Firevalt Blog - Personal finance and entrepreneurship

Law of Lost Attention

March 24th, 2006

Scott Berkun, a project management and product design consultant, writes about the importance of being frugal; not with money, but with our attention. He explains in his essay, Attention and Sex, that we determine the value of something by deciding how much attention we devote to it.

Law of lost attention: The value of something you spend attention on is dependent on how much attention you spend on it.

I feel this if very applicable to personal finance, entrepreneurship, or anything we wish to improve or succeed at. If financial independence is a high priority, are we devoting enough of our attention to our finances so that goal becomes a reality? We can ask that question about any ambition we have to determine if it is really valuable to us.

This is an excellent lesson for me because the time I spend on the important things in my life is often at the mercy of several less important things I try jamming into my day. Learning to focus my attention on the worthwhile will bring me the success I seek. In our day and age of mult-tasking, we divide our attention over many trivial things, and focus less on the things that will bring satisfaction and meaning.

“There isn’t a single great work in the history of civilization, no novel, symphony, film, or song that was completed as a 1/5th time-slice between e-mail, IM, cellphones and television.”

Sources: Attention and Sex

Entry Filed under: Debt Reduction, Entrepreneurship, Firevalt, Frugality, Investing, Saving