A Poverty of Attention
What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
- Herbert Simon, recipient of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics and the A.M. Turing Award, the "Nobel Prize of Computer Science"
This is a quote I came across while rereading The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. I find that the book has good insights, even if you are doing something completely opposite from a 4-hour workweek.
In fact, some of the insights seem to punch harder in my current state of work all the time than they did when I first read the book back in the days when I didn't have a farm and four kids.
This quote jumped out at me because it was an interesting way of looking at things. Information consuming attention, not the other way around.
To me, saying that the information is doing the consuming speaks a bit to how out of control information consumption can become.
If I'm not being mindful, I can spend many hours watching videos that don't actually lead to any real-world increases to my productivity or happiness. The information gets consumed, and my time goes down the drain.
I'm not saying that this information has no value. The problem is that it is easy to delude ourselves into thinking that time was well spent to avoid feeling bad about wasting time.
Instead of asking if there was any value at all, the better question is whether that time could have generated more value if our attention was directed somewhere else.
Here's some simple questions to think about:
- What important things needs done right now?
- What activities bring me the most happiness?
- Do I feel in relaxed control or like I'm always a step behind?
- Am I getting enough sleep?
- Am I happy with the state of my relationships? Am I spending the amount of time I want to be spending with the people I love most?
Now consider your screen time, and more generally how much of your attention gets consumed by information.
How much of your attention is going to Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, email, text message threads, cable news, TV shows, Netflix, movies, newspapers, or books?
I do not know many people who can honestly say that they spend less than 3 hours a day consuming information in these forms. I know many who spend double that and more.
The worst part is that many of these things are designed to be addictive.
This makes it challenging as an individual to actually take back a chunk of your attention.
It makes it even more challenging to talk to people you care about about this problem.
The more attention a person is losing to screens and information consumption, the less likely they are to hear this message. They tend to ignore it or even lash out.
I don't think this is a lost cause though. I think this is the most important thing that any of us could be thinking about if our goal is happiness and fulfillment for ourselves and the people we love.
I think this is an important time to be thinking about this because we're not just talking TV anymore.
We're talking about apps that use machine learning (AI) to perfect the content they show you to keep you there as long as possible.
It's one thing when it's our own errors that are causing us to consume too much information. Now people are literally being programmed to consume more.
Think about that for a second. AI using data to hack our brains and program us to sit staring at an app. Sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, but that is TikTok in a nutshell. I don't care how great the content is. The structure of the delivery is a problem.
I don't know. Maybe I am going to far. Maybe everything is fine.
I know that I see many individuals losing an increasing share of their time and attention to staring at screens. I wouldn't care if this were making them happy, but happiness does not seem to be part of the equation.
The equation seems to be:
Your basal ganglia wants that dopamine drip. They want the ad revenue.
I also know that my happiness and effectiveness is directly related to my ability to direct my attention to the things that are most important to me.
Every moment that I direct away from political banter in a text thread and towards my children is a tangible increase to my satisfaction.
Every time I choose to go to bed on time instead of sitting up to stare at screens leads to better sleep, more energy, and more excitement the next day.
If we are going to make meaningful progress towards engaging with the process of life, we need our attention.
We need to take action. We need to disrupt the slow descent to the inactive commonplace.
The things that have been most successful on my end are making access more difficult and "reprograming" my brain with new habits.
On that note, I'll end with a passage from a book called The Greatest Salesman in the World by OG Mandino:
Good habits are the key to all success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure. Thus, the first law I will obey, which precedeth all others is - I will form good habits and become their slave.
As a child I was slave to my impulses; now I am slave to my habits, as are all grown men. I have surrendered my free will to the years of accumulated habits and the past deeds of my life have already marked out a path which threatens to imprison my future. My actions are ruled by appetite, passion, prejudice, greed, love, fear, environment, habit, and the worst of these tyrants is habit. Therefore, if I must be a slave to habit let me be a slave to good habits. My bad habits must be destroyed and new furrows prepared for good seed.
I will form good habits and become their slave ... For it is another of nature's laws that only a habit can subdue another habit.
I will form good habits and become their slaves. I will subtely nudge others to do the same. (The irony is not lost on me that I am doing this through sending information to your screens.)
In the real world, I've found that one of the best ways to help others who seem lost to a phone - especially kids - is to engage them with a fun activity that they like that demands their attention. If you can do it on a regular basis, even better.
Life is good!
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