What is the Attention Gap?
Simply put, the Attention Gap is the difference between required or desired attention, and available attention.
As an example; I want to build a desk for my office. This project requires a definite amount of my attention to complete. I need to have the time, focus and expertise to design it, gather materials, shape and assemble the materials, then apply the appropriate finish.
To complete the project, my available attention (time, focus, expertise) must meet or exceed the requirements. As long as I am able to meet the required amount of attention, the project will commence and I will soon complete it. Without the required amount of attention, the desk project will not happen.
How does the Attention Gap apply to society?
When President John F. Kennedy set the goal for putting man on the Moon in a decade, he set the attentional requirement side of the curve very high. In 1961, the US had nowhere near the attentional ability to achieve that goal.
But, in the course of the decade, NASA and the US gathered the required attentional ability to close the Attention Gap and put man on the moon.
Is the Societal Attention Gap growing?
Every year, public and private goals continue to rise. Every year crises and problems continue to occur. The internet has flattened the world and made communication instantaneous. The appetite for technological progress rises faster than production.
At the same time, as a society, our capacity for attention is decreasing. The advent of the internet, smartphones, and streaming has taken a massive toll on productive time and attention. The default state is some form of entertainment in front of a screen. Deep-work is becoming a rarity.
The trend is undeniable.
3 Factors Pulling up the Top Side of the Gap
There are many factors tugging at the top side of the Societal Attention Gap, including technological advances, increasing ambitions, and the nature of the Information Age. Here is a closer look at each of them.
Technological Advances:
Technological advances have been full steam ahead since the turn of the 20th Century. As the world transitioned from an Agricultural society to an Industrial society, the emphasis on making machines that do work was kindled, and is now a raging fire. The Industrial society placed an emphasis on developing machines to do the work of a man, with more precision and higher rate. Now, instead of a worker sitting and hand-crafting one widget every hour, that same worker supervised a machine that crafted ten widgets in an hour. The attentional requirement of that worker increased. Not only does he have to know how to build the widget, but he must understand how the machine builds the widget. When the machine inevitably breaks, he must troubleshoot and fix it.
Enter the Informational society. That same worker that supervised a machine making ten widgets every hour, now manages an assembly line network of computers and robots. This process produces 1000 widgets every hour, and one small kink in the system costs the company thousands of dollars. The attentional requirement of that work increased exponentially.
This increase in required attention has driven large tech companies like Google to design their own universities, where they teach employees exactly what they need to know. The more specialized the job, the more specific the training must be.
Consider the warfighter. A mere three centuries ago, warfighters fought with swords and muskets. It was man-to-man combat. The most technical job was operating the cannons or maneuvering the ships. The soldier today fights with computers, autonomous weapon systems, and $100 million fighter aircraft. The attentional requirement of the regular line warfighter is many times that of the Revolutionary War soldier.
Increasing Ambitions:
The great space race happened in the 1960s. The race was to put satellites in orbit and ultimately to put man on the moon.
Today, the space race is to put man on Mars. Not only do we want to put man on Mars, but we want to do it with reusable spacecraft and booster rockets.
This is an exponential increase in ambition!
The ambition—higher goals—spans all industries. From a network of thousands of internet satellites to 6th generation fighter aircraft, self-driving cars to the metaverse, today’s technological aspirations are massive. Each of these lofty goals push the attentional requirement curve upward.
These visions will only come to fruition when organizations and individuals systematically and consistently push their attentional availability up to meet the requirement.
The Information Age:
In 2007, the world was turned upside-down. Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone. It was glitchy, unrefined, and barely usable. But it revolutionized the world.
Apple had successfully packaged up a computer and placed it into the pocket of every-man. The world was forever changed.
With seemingly unlimited computational capability, the world has become increasingly automated.
We’ve all heard the self-deprecating jokes about people being “technologically challenged”. The tech landscape changes so rapidly, it can be tough to keep up. Every few years there is a major update to your computer operating system. Every few years you get a new cell phone. Password management across your myriad of online accounts is frustrating at best. There is fear of identity theft.
All this added mental load is a result of the Information Age and it’s rapid expansion of high-tech devices and applications. This caused the top side of the Attention Gap curve to slowly and steadily creep upwards. Jobs today require a minimum level of technological understanding, as well as specialized training.
3 Factors Dragging Down the Bottom Side of the Gap
While there are many factors tugging at the bottom side of the Attention Gap, three stand out. First, allow me to clarify a distinction; there is a difference between capacity and availability. Attentional/cognitive capacity refers to potential, rather than capability that is available and practiced. Given good attentional habits, the capacity of a society may be reached, and through practice and experience, increased.
Attentional availability takes into account current habits and lifestyle. Poor use of attention and time cause a decrease in availability.
As an example, attentional capacity vs attentional availability is much like physical fitness. At one point in my life, I could deadlift over 400lbs. That is my capacity. I know, given disciplined training, I can again deadlift 400lbs. But because I have not had weightlifting habits in place, my deadlifting availability is only at 300lbs. Try as I might, I could not lift 400lbs.
Here are three factors—trends—affecting attentional availability in our culture, thus opening the Attention Gap farther and farther.
Screen Time:
Adults, teenagers and kids are spending increasing amounts of time in front of screens. Social media is viewed primarily on mobile devices, and is in excess of three hours every day for the average adult. In the average home, the TV is on for nearly five hours every day. With the rise of the metaverse and other virtual spaces, time spent on video games is set to explode.
Spending attention on a screen typically puts us in a passive/reactive state of mind. We let the algorithm or the storyline direct our attention. This lowers attentional availability because we are training our minds to be passive. In a time when the workplace craves creativity, complex problem solving and critical thinking, people are spending their time streaming, scrolling, and gaming.
While there are video games and TV shows that promote problem solving and thinking, the lionshare does not. They are created to provide entertainment that makes you feel comfortable and happy with the goal of bringing you back for more.
Lack of Learning:
Today’s cultures place an emphasis on consuming rather than learning.
Just the other day I heard from a substitute teacher, that the guidance from the school was to sit the 3rd graders down in front of the TV to watch a show rather than have them talk with each other during snack time. Instead of placing the kids in an environment where they have to think and communicate, they effectively turned them into mindless consumers of both snacks and entertainment.
Neither snacks nor entertainment are bad. But this should not be the default. Kids go to school to learn how to think—unfortunately that is today’s exception rather than the standard.
The same is true among adults. People want to read a book, but they don’t have time. They want to learn how to cook, but they don’t have time. They wish they could build something, but they don’t have time.
They are too busy scrolling and streaming and gaming. When you spend your time scrolling, streaming and gaming, you are not learning.
This drags down attentional availability.
Lower Standards:
“You do not rise to the level of your goals, you sink to the level of your systems.” —James Clear, author of Atomic Habits
21st century humans are settling for what is comfortable, rather than striving for what is possible. While we have aspirations, often they go without being defined. When they aren’t defined they do not get pursued, and when they are not pursued they are not achieved.
Let me tell you a secret about humans: we love to achieve, improve, and make progress.
App developers, game creators and the mischievous social media developers know this and build this into their products. Instead of fulfilling our sense of achievement and progress with real achievement and progress, the norm is to fulfill it with fake achievement and progress. This fake achievement comes in the form of likes, shares, leveling-up, getting points and streaks, fake video game money, records, achievement prizes and medals and trophies and awards, etc, etc, etc.
The standard has become the next hit of dopamine on social media or the next level of the game.
What can be done?
The first step is becoming aware. How are these factors at play?
The second step is to methodically reverse them.
Evaluate your screen time, and choose to reduce it.
What do you need to learn right now that will pay dividends for the rest of your life?
Raise your personal standards. If you want to focus your attention on what matters, when it matters, send me an email or schedule a phone call with me to see how we can make that happen.
