A new kind of payment.
My ambition with this text is to put in to words something that I’ve been touching upon a couple of times in conversations lately. To some, it might be old news, but my experience tells me that some still haven’t heard this argument before.
I think that our society has a currency that we don’t talk about as a currency. It’s not bitcoin or anything like that. It’s attention. You’re paying attention. You’re paying with time. And you’re paying with interest. (Pun intended)
As soon as we see our attention as a currency, it becomes immensely valuable. Anything that takes time from something that I’d rather pay attention to is a distraction and should go away instantly.
Last night, I saw a science fiction movie called Ghost in a shell. It’s about our society but a couple of hundreds of years ahead, when singularity with technology is made real. In the city where the movie plays out, there’s a bunch of commercials in hologram form on buildings, just as we would have billboards. The idea of anyone paying attention to anything billboardy when they have the entertainment or information they want in their glasses or even in their heads.
And we’re not far from there today. Looking at our attention patterns, you’ll see that a majority of our attention is focused on our digital lives, either through our phones, our computers or our headphones. We can constantly choose the information or entertainment that we’d like to see. I was genuinely angry when my mom put on linear tv the other day, because a commercial popped up. I’d very much like to choose to see the kinds of products and brands that I’m attracted to, thank you very much. Or even use and adblocker and not see them at all.
As soon as we see our attention as a currency, it becomes immensely valuable. Anything that takes time from something that I’d rather pay attention to is a distraction and should go away instantly.
As soon as I started to see my attention as a currency, my behaviour shifted quite drastically. I started to sift out all the things in my field of attention that I didn’t want there. I stopped listening to podcasts with commercials that wasn’t relevant to me. I stopped reading texts that didn’t provide any value. I stopped following a bunch of people, pages and groups on social medias. And so on. All in the name of attention.
Here’s what I want to discuss thoroughly. Right now, where I am at in life, I value peoples attention far more than money. I’ve got my ass covered every month. What I don’t have is a bunch of people listening to the value that I’m trying to provide. I’ve got some people for whom I’m immensely grateful, but I want more. Because my aim in this life isn’t to have as much money as possible, it’s to have as much fun as possible. I want to have an impact. I want to be remembered. That takes attention. And in the long run, money will come from this.
Far too often now, I see people trying to monetise on their attention. People who’ve built somewhat of a following on Instagram or Facebook that sell out through sponsorship deals, or people with small podcasts that try to get people to start paying for it or get commercial deals. I think that’s all fine, as long as we realise the setbacks of doing that. I think that depending on how much value you provide, there’s a big risk in making those kinds of deals. That’s because as soon as you stop providing value, or even provide just a little less value, the attention is shifted to someone or something that is providing value.
These thoughts started off as I started to listen to Gary Vaynerchuk, and many of the arguments made in this text come straight from him. He’s got an expression for the kind of behaviour he think works in a digital, attention based economy: “Jab, jab, jab, right hook” or “give, give, give, ask”. The thing with attention economy is that as soon as you ask, the risk for you to loose attention is raised through the roof. So for most people, I think the strategy should be jab, jab, jab, jab, jab and jab. If, that is, the long term benefit of attention is your goal. As stated, it might not be and then by all means, go for the deals! Money is always a key to something.
Almost all of the things that we happen to pay attention to don’t matter. Make sure the things you pay attention to do. And make sure you’re worth paying attention to by providing value.
