The Attention Crash

If you want to learn how to blog, go read Marc Andreessen's new weblog. I haven't absorbed many other blogs as deeply as a I have his - at least since he started writing it a few weeks ago.

Marc says that we're not in a Web 2.0 bubble and I have to agree. We're not seeing nearly as many millionaires minted as we did the first go round. That's a sure sign.

However, there is definitely a bubble and therefore a crash coming. It's not financial. It's not related to the level of noise or startups. This crash is personal.

We are reaching a point where the number of inputs we have as individuals is beginning to exceed what we are capable as humans of managing. The demands for our attention are becoming so great, and the problem so widespread, that it will cause people to crash and curtail these drains. Human attention does not obey Moore's Law.

I have seen this in my own life. I am applying some of the principles Marc wrote about here as well as practices that Tim Ferriss describes in his amazing book, The 4-Hour Workweek. I look forward to getting more tips when I meet Tim in person this week. I am particularly trying to reduce my need to check email dozens of time per day.

More importantly, I have become fascinated with Tim's use of the 80/20 principle, which Gina describes here. With this philosophy in mind, I have trimmed projects, RSS feeds and emails to hone in on the 20 percent that's most important. It's also why I am not trying every new site that floats in my inbox and deleting pitches that are clearly off topic w/o even reading them.

My attention has reached a limit so I have re-calibrated it to make it more effective. I think this issue is an epidemic. We have too many demands on our attention and the rapid success of Tim's book indicates that people will start to cut back on the information they are gorging.

If this happens en masse, will it cause a financial  pullback? Possibly if ad revenues sag as a result.

Comments

[Simon Collister]

Funny you should post this, Steve. I wrote at the weekend that the Web 2.0 bubble isn't financial. For it it may cause a consoliddation of tools but the big gain will be a much increased global population understanding and living in socially networked societies: http://simoncollister.typepad.com/simonsays/2007/06/web_20_bubble_i.html

[Josia]

I see your week off from blogging made you especially insightful - this process is going to keep escalating until we realize what the point of all this stuff is. What happens today in a week used to happen over five years! We are headed for a crash alright but it's a good crash.

[Mark Hurst]

Steve,

You're absolutely right about the oversupply of inputs. If checking your e-mail less frequently fixes the problem, fantastic... though most people I talk to need a deeper transformation. I'd recommend my new book, Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload, which is available at http://bitliteracy.com. Hope it helps.

-mark

[Eric Eggertson]

Anyone who has managed an internal newsletter or intranet knows all about the attention problem. They're competing against constant interruptions of employees by e-mail and other sources.

One of the only certain ways to overcome this problem is to hit employees with information that is too valuable and engaging for them to ignore.

I'd say the same applies to blogs and other forms of communication. If you're not valuable, you're probably spam. Everyone has to decide which one they want to be.

[Wayan]

Steve,

I have to disagree on the input overload idea. This concept is not new - overload was predicted when newspapers went mass production, when the telephone, radio, TV, computer, and Internet were all introduced to the masses.

Humans are adaptive and we are adapting by shifting our inputs to the most useful. I haven't watched TV in years (well, except when I am on it) and my Internet habits shift from sites to feeds to email alerts, depending on my time constraints and informational needs.

I expect that smart advertisers are just as adaptive, changing their message and medium to keep up with the shifting patterns of usage. Or to be succinct - I have no doubt that advertisers will find a way to put commercials in my life, no matter what I do to evade them.

[BillyWarhol]

Yeah i've Input enuf fer FREE on Flickr + my Blog*

In the Future i expect to be PAID & paid handsomely*

I'm tired o working fer diddly squat*

;PPP

[Ed Kohler]

Great points. Attention doesn't scale. I think Google Reader's trends feature will help some blog obsessed people get a better feel for where their time is going and whether it's justified.

[Ty Graham]

I agree with Billy, and this post hints at a shift in the way things have gone to a more human experience where you only interact with what you need or want. Isn't that what we do in real life, everyday? How many times have technology made us less human: Receiving messages from strangers trying to take our money or giving attention to something that means nothing to you etc... Contracting isn't it? Technology is supposed to be a revolution of the our creations mirroring or expanding our own humanity. The days in which an advertiser pays for the wrong attention and the consumer struggling to find a way for something worth pay attention to are numbered. The adventure is almost starting, pay attention folks, because soon, everyone is going to get blipd!

[Robbo]

I have to agree with Wayan. Not only are humans very adaptable, we are constantly surprising ourselves with how much further and faster we can go in any endeavour. More importantly, while codgers my age may be feeling left in the dust we can still clearly see the younger kids around me wading through this info-ocean without a second thought. Is it changing them? Most certainly. They will grow up to be quite different from us. But they won't respect our "limits". Nor should they.

[Tom Keefe]

Another point to consider is that people will not solely look for ways to be more efficient at managing information flows. Look for entertainment and mindless conversations to increase--they are easier to create and digest, and they make us laugh. To survive, the brain diverts its attention to something easier.

[Aidan Henry]

Steve,

I would have to agree with your thought process. I wrote a similar post a little while back here:

http://www.mappingtheweb.com/2007/04/15/time-vs-web-applications/

There are trade-offs in life and every decision has an opportunity cost. Finding the right balance and focusing on things that are most important is not only critical to success, but also to happiness.

The only saving grace I see for the new-web landscape is the concept of aggregation and mash-ups, thereby consolidating previously unrelated activities. Amassing everything into a given area saves time and hassle for the user.

Cheers,Aidan Henry

www.MappingTheWeb.com

[jlewin]

Steve

How is your issue with too many inputs different than the idea of information overload that Toffler popularized in the 70's?

The problem of dealing with too much information is not new. The real problem is that our skills for dealing with too much information are beyond their freshness date. We have to learn new ways of dealing with the information that's available to us.

If you flip this around, I think you'll see your problem of having too many inputs represents a huge opportunity for people that can come up with tools that help manage all this information!

[gadgotra dotu]

80/20 principle point was a nice point. Great post!

[Chris Saad]

Steve - I think that there is probably a middle ground between Stowe's argument of changing our behaviour and expectations and your argument of information overload.

Manual Trackbackhttp://www.particls.com/blog/2007/06/attention-economy-vs-flow-continued.html

[Avi Solomon]

You can buy money but you can't buy time.The trick is to be able to sit quietly in the morning and define the one thing you can do during the day that will significantly impact the quality of your life. And then to just do that one thing, without feeling guilty for not doing all the other stuff.Doing Yoga in the morning helps me in slowing down and getting perspective.

[RachelC]

I agree that to make the most of the information that flows in you need to be focused and have coping strategies. But one thing that I guard against is just focusing on the things I think are important to me today..which are often those areas I agree with. Having a way to dip into the larger information pool lets you see opposing views and not just validate your own point of view.

You can see the closed wall approach in attitudes to things like MySpace, which to many is the web and there's nothing outside that group of likeminded individuals.

[Tom Keefe]

I actually agree with both Avi and Rachel. Unless we focus on the important things, our time is spent on other things that come our way. And unless we take time to explore the unexpected things that come our way, we don't stretch our minds and uncover creative solutions to the important things in our lives.

[Gordon R. Vaughan]

Steve, I just found your blog and I tend to agree about the bubble being one of info overload, not finances. I wrote about that and how innovative tools such as GTD apps and Twitter need to be developed and adapted to help us cope:

http://allthings.blogsome.com/2007/06/16/twitter-taking-info-overload-seriously/

[Victor Zalakos]

Fear not Steve. The human brain will do what it does so very well - delete, distort or generalise content.

[Digidave]

Another case of internet multitasking syndrome

[Keith Shepard]

Just get a cat.

[Mike Abundo]

Funny that, while attention is scarce and content is abundant, big media acts as if it's the other way around.