I have been working on a handful of projects this summer and as I approach the halfway point, I realize that I have not made much progress on any of them. Although I am spending time working on them, my attention has been scattered and I think that’s why I haven’t made a lot of progress.

There’s a difference between time and attention. Time is the 24 hours you have in a day. Attention is how much of it you can actually use. And like money, our attention is limited—and easily squandered if we don’t budget it wisely.

Your Attention Budget

Attention is a scarce resource, like capital in a portfolio.

I see attention as a subset of time. Unlike money (which any of us can theoretically acquire in unlimited amounts), time is a scarce resource—each of us has the same 24 hours in a day and the same ~80 year lifespan as Elon Musk. Within that amount of time we have for our lifespan, not all of the time is of equal value. There is time when we feel energized, alert, and calm, and time where we feel drained, groggy, and emotionally unstable.

Although we can establish habits that give us more time in the energized state, we generally have periods of both high- and low-energy. That high-energy time I would call attention and unfortunately there is never enough of it to go around—we want to devote attention to our work, our hobbies, our health, and our relationships. Since our attention is limited, however, inevitably some of those things get our best hours of the day and other things don’t.

Like capital, misallocating our attention has serious consequences, usually in the form of opportunity costs. If I have three really good hours in a day, and I spend those on work, then I can’t spend those three hours on a creative pursuit. Systematic misallocation of attention over a long period of time leads to slow progress, incomplete goals, and feelings of regret about wasted time.

Why aren’t most of us deliberate about where we direct our attention?

Three Ways We Waste Attention

I see three main ways in which our attention gets fractured: entertainment (particularly social media), emotional coping, and lack of prioritization.

Entertainment

Entertainment has always been a focus of human attention—and there’s nothing wrong with that—but in today’s algorithm-powered environment, entertainment is particularly good at hijacking our attention. Of modern forms of entertainment, social media is probably the most powerful in capturing attention. This is because the algorithms are excellent at providing some immediate emotional reward when we open our apps—either something funny, something that feels comfortable, or in some cases, even something that makes us angry.

Since the reward is immediate, social media use becomes habitual for many of us. My social media use is generally most prevalent in the morning, when I wake up from the alarm but don’t feel fully rested. I don’t want to go back to sleep, but I feel groggy, so I reach for the phone (without thinking) for a jolt of something. When I had Reddit installed, I could easily burn 45 minutes without realizing. With Twitter (the only social media app I have now), it’s much less, maybe because I find it much less interesting.

Emotional Coping

If you use social media at least semi-regularly, and pause to introspect, you will probably notice emotional patterns or dysregulation linked to your scrolling.

Many of our “bad” behaviors—drugs, alcohol, destructive sexual activity, overeating, excessive use of entertainment like TV binging, video games, social media and so on, are merely tools that our nervous system uses to cope when it becomes disturbed. If I feel anxious, for example, and subconsciously I don’t want to bring my attention to the underlying cause of the anxiety, I will use some other tool to send my attention elsewhere. Unlike drugs or alcohol, which shift or suppress the chemical balance in the brain, the other types of entertainment are basically deliberate distraction. If I’m worried about the consequences of a bad performance review, I can’t worry about it while I’m playing a video game because my brain is totally consumed.

Lack of Prioritization

This is one I noticed for myself recently and is the genesis of this note.

Since the fall semester doesn’t begin until August, I came up with five projects to work on over the summer. I’ve only made mediocre progress on them over the last six weeks and I think that’s because my attention is scattered over all of them. I tend to do better work when I can get immersed in a single task and with five projects, I’ve been bouncing between them every day, almost at whim. I haven’t been spending enough time with a single project to really get into the groove.

There’s a saying that if you have two priorities, you don’t have any. The Latin root of “priority” is “prior,” which means first or before. “First” implies that only one thing can be a priority. If I have a single top priority, that one thing will get all of my best attention and is very likely to move forward.

Managing Your Attention Portfolio

Much like allocating capital, I think we can be deliberate about allocating attention in the ways that will produce the highest returns for us.

Most of us wish to lead a balanced life: having good relationships, good health, a good career with financial security, and perhaps some spiritual growth on top. Each of these things requires not just time, but focused attention.

If one of these areas in life feels severely lacking, it’s likely that rather than not getting enough time, it’s not getting enough proper attention. Conversely, there might be areas that are getting too much attention, to the point where the marginal returns on putting extra attention are quite low—almost like a crowded trade.

Managing attention is like managing money. It requires honesty about what you can afford to budget and discipline about what you choose to invest in. Attention is what turns time into progress.

If you want to change your outcomes, start by changing where you invest your best attention.

Exercise

Journal on the following or discuss with a friend.

1)      Taking Stock

What does my attention budget look like? In a typical day, how many good hours of high presence, calm, and energy do I have?

2)      Noticing Squandering

Where does my attention go? Do the most important things in my life get the most attention?

If my attention budget is leaking, where are the leaks? Do I spend too many of my good hours on social media or other forms of entertainment?

If I feel emotionally dysregulated at times, how do I distract myself?

Am I spreading my attention over too many projects?

3)      Capital Allocation

Out of the things that I may want out of life—health, career, relationships, and spiritual growth—where am I allocating too much attention, and where am not allocating enough?

It’s possible that none of the areas are receiving enough attention, because too much of my attention is leaking out into social media or the like.

What would it look like to put more attention on whichever goal is farthest away from how I want it to be? What would a small action in that direction look like?