You're Paying With Your Attention

Part 1 in a Series on Attention

As the world grapples with the changing tides in business and life through the Covid-19 pandemic, one primary conversation is how we need to evolve and emerge in order to be successful in a new norm. I’ve seen a lot of content about being “intentional" in work and life. While I appreciate and understand the overarching meaning in the use of this term, I believe there is a deeper layer in trying to achieve something intentionally. I would suggest that there is a mechanism that we must utilize to control the viability of our intentions, and that is how we use our attention.

at·ten·tion

noun

1.notice taken of someone or something; the regarding of someone or something as interesting or important.

2. the action of dealing with or taking special care of someone or something.

The subject matter of attention is so massive, that I will be doing a series of posts on this content. After I introduce the value of your attention, I will be diving into attention and intention, time versus attention, controlling attention, attention models, and anything else that comes up over the course of this development of content. My hope is to create an awareness of your attention as a valuable resource so you can use it with a mindful approach on your inside-out wellbeing journey.

ATTENTION AS A CURRENCY

“Pay attention.”

We say this all of the time, but I don’t believe we often think about the fact that what we are saying is to quite literally PAY with your attention. It is a currency, and it is valuable. The primary difference between attention and other forms of monetary currency is that you can’t save it or store it. Just like life, we either use it or lose it. Actually, even more like life, we are always using it. The question is on what?

To introduce this series about attention, I thought it may be most effective to make it feel tangible and real through an understanding of its value in the digital realm. I believe that everyone is aware that their attention is being sold in the form of data, and the world is trying to understand how to monitor, regulate, measure, and manage a field that has produced many of the most successful and massive businesses in the world. According to Statista (5/27/20) below is the current list of the ten most valuable companies in the world by market value. Notice that seven of those would be considered a technology company: Apple, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Alphabet, Facebook, Alibaba, and Tencent Holding.

Without going down the rabbit hole of describing the different business models, I believe it is widely observed that there is a tremendous amount of value in the data industry and these companies prove it. I would also like to address the very important fact that data equals people. There is a human behind every data point. So, you are the value of these companies, and your value begins in the form of your attention.

As a marketer and strategist who spent the last six years building strategies to connect brands to people through technology, I am all too familiar with the value of people in the data industry. One way to illustrate this is to introduce the sales funnel used by most businesses. The funnel begins with awareness (attention) and ends in actions, which could be a transaction, a click, a like, a heart, etc.

 Ultimately, any action that is not an actual transaction is actually an advertisement dollar purchased for your attention. Think social media: if you “like” anything, your data is now valuable to marketers who are purchasing attention in your demographic. You most likely have noticed the ads popping up in your Instagram feed, along the sides of your Facebook page, or all over your Amazon shopping experience based off of your actions within the application. In other words, digital media uses an advertising business model where attention is purchased with the hope of traveling a person down the sales funnel to an eventual purchase.

Many businesses call these “leads”, but again, I prefer to call it what it is, PEOPLE. Separating data and leads from people has been a tactic in business to build new industries, confuse the masses, and create new value where it already existed. A person is a person and the hope is to make them a customer. The tools may change, but it’s all still sales and marketing.

MURKY MEDIA

Although this is the way advertising has been done since the rise of the digital networks, it hasn’t gone without its criticisms. In business, advertising needs to lead to a purchase of a product or service or there would be no return on investment. This has created a lot of discussion around the actual return that businesses are receiving in this digital media advertising model. Marc Pritchard, Chief Marketing Officer at P&G, has been a very influential figure in the rise of concern and doubt (P&G spent $2.8 billion on marketing and promotion in the year to end June 2016). He recently stated: 

“We have a media supply chain that is murky at best and fraudulent at worst. We need to clean it up and invest the time and money we save into better advertising to drive growth,” he added. (source)

Even with this undercurrent discussion of doubt and concern for actual value, businesses still find their best option for marketing and advertising to be on the digital networks because that is where people’s eyeballs are. Especially with the current pandemic where shopping is done nearly exclusively online, the only option to get your products and services in front of people, or get their attention, is to target on the digital platforms. I will address the differences in how your attention is being effectively or ineffectively targeted on these platforms in another piece.

YOUR FUNNEL OF RESOURCES

Now that I’ve hopefully explained how valuable your attention is to business in the digital realm, you can see it as more of a tangible resource of your own. I believe that by grasping the importance of your attention you will be better equipped to control your actions.

Now, take the sales funnel and associate each level to a personal resource that brings you from awareness to an action. What is at your disposal when a business is trying to get your awareness? Your attention. What do you use to show interest or make a decision? You use your connections with others and take actions (likes, hearts, shares, etc.). Finally, what a business considers the ultimate action is a transaction, so what are you doing? Making a purchase. It begins with your attention as the first use your time. From attention, it carries down to your potential connections, actions, and purchases. Attention could be considered the bridge resource to connect your unseen desires and needs to your seen actions.

Unconsciously, we can walk through life paying attention to whatever is put in front of us. The content that is sold to us may be work, politics, entertainment, celebrities, news, or materialism to name a few. 

I bet many people have never considered their attention to be so valuable. It is extremely valuable to brands, organizations, and media, but even more valuable, in my mind, is how your attention has the potential to either connect your true desires and needs to your actions and purchases or not. People are being manipulated and robbed by media, marketing, and advertising to use their attention for actions that aren’t getting them anywhere. Building off of a consumeristic society that is glued to media, it is very easy for brands to create a captive audience through the marketing of aspirations, hopes, and fears that have no relevance to the desire and need of people to improve their lives. If people remain blinded to this system and their true value, they are more malleable and susceptible to whatever information, products or services organizations need to sell to them.

Most people wouldn’t define their deepest desires and needs in life to be centered around work, other peoples’ lives, politics, celebrities, material things, or even cute puppies. Unfortunately, this is the kind of content that is sucking their attention on a daily basis from Instagram to Facebook to Amazon to the news. People have been sucked into a funnel that has operated like a well-oiled attention-sucking machine for many years and digital media has only enhanced this business model. Time is being sucked dry and lives are not improving as a result. 

Clearly, people should be capable of designating a proper amount of attention to work, relationships (even on social media), politics, entertainment, interests, shopping, etc. What I am proposing is that this attention is mindful of what is really happening underneath it all. Own your resources, don’t sell them to the highest bidder or the most appealing ad for something you don’t need or a sensational news clip designed to target your tracked interests. 

SUMMATION

If we are not mindful of how we use our attention as a first resource, we can lose control of how the content we are consuming will bleed over into our character, our actions, and our lives. My hope is that you will see your attention as a tangible resource that you should use as carefully as your bank account. In the end, how you use your life is determined by how you use your attention.

“For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” (Proverbs 23:7)