choices as to what we were paying attention to – our ancestors were primarily concerned with survival. Even today, there are still plenty of people for whom this is the case. If the choice is between procuring food or dying, it isn’t much of a choice at all. However, I write this as a westerner living in a society where the choice has been abstracted away from procure food or die to provide value to others or else. The or else can be many things, but it’s much rarer for it to mean dying.
Ok, so that got a little morbid, but I now live in Austria and they have a somewhat jolly relationship with Death, so it’s allowable.
I think the most prevalent example of our Economy of Attention is advertisements. Unless you’re one of those curious marketing people who like to critique ads, you probably don’t actually enjoy watching some inexplicably attractive person remind you of what a certain soda tastes like. The choice here is between paying a fee or paying with your time spent watching the ad. This can be up to an hour per day for the average person, according to Nielsen’s 2021 Total Audience Report. An hour per day adds up quickly!
Another example is the incredibly competitive gaming industry, where there are models such as Free to Play (F2P) and recently, with blockchain technologies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, Play to Earn (P2E). Typically, the choice with F2P is between paying for a pass/subscription or paying with time spent doing less-fun things in order to remain competitive. Many indie developers even offer their games for free on platforms with large numbers of users, simply to get people to play. With P2E games, players are incentivized even further to play with monetary rewards. Pretty amazing!
I speak about these things because I am most familiar with them, but there are many other things that demand our attention. Let’s take psychological distractions for instance. Have you ever experienced times when you had thoughts and memories that were so overwhelming and inescapable that you couldn’t focus on anything else? I sure have. At these points in my life, the most valuable things were whatever allowed me to avoid those thoughts and memories.
As a result of this period, I discovered the gift of meditation. I know this word can mean many things in the western world so I’ll try to define it according to my understanding: meditation is the practice of focusing one’s awareness on one’s awareness of the immediate present (I am aware, that I am aware, that I am aware). This is often achieved by paying attention to one’s breathing. I won’t claim that many of the distractions that life has to offer are not good things. I will claim that it feels very good to have a calm, still mind that’s rooted in the present moment.
I believe that the noblest form of human activity is creation and it requires our complete attention to create something good (he writes, while trying not to be distracted by the music coming through his headphones…). I believe that when we, as humans, have all of our other needs met, the only things left worth doing are creative things. Creating experiences/memories, music, dances, paintings, sculptures, games, you name it. I firmly believe that the pursuit of these creations are well worth our attention.
What would you do if you won the lottery? If all your material needs were met (or do you already enjoy this sort of wealth?)? It may sound far-fetched with so much need and suffering in the world, but I believe that things are going to continue trending in this direction of more and more of us having more freedom to give attention to better things. That more and more of us will be allowed to pay attention to being purely creative. This is why I continue to develop ERAS and PBM: to enable many more of us to do more creative things, together.