How to Survive and Thrive In the Attention Economy (4 Crucial Tips You Need to Know)

Your attention is the most valuable commodity in the world.

It is so valuable that day by day people, organizations, and other groups are trying to think of ways to extract some of that attention from you.

Online ads, news designed to elicit emotions, addictive social media platforms…all of these are ways to draw out attention.

Here’s the other kicker:

Attention is a scarce resource and you only have so much of it to spend.

Since the economy is driven by scarcity our world economy is actually an attention economy.

How does this relate to you?

If you’re reading this, I know you actually give a damn about your life.

If you want to do either of those, you need to know how to focus on things that really matter. You can’t do that when your attention is being leeched constantly.

It takes the average human 23 minutes (!) to recover after a distraction and you are constantly being distracted every 3 minutes on average.

You can start to see how this begins to be a problem.

In this article I’m going to show you:

• Psychological tricks played on you to get you give up your attention
• The key players in the attention economy
• 5 key tips to help you to stop giving your attention away to things that don’t deserve it

After this article, you’ll see why it’s called “paying attention”.

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What is the Attention Economy?

The “attention economy” refers to the notion that attention is the main driver of revenue and profit in 21st century society. Attention is the main funnel that drives traffic to specific places on the Internet and advertisers and organizations of all kinds want to cash in.

What’s an example of this?

The more time you spend looking at a page, the more likely you are to click on an ad. The ad generates revenue via impressions (how many people looked at a page), clicks (how many people clicked), and conversions (how many people took a specific action leading to a profitable action). Companies buy ad space on sites that generate massive amounts traffic in order to do this.

When this is replicated millions and millions of times over a specific span of time – this creates revenue.

This leads to the next (and arguably most important) point.

Social Media and the Dopamine Equation

As I talked about before, many people are addicted to social media and the “buzz“ it gives you.

Why?

Many people get their satisfaction from watching television and going on social media because it works on the human reward system in our brain. This system is engaged by dopamine.

It makes us crave food, sex, and novelty. Anything that would be beneficial to our potential advancement and survival releases dopamine. It’s why the human race has discovered, invented, or created anything. Novelty triggers dopamine release. The Internet is the single biggest driver of novelty. Without dopamine, we are nothing but hollow shells.

Dopamine is the single biggest driving force of human evolution and development.

However, we live in a world where this system is constantly being stimulated by various sources. Many of these sources provide dopamine boosts in quantities that cannot be mimicked in the real world.

This is known as “super-normal stimuli”.

Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, all of these sites are concerned with the question:

“How can we get these people to stay on our website as long as possible?”

Enter all sorts of “hacks” to get you locked in as long as possible and as often as possible. They create vast amounts of novelty to keep you clicking and clicking and clicking.

And here’s the thing: when the human brain produces a lot of dopamine, it diminishes the amount of dopamine receptors available for use.

This means you need a bigger high to get the same (or lesser) result. This is how addiction starts because you are literally “chasing the dragon”.

Former Google employee Tristan Harris states it quite well:

“By shaping the menus we pick from, technology hijacks the way we perceive our choices and replaces them with new ones. But the closer we pay attention to the options we’re given, the more we’ll notice when they don’t actually align with our true needs.”

The Attention Economy and the Individual

For humans in general, it should be known that none of this is good news.

Since we are “modern hunter-gatherers”, we still have the same neuro-circuitry as people who came before us. They did not emerge in an environment with vast abundance or neurochemical stimulation.

But if you’re a man, you should be very concerned as to what this is doing to you.

The male brain is influenced by testosterone, which shapes and guides its development.

Women have more estrogen and less testosterone flowing through their brains enabling them to look for solutions to conflicts. One other distinction is that estrogen promotes the stress response within the prefrontal cortex. What this means is that when faced with a deadline, women will complete a project a week ahead of time in order to avoid the pressure and increased arousal a deadline brings. Men however, will wait until the last minute so that they have the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinepherine actually push them to finish. – The Difference Between Women and Men’s Brains

This would make sense from an evolutionary perspective considering that the male brain evolved with an emphasis to pursue (food, offenders, mates) which required little self-auditing and inhibition.

The Attention Economy and the Prefrontal Cortex

So it’s clear from the quote above that men already have lower prefrontal cortex ability than women.

We live in a world where impulse control, the ability to delay gratification, and prioritization are keys to success in most areas. Women will naturally thrive in this type of environment while men who lack these qualities will be eaten alive.

This because the frontal lobe is responsible for these things:

• Motivation
• Prioritization
• Working memory
• Self-discipline

This altogether allows you to work harder and strive longer for your goals.

If you are already at a disadvantage with a prefrontal cortex less oriented towards those activities, then actively participating in the many conventions of the attention economy will dampen your prefrontal cortex ability even more.

Lots of men want success in the areas of work, finances, health, and relationships.

A working frontal lobe combined with the added boost of testosterone, adrenaline, vasopressin, dopamine, and serotonin allows you to win big in all those areas.

I believe more men will decrease their time on attention destroying things in general when they find what it’s doing to their focus. I think this already shows in the fact that most social media users are female and their level of addiction rates to these platforms are higher.

You need as many neurochemicals as possible to help your brain run at peak efficiency. Don’t take away from that by spending your attention on things that don’t matter.

Solutions to the Attention Economy

Our brains are simply ill-prepared for this “brave new world”. How do we equip ourselves with the tools to stop giving away our attention?

I don’t have all the answers, but here’s 5 specific steps you can take starting today.

1. Stop or Decrease Social Media Use

This is a no brainer. It’s pretty clear by now that extensive social media use dramatically affects your focus and presence of mind. Cal Newport in Deep Work says it best:

These services are engineered to be addictive – robbing time and attention from activities that more directly support your professional and personal goals. Eventually, if you use these tools enough, you’ll arrive at the state of burned-out, hyper-distracted connectivity…The use of network tools can be harmful…you’re unwittingly crippling your ability to succeed in the world of knowledge work.

Delete all of the apps from your smartphone so you don’t have easy access. Make getting to these sites harder than usual so your prefrontal cortex can kick in and exercise some self-discipline.

2. Return to a Flip Phone

Remember those old flip phones like the Motorola Razr? Yeah, if you have a problem with your smartphone – you might want to consider using one.

These phones don’t have an “app store”, the capacity for unlimited data, or any other sorts of sticky issues that come with having a smartphone. If you have a problem with browsing the Internet on your phone, I’d highly recommend this.

3. Vote With Your Clicks – Elsewhere

In the attention economy, you vote with your clicks. When you take your clicks elsewhere, you decrease the traffic to a specific site – a clear signal that they are doing something wrong.

Even if you’re not leading a large scale revolution/exodus, if you don’t want to contribute to a problem – just say “no”.

If a headline disturbs you, don’t click on it. If an ad is offensive to you, don’t go onto that website anymore.

Easier said than done, but still doable.

4. Go On the Dopamine Detox

As a reaction to the attention economy, people by the thousands (maybe millions) are deciding to do what is called a “dopamine detox“.

This is the act of greatly reducing time or completely moving away from super-stimulating, low value activities – most of them found on the Internet.

A dopamine fast has many benefits, but it’s not something that everyone will do. However, it makes great psychological sense.

The more you do something, the greater of a chance you will do it the next time. Likewise, the less you do something – the lesser of a chance you will do it. This is the basis of operant conditioning and it is something the dopamine detox actively fights against.

Conclusion + Wrap Up

“The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.” – The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis

Will you be a victor or another casualty in the attention economy? It’s really your choice.

When you think about all of the hours, days, weeks, and months you’ve lost to stupid things on the Internet, you may get pissed off.

But through that anger, you take action. You start acting with more responsibility. You start becoming more aware. You start becoming more conscious.

You start to realize that you have more power than you think. Once you realize that, you start going inward.

You start to marshal the resources needed to dive deep on the tasks that YOU want to spend them on. Not what someone in Silicon Valley wants you to spend it on.

And that is an amazing thing.

What do you think about this idea of the attention economy? Have you found yourself trapped in its tentacles? Let me know in the comments below!