How to Focus In a World of Scattered Attention

Focus. Let’s talk about focus for a second.

In 1970, a Nobel Prize winner, Herbert Simon, said that information consumes the attention of its recipients, therefore a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. Pretty powerful, right? Just let that sink in for a second.

The Number One Currency: Attention

Two years ago at my Healthpreneur Live event from stage in my keynote state-of-the-industry address, I told everyone on the audience, I said, “Listen, guys, the number one thing that matters in this day and age, the number one currency that we’re all working with is attention.” Brands, businesses, their goal is to command the attention of their viewers, of their consumers. Right?

You are watching this video, and this is an example of me commanding your attention in some degree. That’s part of it, but the second piece, as a creator, is being able to focus your attention to create outcomes.

Less Time Consuming – More Time Creating

I recently deleted Facebook and Instagram off my phone for probably the second or third time now, to be honest. I don’t have email on my phone. I don’t have social media on my phone anymore. When I’m on my desktop or my laptop, I use an app called Kill News Feed on Chrome. It kills the Facebook news feed, which is great for me. I also use another app called Self-control, which blocks any websites I don’t want access to for any amount of time that I choose.

For me, I recognized that, listen, I’ve seen what’s happened to my mind with the iPhone. Just the phone, just social media, just the phone, and I know that my focus, my attention, has really diminished compared to where it used to be. One of my goals this year is to really focus on improving my focus. Right? I think that no matter where you are in business, no matter what level of business you’re at, to achieve the goals you want to achieve, you have to be focused on what matters most. As much as I love having you watch my stuff on social, spending time scrolling through a newsfeed is probably the single-biggest thing that’s going to kill your business. It’s going to kill your dreams because you’re spending most of your time consuming other people’s stuff instead of creating your own.

This is this conundrum. It’s like, yeah, I definitely want you to consume this, but at the same time I also want to encourage you to shut this off, to do what you need to do to move your business forward because the more time you spend consuming my stuff, the less time you’re spending creating your stuff.

So that’s a little message I want to really have sink into your mind today is that it’s not about the latest strategy or tactics. You more or less know what to do. If you don’t know what to do, then obviously, reach out, and we can help you. But if you know what to do,  why aren’t we doing it? Distractions, low attention, all these things can be trained. They can be built like a muscle. It just requires self-awareness to understand what’s happening inside of you, why you’re being distracted, why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling, how you lose focus, how you can get back on track.

If you can really master that, the sky’s the limit to what you can do in your business and in your life. Anyways, when it comes to staying focused, I’m a big believer in keeping things simple.

Listen, if you want our help to get more focus in your business, to only do a small number of moves that will make a big impact, then book a call with us. Answer a few questions to tell us a little bit about your business, and we’ll jump on a 45-minute call to see if we can help you. Okay?

But again, at the end of the day, where attention goes, energy flows, and results show. I’ll see you soon.