It’s never been easier to access information.
So easy in fact, that it’s introduced a new problem. The worst part is… we often have no idea.
The issue is our return on attention (ROA) is at an all-time low.
What’s ROA?
Imagine we get only $100 worth of “attention” to spend each day.
The same way we’d invest dollars—we’re seeking disproportionate returns.
We want to focus our “attention dollars” on the highest leverage activities.
In other words, things that we’ll benefit from in 10 months or 10 years. Not just 10 minutes (scrolling IG).
Okay fair enough. But what’s this actually look like? (glad you asked)
Wake up:
- Check email/slack ($5)
- Scroll Twitter/IG on the toilet ($10)
- Listen to a podcast ($10)
Finally, start work and already used 25% of the daily attention budget.
Okay fine, but there’s free time too, right? (let’s see…)
*Opens up laptop*
- Check slack ($5)
- Reply to emails ($10)
- Reply to texts & slack ($10)
- Open Twitter, read 3 threads ($10)
- One actual important work task ($10)
Dang, it’s lunchtime, and only have $30 left from the $100.
And haven’t really accomplished anything…
Sound familiar?
It’s easy to be in motion—and confuse that with making progress.
Busy ≠ effective.
Attention is precious. But we spend it on dumb things constantly. So much we aren’t even aware.
Here are 3 ways to protect our daily “attention budget”.
1 – Prioritize the first $25
Aka don’t do anything else until you get your most important thing done for the day.
2- Quality control
If you only had $100 budget each day, would you really waste it on OG memes and TikTok videos?
No chance.
There are countless books/podcasts/articles that have stood the test of time. Both would be far better investments.
Consider the quality of information you’re consuming.
3 – Default to no
There are thousands of things to do or learn. But if you try to learn everything, you end up really learning nothing.
Instead think, “this is cool, but is this my top attention investment right now?”
Probably not.
Sure, it’s good to take a quick break every now and then. But if we audit these breaks, they end up being much more expensive than we think.
Quick Recap:
- Information is no longer scarce…but attention is
- Optimize a daily $100 “attention budget”
- Be strict with the first $25 each day
- Then invest in high-quality inputs
- Default to everything is no
Time is the ultimate resource. Spend it wisely.