Law of lost attention

The value of something you spend attention on, is dependent on how much attention you spend on it.

"Whenever someone is lost in waves of e-mail and information, they're often oblivious  to the deepest tragedy of their time. It'd not the stress of dealing with so many requests and obligations (as real and challening as that stress might be). It's that somewhere in the wash of interactions and split attentions is the missed possibility they're looking for: meaning. Depth of experience. Connection. To quote Robert Pirsig, "The truth knocks on the door and we say, 'Go away. I'm looking for the truth.'" In the race to clean out inboxes and scratching items off the to-do list, we miss chances to find the things we've created the inbox and to-do list for." (via "Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds" by Scott Berkun)

What does it mean to stay on top of information that doesn't satisfy?

Consume information consciously

We need to understand that information is something we consume, and that we have the ability to choose what we consume. (via The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption)

How do we consume data?

At TED@SXSWi, technologist JP Rangaswami muses on our relationship to information, and offers a surprising and sharp insight: we treat it like food.

"Information, if viewed from the point of viewed from the point of food, is never a production issue... it's a consumption issue, and we have to start thing about how we create diets [and] exercise." (Link to TED Talk)

I have been reflecting on what's important to me and what I should be focusing my attention on. I hope that you are doing the same.

"Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for miseries and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries."" -Blaise Pascal