Give Me Your Attention.
#3. Make your decisions consciously
In the information age, attention is one of our most valuable resources.
We are saturated with stimuli, all vying for our attention. Something trending on social media. Advertisement for the latest products. Cool events happening in your surrounding area. A social cause to work towards. We only have a finite amount of attention to give.
The internet enables us to be connected to everything that is going on in the world. Yet as a result of these continuous demands from different directions, our attention span is diminishing.
We could argue about the pros and cons of this, but it is the reality and therefore we must respond to it. To do so, we must be worthy of the attention of others and we must be militant about protecting our own attention.
To get the attention of others, we must choose only our most important points. Keep things brief. Don’t say more than you need to say. If you have five points you want to mention, choose the top one or two.
In order to decide who you are going to give your attention to, we must be ruthless about asking how important it is to us and whether it is in our best interests. Every time you say yes to a commitment or spend time doing one thing, you are automatically prioritising that over another commitment or activity — make sure that you make these decisions consciously and, to the best of your knowledge at that time, the decision is the right one for you and for others.
I must go now, as something else needs my attention…
