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Ask HN: Is Attention Now a Superpower?

22 points by chainbear ↗ HN
And I mean the biological attention (not ML attention).

It seems like everyone's attention span is getting lower. And I figure in this climate, the ability to pay attention and focus for long spans should give someone a competitive advantage.

13 comments

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PaulHoule
If you pay attention to the right things.
[dead] favourable
i.e : Not social media. And if you are going to use social media, try and train it to be high signal.
cpach
I think so, yes.

Example: Many people today don’t read books. Therefore they are missing out, big time. Many books contain unique and valuable information/analysis that cannot be obtained elsewhere. So IMHO, people who read books will gain advantages from that activity.

esturk
If said information has any staying power, it would continue to propagate which is the original definition of a meme. Saying that it can't be obtained anywhere else implies it's not as important.
blockwriter
Maybe, but if you look at it from the opposite point of view, I think it can be said that those that read books enjoy an advantage over those that do not. Even though the idea could be conveyed outside of a book, the time, discipline and quiet required to read is likely better than most other methods of consumption.
giantg2
"the ability to pay attention and focus for long spans should give someone a competitive advantage."

My company wants us to support multiple apps in multiple stacks while providing prod support. If you have "long spans" of time for any one thing, that would be miracle. I am able to focus for long periods of time, but not when the environment requires dropping things to work on a higher priority or join a meeting.

jmiskovic
I think it's more ability to delay the gratification. For example, some video games require attention to be sustained for long times, and being able to do that won't grant you superpowers. Instead it is useful to be able to stick to the task at hand even when you are not immediately making progress.
kleer001
> I think it's more ability to delay the gratification.

And that's a frontal lobe issue (and everything that influences that). My guess is that there's a media wide focus on the doings of the young (under 25yo) and their brains aren't done baking yet.

robbedpeter
I think people are paying attention to things for longer spans. You can lose hours to superficial content on tiktok or YouTube, but you can also fill hours of your days with lectures and podcasts and audiobooks. Everyone I know under the age of 70 has binged their favorite shows, watching 6 or more hourlong episodes in a sitting. Minecraft players can lose themselves for a day, easily, paying attention to the game for 12+ hours.

Look at the typical response of young people to TV ads - they find the rapid switching and interruptions infuriating. They'll have watched many hourlong episodes of their favorite show, maybe repeatedly, and be able to tell you the story in detail.

I don't think there's an attention span problem, there's a short-circuited attention problem that sucks people into wasting time on superficial content.

Less time reading isn't necessarily a bad thing if our lives are being enriched through other media. Not everything has to be deliberative study. There's a balance to be found between reading, silent contemplation, entertainment or educational audiovisual content, and so on. Going down a YouTube rabbit hole of superficial content is still paying attention, it's just not good for you.

I think there's a lot of subliminal conditioning of attention in people who engage with modern media, and it's easy to have your attention captured, but you can turn that around by being deliberate in your choice of a playlist, or selection of a playlist, and not allowing a third party the ability to choose content for you.

afarrell
The ability to wisely manage one’s own attention has always been powerful. If you read How to Win Friends and Influence People, its core message is to direct your attention with a forgiving curiosity about those you work with. If you want to get better at managing your attention in conversations, the books “Clean Language” and “From Contempt to Curiosity” are good.
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