Noise. With all of the outlets and inlets that the Internet provides, we experience more noise than we ever have in the past. Learning how to successfully wade through the noise and get to the good, quality content is an art in and of itself.
Regardless of the channel, there is noise to be found. Conduct a search on Google, and you’re likely to find ads and organic listings that flat-out don’t make sense to your search (noise); jump on Twitter for a few minutes and you’ll likely read tweets about people’s pets or dietary decisions for the day (noise); or, as in my latest recognition of noise that I personally deal with, launch Google Reader to catch up on what everyone you like to read is talking about and you’ll probably have some articles/posts that you really don’t care about and probably never will; or if you subscribe to multiple feeds from similar sources (like the New York Times technology section and Mashable) you’re likely to read about the same story/event 2-4 times in one sitting.
Chris Brogan, in this post about Attention as a Currency and Noise (worth a quick read) promotes the common-sense idea of budgeting attention/time for yourself. Though the idea is a common-sense one, Chris, as he often does, explains it in such a way that makes it easy to apply.
Budgeting, whether financial budgeting or attention budgeting often requires two major steps:
- Determine what things you can’t live without. Financial budgets will usually include such things as a mortgage/rent, insurance, etc. Attention budgets will usually include such things as your boss or clients, your family members, etc. Essentially, you will be required to keeps these things in your budget on some level.
- Determine what things you can easily get rid of. Don’t be a hoarder. Sometimes it makes better sense to simply cut something from the budget altogether rather than trying to find a way to keep paying for it. A great example of this for a financial budget would be to cut the having a latte at Starbucks every day. For attention budgets, you might simply unsubscribe to the feeds that you don’t get at least 80% value from as you read through them. By simply unsubscribing from the feeds that don’t provide you with a sufficient level of value, you are able to immediately reduce your attention spending level.
Of course the only way to truly reduce your spending is to stay committed to doing so, before you follow that person on Twitter or subscribe to that RSS feed, read through what they are saying/have said in the past and make sure it is in line with the type of information you believe you would like to spend your attention on in the future.
On the flip-side of this whole thing, it is important to realize that as people increasingly gain access to information and data, they will increasingly become more selective about what they choose to spend their attention budgets on. If you want to gain or maintain a percentage of that attention budget, you must make sure to deliver value and quality content/products/services, etc that keeps them interested and coming back for more.
And to borrow a Chris Brogan line, what say you?
