Gone is “the pursuit of happiness”; Instead, “the pursuit of attention”
The New Definition of Wealth is Freedom to Think Clearly and Control Attention
Move over “the pursuit of happiness” and welcome to the current age where “the pursuit of attention” has become the substance of life. We had a good run for 250 years for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The mind-blowing events and feelings happening now have more to do with the cultural shift you are living through—more than any one election or your choices around relationships or career moves.
Cultural shifts are massive and permanent. Examples: From the Agriculture Age to the Industrial Age; from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, most recently, from the Information Age to the Age of Attention. Each shift comes with massive measures of change, adaptations, unprecedented opportunities, and turbulence. We don’t like turbulence during a plane ride and we hate turbulence in all that matters to humans—health, relationships, freedom, and wealth.
The wealth and your future are in the current age. Farmers still grow food, manufacturers still make products, the Internet still runs, advertisers still create advertising, and history shows that wealth and opportunities always shift to the current age.
Luxury is no longer about expensive cars, mansions, and penthouse offices anymore. It's about having the freedom to think and live with clarity and intention.
To Make Sense of Now, Look at Everything Through the Lens of Someone Past 45
People over 45 have a natural advantage in understanding and navigating through the current shift. People over 75 are even better at it because they participated and caused the recent three ages—Industrial, Information, and Attention.
After I passed the point of eligible for Medicare enrollment, I created this community for professionals who communicate well and happen to discover they were born with a brain often found in the “Everday Genius” and gifted adult. My greatest joy in the past 10 years is listening to their stories, wisdom, and context for living, learning, loving, and dying.
Join me for the rest of this story about what I learned from them about attention, power, wealth, and the substance of life.
Is Attention The Substance of Life?
If attention is the substance of life, then the question of what we pay attention to is the question of what our lives will be.
This brings us to the foundational question that is far harder to answer than we might like it to be. What do we want to pay attention to? If we didn’t have the technologies and multiple messages attacking our attention, if our attention wasn’t being monetized and extracted, what would we choose to pay attention to?
We hear complaints about the gap between what we want to pay attention to and what we end up paying attention to all the time in the Attention Age.
Has this happened to you? You used to love books. You used to love spending the day in a library or sitting in the big comfortable chairs at Barnes & Noble, sipping your drink and enjoying a book. Something changed and you purchase books but don’t read them. Then you pack two books in your suitcase for vacation and only get past the first chapters of one book. What hijacked your love of books? Did you take your cell phone on vacation along with your shitty habits of scrolling more apps than you remember uploading? What was it that subtly, insidiously threw your brain into conflict?
When did “staying informed” and being “always alert and constantly present” become more important than the person right in front of you wanting some eye contact? When did you first notice the stress and confusion you created between what you want in life and giving up your power, your identity, and your sanity to the overlords of attention capitalism?
When did you stop being a cool person with interesting stories about what you saw, felt, heard, smelled, touched, and noticed? When did you become someone’s digital checkbox in an algorithm?
While there isn't a clear-cut transition point, tech historians suggest that the Information Age began to shift the Attention Age around 2004-2007, coinciding with the rise of social media platforms and smartphones. There was an overlap period because the Information Age ran from the 1970s to 2000 and was characterized by the democratization of information access through personal computers and the Internet.
Of particular interest to the subscribers of this newsletter, professionals want to understand how the attention issue defines each field and specialty, plus, they want to see the direct impact of attention on our creations, delivered services, and outcomes.
Of particular interest to the communicators is the quest to understand when and how attention becomes the core of every communicator, including writers, journalists, artists, musicians, architects, and storytellers.
All Evidence of the Attention Age Surrounds Us
The Attention Age emerged as we became overwhelmed with information, making attention—not information—a scarce and most valued resource.
The trajectory of Elon Musk is a perfect fable for the Attention Age. By the third decade of the 21st century, Musk was the richest man on Earth. He had every material and financial resource, enough to purchase anything that the totality of human history up until that point could produce to be bought or owned by one man. And yet he was willing to trade it all for attention. Twitter and all he touches is for more attention.
Every aspect of human life is reorganizing around the pursuit of attention. For a deep dive explanation, read The Atlantic article Kaitlyn Tiffany, A “Radical” Approach to Reclaiming Your Attention. It’s not just about putting your phone away.
Attention is power. Stop giving your power away. If you need reminders on ways to stop power stealing or what you can do about it, read this article by Janelle Bruland.
Attention is a strange and powerful force. Attention is the stuff of consciousness itself, where we choose to place our mind’s focus at any given moment. And yet it can always be wrenched from us seemingly against our will by the wail of the siren, the bark of a dog, or the flash of an image on our phone.
The Natural Advantage of Everyone 45 and Older
Listen to the stories and voices of professionals, communicators, and gifted adults over 45 to understand their natural advantages.
Throughout our school years and even in the early years of professional development, there were no cell phones. We know how to focus, get stuff done, find great mentors, and ignore social media. I was past 45 when the Blackberry device was introduced and that had a good run until phones with cameras, plus email, plus keyboards came in. We are the first to suffer the irony of achieving professional status only to lose control of our attention. That loss of attention sometimes cost us an entire business or loss of the big contract when we learned that customers never go away—they go to someone who shows them more attention and remembers every detail about the relationship. The key concept there is memory, as in computer chips, and affordable technology that enables the one-person business to delight the customer, thus outperforming and outserving the larger competitor, stuck in last year’s information and last year’s numbers.
Communication skills and advancements thrived during most of our life and it’s only in recent years we’ve experienced the demise of mainstream media and the explosion of the solopreneur creator business environment, with only a computer, a wi-fi connection, their brain, and someone willing to buy their stuff. Everyone over 45 has been in the sweet spot of the communication evolution. We have the depth as leaders in communication changes and witnesses to shifts from analog to digital, VHS to streaming, record players to playlists and earbuds, and paperback books to podcasts.
The adult with the neurodiverse brain was that way from birth and the advantage now is brain science that confirms we are not weird, instead, we have heightened awareness in an attention-hungry world. Our brains see patterns and systems that others miss. We have the blessing and curse of remembering more and processing everything more deeply. We are deep thinkers and we are redefining the concept of wealth and luxury to freedom to think clearly.
Put all three together and you have a new vision of wealth. Professional + Communicator + Highly-Sensitive Brain = You understand the cost of constant connectivity. You see how all three intersect to bring power, freedom, and assets to every situation.
We are way ahead of our peers in getting to the point of how attention dictates success in modern careers. That lived experience makes us beyond wise because we already created systems that experiment rapidly while still securing a stream of revenue adequate for our needs, never excessive.
Wealth to us is not billions. The new wealth is the freedom to think clearly and control attention. New wealth is the power to transform from a victim of attention capitalism to the master of your own attention. Wealth now happens in the communities we form and support to go deep into human potential, lifestyle design, and one-person businesses or legacy projects that improve our lives and the lives of those who need our gifts.
We are both here for thought-provoking conversations. Please click the button below to start a conversation with me. I read and respond to ALL comments.
This is a deep subject. Did I miss something important? Is there something else you think I should’ve mentioned? I’d like to hear from you as long as you want to have a constructive conversation.
I’m a team of one. I research and write for the joy of producing thought-provoking content. I rely on referrals to grow my audience. If you know someone who'd enjoy Gifted Professionals & Communicators, forward this article and encourage them to sign up here.
👉 Our Community
👉 Our LinkedIn page
👉 Our Substack newsletter
I am very much a HSP - highly sensitive person. I’ve struggled with life as I didn’t fit in very well with a busy inundated world. I decided finally to put myself in the driver seat and try my own way - being my own boss. I grew tired of all the fake emergencies (we need this today!) and the competition at work. I just wanted to focus. And create. Now I’m finding out more about myself but also that I don’t actually hate work. I just didn’t like all the stuff that went with it that taxes my soul.
The vacation paragraph! Exactly.