The Attention Paradox - Becoming Superhuman

The sad reality is that if no one is paying attention to you, your ability to create change is minimal.

Regardless of how profound your ideas, your words will lack impact if no one is there to see or hear them.

Yet, when just one person gives you their attention, the potential energy of your words grows.

If they were to share your words to their networks, the results can grow exponentially.

The more people that give you attention, the more your potential impact grows.

Systemic Attention

Attention begets attention.

Your content gets attention, the algorithms like that, so it gets shown more.

Your subscriber base grows.

That social proof influences newcomers, who in turn subscribe, grow your social proof, and influence the next round of newcomers.

The network grows.

Now you consistently have attention.

Now your words have weight.

The Potential for Impact

Now, when you publish, your words are studied, your opinions are scrutinized, your actions are critiqued.

Perspectives form. Conversations flow. You have influenced people.

You have made an impact.

A Tale of Two Edges

To this point, I’ve only described a system without values. I’ve described the systems of attention.

The same system can be used both to amplify ideas that change the world and ideas that seek to rip the world apart at the seams.

The same system can be used to court your mindshare for anything.

But here’s the catch: the game is rigged.

Your brain is a system.

It abides by rules that you never chose but rather that evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. At its core, it is still working to keep you alive.

So you gravitate toward simple information because it doesn’t require extensive use of your mental faculties. It is not a threat.

You give your attention to what is new, novel, loud, and exciting because it is different — and different could be a threat. Fireworks over philosophy.

This means that our best bet to get attention is to be controversial, loud, and simplistic. It means that to achieve more eyeballs, you have to water down the message or abandon it altogether in favor of your new role as court jester.

You want the attention, but the more attention you seek, the more you have to water down the message.

Your impact is a diminishing return.

Beyond diluting the idea, you see that the path to attention requires you to be louder and more boastful. It requires you to develop catchphrases and spend extra time begging for likes, comments, and shares. It requires you to become the entertainment.

It requires you to be always on.

You’re busy now. So when do you have time to think?

Playing Integrity Games

By contrast, you can stick to your message.

You can build your following slowly and organically.

You can avoid the trap of chasing a bigger audience. That’s still an option.

The challenge is that the market rewards attention, and its yardstick is often quantity, not quality.

So what will you do?

Where You Focus Your Attention Matters

There is only so much attention to go around. It is a scarce resource.

So as our entertainment has become escapism, it comes at the expense of issues that matter. I would humbly submit that in a complex world, the ideas most deserving of our collective attention are often difficult.

We need more deep thinking and problem-solving, and fewer pranks and memes.
We need less of the tranquilizing effects of entertainment, and more of the mind-expanding discoveries that inspire us to solve real world problems.
We need to explore nuance and ask the follow-up questions instead of regurgitating simplistic motivational platitudes or statistics without context.
We need to engage in discussions and debates where we see the opposing side as human beings rather than caricatures, and where the outcome we seek isn’t to win, but to mutually benefit.
We need to value and remove the stigma from mental health services instead of leaving people to cope by following Instagram fitness models who post motivational quotes.

The paradox of attention is that you need attention to mobilize people and change the world, but the ideas least likely to change the world have the easiest time dominating our attention and getting rewarded by the market.

I know what I’m going to keep doing. What will you do?

NOTE: This post is updated and adapted from a post I wrote back in 2018.

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