Is attention really all that important? Yeah, actually it is. The cost of our inattention is real and the consequences are enormous. And I don’t mean just financial costs. There are tangible personal, professional, and societal costs to our individual and collective lack of attention.
At a personal level, our health, our relationships, and our opportunities for career advancement suffer significantly when we don’t give thoughtful attention to ourselves and the people we care about most. Professionally, the lack of attention has a dramatic negative impact on our productivity, employee engagement, sales, and bottom0line results. Globally, our carelessness had led to irreparable harm to our natural resources, plan and animal specifies, and the planet itself.
The price we are paying for our inattention is far too great.
You get just one life to lead. How do you want to spend it? Overwhelmed, overstressed and overtired? Or joyful, productive and attentive? Are you squandering the amazing talents and skills you possess because you can’t stay focused at work? We have only one planet to care for. What kind of legacy and world are we leaving to our grandchildren?
You may think you are paying attention, but are you giving intentional attention? Maybe you think you are doing work that matters, but maybe you’re not. You may think you make people feel like they matter, but do they really? It’s not that we don’t want to pay attention. We are trying – so we think. We:
- Believe connecting with friends and family through social media creates authentic, meaningful connections.
- Think survival by multitasking is our only option.
- Try to be all things to all people.
- Feel we must be accessible to everyone all the time.
- Create mindfulness programs at work.
- Go to time-management training positions.
- Create never-ending-to-do-lists
- Try new fancy planners.
- Download the latest apps.
- Color code our calendars.
- Read anything we can about how to get it all done.
And yet, we still feel frustrated. We are missing something when it comes to truly understanding attention – Intention.
