You Cannot Be Creative or See Breakthroughs If You Have the New Average Attention Span

March 18, 2015

In an article called How to Build Billionaire Habits by Nick Papple I just came across a statistic that’s crazy.

See for yourself…

“According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2013. That’s one second less than the attention span of a goldfish. Research shows the decrease is due to an increase in “external stimuli.” In other words, the harder you try to stay ‘connected’ (checking Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Email); the less connected you actually become.”

Can you believe that most people have an attention span less than a goldfish?

Creativity and Breakthrough Are Only Accessible Through Attention

Let me just be real with you.

There is no way that you can come up with creative content marketing ideas, if you can’t focus for longer than a goldfish.
There is no way you can come up with solutions to the problems you’re facing in your life or your business, if you can’t focus for more than 8 seconds.
And there is no way you’ll come up with breakthroughs for your life or business, if you can’t focus long enough for someone to count slowly to 10.

Let me ask you this…

How are you doing these days when it comes to focusing on the things that really matter in your life?

Our Problem Isn’t a Time Management One

More time.

It’s the thing that we’re all chasing after, but I’ve become convinced that we’re chasing after the wrong thing.

Our problem is NOT with time management.

Our problem is with ATTENTION Management.

The tools, luxuries, and benefits of our modern lives, that were supposed to add to our lives, have ended up distracting us from the important things in life.

It’s not our time that we need to manage better. It’s our attention.

What Has to Change

Life is so busy, so distracting that there is no way that we can be alert if we don’t do something differently.

But what is it that we have to do differently?

What has to change?

We have to make time to do these three things:

To think about our life, our business, and our problems
To process where we’re at, where we’re headed, and if it’s where we want to go
To be watchful for opportunities, looming problems, and the needs that are around us

Creativity and breakthrough will never happen if you don’t create space to do these three things.

It won’t happen if things don’t change.

So what are you going to do about this?

Photo by kkoriyama

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