How Are You Spending Your Attention?
Becoming intentional with attention
Attention is currency.
As Tony Robbins says, “Where your attention goes energy flows”.
Everything in life is pulling at your attention. Family, kids, social media, news, health, friends, career, hobbies, stress, etc.
You only have so much attention to give out daily.
Have you ever started scrolling on social media only to look up from your phone and notice an hour has passed?
Or maybe you spent the last two days stressing over something?
Both of those things just took some currency out of your attention wallet.
Unfortunately, the things that matter the least to us consume most of our attention. I’ve never worked with a client who named: stress, news, and social media as their highest values. But many have said those three things take up a large portion of their time.
The things that are considered high value (spouse, kids, health) end up with leftover attention at the end of the day.
A while back I had Juan Alvarado on the podcast (episode 58) and he talked about the importance of creating your G.P.S. (goals, priorities, and schedule). Most people live a life dictated by a schedule that doesn’t reflect their goals. Constantly spending attention on nonessential line items.
When I work with clients, I take them through a minimalist approach to personal development. Part of that approach is distilling down the essential from the non-essential. We then work to set goals and prioritize what truly matters to them and cut out the rest.
Becoming intentional about where their attention goes.
Where are you spending most of your attention? Here is a quick practice to help you identify who and what is making withdraws from your attention account.
1. Write down who/what matters most to you
2. Write down your goals and dreams
3. Write down the activities you enjoy the most
These are your essential items.
4. Now write down a detailed account of everything you did today, and I mean everything. How long did you scroll on social media, watch the news, exercise, argue with your spouse, eat, work, etc? Be thoughtful and thorough.
5. Now compare your day with your first three lists. What in your day reflects what you value and what’s essential?
This practice can help unveil where you are wasting attention.
There will always be some things that require our attention that we might not desire to do. Ask yourself if these activities put you closer to your goals. For example, maybe you don’t love your job, but it enables you to provide for your family or go on trips with your friends. If it doesn’t contribute to your goals maybe it’s time to make changes.
You can always make more money, you can’t make more time.
Put your phone down at dinner and be where your feet are.
Attention is currency, spend wisely.