Merlin Mann on email, attention and existence

Image via CrunchBase

At the Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference I had the fortune to catch a presentation that turned out to be much more interesting than I gave it credit for upone reading the title: “Inbox Zero.”

Merlin Mann is an interesting character. He’s sharp and funny. He chuckles and makes others chuckle with his insightful skewering of the quotidian noise of modern life.

“Inbox Zero” sounds like a book about email, but it’s actually much more. Mann was originally going to give his regular speech, describing key points of his book, which describe how to minimize the role of email in daily life, ways to stay focused on the most important tasks and why these are virtues.

Instead, Mann led a meandering conversation with the crowd. He talked more about the deeper implications of — the larger picture that his prescriptions paint.

I’ll skip to a few pillars of what Mann had to say.

“Attention is existential currency.”

This statement struck me. If we choose to see life as a the sum of our experiences, than we must value our attention above all else. Now, not everyone will agree with these premises, but for those who do this has serious implications.

If our attention is the most valuable thing we have, then deep, prolonged attention that produces satisfying experiences is most desirable. Multitasking is nearly antithetical and the cheapest form of attention.

Once accepted, this means we must make some serious observations about our attention habits. And if we want to truly achieve that greatest form of existential currency, most of likely need to make some adjustments to the way we conduct ourselves.

For most people reading this, there’s a device about the size of a pack of baseball cards within arms reach that can send and receive audio and video, stills images and textual information to and from millions of people all over the planet in the blink of an eye. It’s within reach at almost any moment, and they’re becoming  What a revolution in communicative ability. But what a detriment to our ability to create high-value attention.

See also:

• Productivity and Time Wasters in Social Media (altitudebranding.com)
• How to achieve complete focus to listen to a podcast (jurecuhalev.com)

 

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