If Time is Money, Attention is Everything
It’s Why More Time ≠ Better Results
I’m lost in (non) time
I’ve been feeling, lately, like I can’t quite get a grasp of time. The hours on especially busy days, yes, but more so the way my life continues to ceaselessly unfold even while I’m still learning how to do yesterday. I don’t know how else to explain it, except for that I’m starting to understand what it meant for adults to tell us as children that “time only gets faster the older you get.”
As a child, that time only got faster for adults was something to be jealous of. It didn’t seem like a resource in which we were lacking; if anything, there was too much of it. Or, at least, there was always “enough.” I’m 30 now, with my 31st birthday around the corner, and at 7, I remember thinking 30-year-olds were about as old as a person could get. But at 92, I’ll look back on 30-year-old me as a floundering, sad, fluffy, frenzied little baby bird with too much ego and somehow, also (?), too much self-doubt. I’ll be thankful, at 92, that I’ll have sorted some of it out.
Is time *still* money?
I’m beginning to get what it means that time doesn’t exist. And definitely not in the way we typically operate or understand today — I learned recently that the more we can enrich our lives with new skills and novel experiences, the more we perceive time as being abundant (or “enough”), as our brains form new neural pathways to experience, interpret, and reflect on those things outside of our norm.
So, if you want to stretch it out — to make time seem more abundant — do what is contrary to popular belief (or ease): Fill your time learning new skills and enjoying new experiences. Trade an hour of TV for an hour of Mindvalley or SkillShare or New Masters Academy (some of my current personal favorites). Instead of scrolling social media for 30 minutes before bed, read. Or just rest for once, without moving so frantically to the next thing. Make it easy — enjoyable, even, if you can. (I forgot how much I actually liked reading until I picked it back up again this year. Kind of like getting on the exercise bandwagon, the hardest part really is just getting started.)
If time is just a fabricated perception — in that we have the ability to influence how slowly or quickly we perceive it — then is the ideology that “time is money” still relevant? In this instance, we understand time to be our greatest resource. But it isn’t time, actually. Because some of us have all the time in the world and can’t seem to move the ball forward in any direction. Days are hazy, progress is parallel, and nothing really gets done despite all the good intent and honest desire. (I’m not even calling anyone out here, so don’t take this one personally — I’ve been here, so this is really just a personal reflection). Meanwhile, others of us have very little time for ourselves and still somehow maintain close friendships, work out 8 days a week, and grow multi-million dollar businesses, all while raising and homeschooling three kids and a dog and a fish (+ if you’re one of those people, please send book recommendations xoxoxo).
If time is flexible, then, what’s the catch?
Moving as though time is our greatest, most precious resource is where we get it wrong, thinking that the to-do lists will complete themselves, the paintings will be painted themselves, the books will be written themselves, the kids will be loved themselves, the partners will be pursued themselves, all as time unfolds while we ride its wave inevitably onward.
If our greatest resource isn’t time, it is instead our attention. Just as, at 30, I’m grasping time’s insignificance, I’m realizing attention’s opposite. It’s come at somewhat of a painful price, too, because part of me feels like I’ve been wasting away my time — or, worse yet, that my precious attention has been cannibalized by distraction. (“Youth is wasted on the young” is only funny until you’re not a youth anymore.)
A year ago, almost to date, I quit my full-time job as a digital marketer to transition to a consulting role, which would allow me greater space and time to work on my art. I genuinely felt as though absence of time was the only thing stopping me from finally “getting things done around here.” Of course — and I know you know where this is going — I spent a lot of that time filling it with other things that had nothing to do with accelerating my career as an artist. I painted and networked and wrote no more than I had while working full time, and probably even less, but don’t worry; my house was cleaner :/ (So what, right? Right.)
Unfortunately, I’ve come to realize, lack of time was never my problem in the first place.
Here’s the thing: You have the time. Maybe not as much as you want, maybe not as much as you used to have, but you have good and plenty of it. And more than you know.
Attention, on the other hand, is really the resource that’s finite, and the one that deserves our intention. It’s the one we can’t make up for — the one we can’t get back.
Your attention is working hard (for someone in Silicon Valley)
This is especially relevant in a rapidly changing digital landscape that capitalizes specifically on your attention. The developers of our biggest tech companies (Facebook/Meta, Instagram, Twitter, etc). are after your time, firstly (they want you to spend time using their apps), but more importantly, they’re after your attention. We know this because they’re not just tracking the length of time you spend on their apps from log-on to log-off; they’re more interested in which posts you double tap, which you save, which you share — the which ones capture your attention and then drive you to action. This trains their algorithms specifically to show you content they know you’ll love, which feeds the insatiable beast that is social media itself. Here’s my point: Your attention is big tech’s payday. If you’re using an app (like Instagram, for example), for free, then trust that you, are the product.
So, in attempting to reframe my mindset to prioritize — and protect — my attention, I’ve been asking myself this simple question: “If time is money, and attention is everything, would I pay this thing money to capture mine?”
Think of our Instagram example. Most of us wouldn’t mind giving Instagram a minute of our time (since to use it is “free”), but many of us would in fact mind very much if we had to instead pay a dollar for every minute of use. Quickly, those minutes would add up; I would absolutely refuse to pay Instagram $20 for 20 minutes of my time.
This, then, begs another question: Would you?
If the value you receive from giving Instagram 20 minutes of your time is worth $20, then you shouldn’t feel guilty about spending it. In some cases, including my own, like that of an artist or an entrepreneur, it would likely be necessary — though I’d bet another $20 that you’d only give attention to the things that really, absolutely demanded it, like posting or reviewing analytics for the purpose of optimizing your use, as opposed to mindless consumption, excessive doomscrolling, or comparative self-sabotage.
It’s not just about social media, though
Now, I have to clarify: I’m not at all trying to rag on social media, or Instagram in particular. There are countless use cases for these platforms, and I’ve given all of them a lot of my undying, anxious, overstimulated attention over the last decade or so. But, today, as I curate more carefully who and what make up my life, I find that there is very little room for those black-hole sort of things, where time escapes me and my attention in passive. Time is a fleeting resource. It comes and goes; it expands and contracts and bounces back again, according to our own perceptions and distortions (if you’ve ever taken psychedelics, and have found yourself trapped in a window of time that doesn’t exist, you might know painfully to what I am referring.)
Usually, in these posts, I share actionable items like lists, guides, and strategies. This one, though, has one very simple, very memorable takeaway: You have the time. Maybe not as much as you want, maybe not as much as you had before kids or before promotions, but you have enough.
It’s your attention that you should be careful to spend.
Make note of where you go, mentally, when you have a split second. (You’re driving and stop at a red light, for example. Do you immediately grab your phone? Do you click the news app purely out of habit, before ever realizing it? What has a grasp on you? Tim Ferriss, in “The 4-Hour Work Week,” prescribes to his readers looking to reduce their time working while increasing their results, a “low-information diet.” There’s more on this, including systems and technical applications that can help free up your time and eliminate distractions in his book. A good read!)
As Bertrand Russell, and others that have paraphrased, famously said: “The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
So take a step back. Relax. Surrender yourself to time as it presses onward, trusting that you have enough. Stop rushing yourself all over the place, lookin’ all frenzied and wild. Avoid the trap of operating on autopilot. Instead, spend your attention wisely; you’ll find your days are more fulfilled, more productive — richer in work, in play, in craft, in people. That’s what we’re all after in our (lack of) time management, anyway, isn’t it?
If you don’t know me, hi! I’m Sophie, a Chicago-based artist and writer.
Subscribe to my list for more on Creative Responsibility, or shoot me an email if you’d like to get in touch (sophie@sturdevantcreative.com).
