Man, I love this blog.

I enjoy the give-and-take of this group as we hammer-out the challenges and issues in the Attention Age.

Your comments provide great material for Part 2 of The Attention Age Doctrine, which will be ready later this month. Thanks for your contributions and your patience. I promise, it’s going to be great!

As you may realize, one of the best attention-holding features of blogging is the opportunity to keep conversations alive. I do it here as often as I can.

While each blog post may survive on its own merit, it is also possible – and encouraged – to carry thoughts from one post to another as a viral thread.

After all, this is how some of the best ideas are spread.

That said, let’s return to the topic of Return on Attention (ROA).

Return on attention is the performance metric by which we measure the value of the attention we “pay” to other people and ideas.

You’ll remember from a previous post that I asked about the return you are receiving from the attention you freely give to others. Thanks for your comments on this topic and keep them coming. You’ll see in a moment why I asked for them in the first place.

Think of ROA as a financial transaction.

When you pay for a product or service, you expect something of value in return:

– Pay for milk. Bring milk home and drink it.

– Pay for housecleaning services. Come home to a clean house.

– Pay for business coaching. Get Rich Schefren. 🙂

The return should always be of great value, otherwise, there’s no point in making the purchase.

Yet, as I’ve noted earlier, we tend to give our attention away to many things, asking little or nothing in return. Seems strange, especially if you are trying to succeed as an online entrepreneur.

Since attention is such a scarce resource, we should recognize its value and only exchange it for something of equal worth.

It’s like bartering diamonds for gold pieces. The value of each must be measured accordingly.

Yet each day, we let our mind and our attention wander away from our own business goals. We squander our intellectual capital and waste our energies on lesser subjects and ideas.

By doing so, we take our eyes off the ball with regard to our own business goals. We divide and subdivide our own attention to our detriment, diminishing our power to achieve.

Re-read that last sentence out loud. See if it applies to your own online business situation.

Giving away attention devalues its impact. It dulls the force of our competitive nature.

It’s like giving up diamonds for rubber bands. You probably wouldn’t do it if you were of sound mind – unless you received a helluva lot of rubber bands – so why do we constantly give away our valuable attention?

ROA often comes in the form of knowledge. It’s what we receive as a benefit for having paid attention to a customer, a client, a motivational speaker, or anything else.

What we derive from that experience should have its own reward for us, either in the form of financial gain, wisdom increase or future benefit.

Our goal, as always, is to convert that knowledge into wisdom.

Entrepreneurs are the alchemists of the online world. We are innovative enough to make gold out of straw. But we can’t afford to give away our well-earned wealth – in the form of attention – without receiving greater value for our efforts.

Global business strategist and author John Hagel III has his own take on ROA. He says it is “driven by the proliferation of options available to us in all domains of our life, increasing the relative scarcity of an increasingly valuable resource – our attention.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself, so I didn’t. That’s why I’m giving him full credit.

Hagel suggests that virtual communities, such as this blog, can be powerful conduits in delivering ROA by enhancing good fortune.

In other words, you’ll become “lucky” just by paying attention to my blog. I completely agree.

Don’t you get a rush of excitement when you “accidentally” discover a valuable, relevant resource of information that you didn’t even know existed?That’s what the StumbleUpon.com web site is all about. It creates value from other sites that we “stumble upon” as we navigate our way around the Web.

As a former baseball executive said a long time ago, “luck is the residue of design.” You’ll be amazed at how lucky you’ll feel when you do things with real purpose – not just out of habit – like searching for knowledge to grow your business.

The challenge is to harness the power of these valuable resources and derive a healthy return on the attention we give during our quest.

How can you connect with others to grow? How can you take advantage of your skills for finding relevant “treasure among the trash” and use the materials as key building blocks for your success?

Your attention becomes an investment in that success. You have to mine the gems before you realize their value.

Let’s put it to the test on this blog.

Think like a big shot banker… Where will your attention receive the greatest “bang for the buck?”

Share your attention wealth with my blog readers.

Tell me your top three goals for getting a great return on your attention.

It is possible to find treasure in the trash, if you know how to pay attention.

Let’s see if we can turn that attention into business gold.

Please leave your comment… 

Local TV news programs often follow a very simple directive:
“If it bleeds, it leads.”

That’s why crime stories and negative news regularly top the daily newscasts. “Bad news” almost always steals our attention.

The “good news” about the church that raised $100,000 for a blind orphan comes much later in the newscast – if it makes the news at all.

Frustrating, isn’t it? Why do the negatives often grab the spotlight from the positives? Why is our attention drawn to negative thoughts and events?

Blame it on the “attention hogs.”

Sept. 11, 2001. It got our attention. Evil terrorist attacks on the United States and the resulting, ongoing war on terrorism. It’s held our attention.

But while fear and bad news often grab the headlines,  our “good news” – perhaps your own marketing message – suffers as a consequence of dastardly “attention hogs.” By capturing and holding attention, these hogs leave little room for other more attention-worthy news.

Just who are these attention hogs?

The list is long and it grows longer by the day…

Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, the late Anna Nicole Smith and Princess Diana. They join the ranks of Monica Lewinsky, Barry Bonds, Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey, global warming, Hurricane Katrina, Harry Potter, and the Apple iPhone on our impromptu list.

They are all persons or entities that have won our attention, for better or worse, in the Attention Age.

Not all will hold a treasured place in our memories. In fact, many may be fading as we speak, but they still receive attention. At least for a moment – usually more – and just long enough for us to emotionally brand our brains.

Our attention is a scarce resource, and so is the attention of the marketplace. How we allocate our own attention really matters.

But there are those “attention hogs” among us who are trying to steal more bandwidth. They want real estate in our brains, and with the help of technology and mass media, many have left their mark forever.

Attention hogs not only suck your attention, but they make it more difficult for your own marketing to be successful. In essence, we are all competing with Paris Hilton and the terrorists for attention.

When people are paying attention to them, they’re not paying attention to you and your products.

Terrorism is clearly an instrument of attention-getting cowardice. Osama bin Laden is known worldwide as a terrorist mastermind. His name and face are synonymous with terrorism. Bin Laden’s acts of terror have made an emotional connection in our brain. He captures that much of our attention, as we hope to capture him.

Far from the only evil “hog” in this Attention Age, Bin Laden is joined by the Virginia Tech killer – no name is necessary – as having successfully seared his image and actions in our brain. The tragic events at Virginia Tech in 2007 and the 33 people killed will long be remembered, even if the name of the killer is soon forgotten.

Why do we know or care about Paris Hilton? How do we know about Lindsay Lohan’s progress in rehab? What about Anna Nicole Smith or the intimate details and tragic turns in Princess Diana’s life and death?

All are celebrity-driven drains on our attention, with two receiving more attention in death than the considerable attention they had already received in life.

Why? Because we allow them to take hold of our attention and keep a piece of it for themselves.

Barry Bonds sets a home run record, but we pay more attention to rumors of “performance-enhancement drugs.” Monica Lewinsky becomes infamous for an adulterous affair with President Bill Clinton. Her last name becomes a slang term for oral sex. Now, that’s attention.

Hurricane Katrina is a metaphor for natural disaster, hope and recovery. Global warming straddles the line between hoax and reality. Oprah is Oprah. Harry Potter is a book-selling, movie-making wizard. And the iPhone becomes the “next big thing.”

All claim attention, all are attention hogs. They hold themselves up as “winners” in the Attention Age.

The losers? Anyone who pays too much attention to any one or all of these winners. They are not all worthy of that much attention, but they get it just the same.

Remember: What we give them in attention, we can never reclaim as our own.

So let me ask you this: What are you receiving from all of the attention you freely give?

In other words… What is your “return on attention” – your personal ROA – from the attention you so willingly pay to the attention hogs?

Create a list of the “good” and “bad” attention hogs in your life.

Tell us what you demand in return from each attention hog and how you will make them earn your attention in the future.

Let’s discover new ways to channel our attention, fight off the hogs, and help our businesses grow.

Post here…

“Interruptions are in the eye of the interrupted.”

This was a key point in The Attention Age Doctrine, and one that really struck a nerve with many of my readers.

Information that you think is important to your business, may simply be an interruption to your business goals.

Trouble is, you won’t realize whether or not the information is important until you’ve given it your attention.

Since the release of The Attention Age Doctrine, I’ve received countless e-mails and blog comments about the distinction between an “interruption” and a “distraction” as it relates to business efficiency. While there are “dictionary differences” between the two, I’ll just give you my quick analysis.

An interruption is external. It’s a break in continuity, something unexpected that “pops up” and causes you to divert your attention. Examples: Someone calling your name, an e-mail alert on your computer, a ringing phone, a raindrop falling on your head, a bowling bowl dropped in your lap. Interruptions grab our attention by diverting our focus.

A distraction is internal. It’s an emotional disturbance that requires our own compliance. It’s your mind thinking about lunch options while you are in an important business meeting. It’s a gaze out the window to watch the birds fly by or the feeling that you left your iron on in the laundry room. There’s an underlying cause for distractions that divides our attention in a subtle way. Distractions may seem like harmless “white noise,” but they can be quite, well, distracting.

Workplace interruptions and distractions serve one disturbing purpose: They take us off course. Every time we “follow the bouncing ball,” our business goals get pushed aside.

By taking your focus off the “big task” of what your business needs (more on this in a sec…), your vision becomes clouded, your message muddled, your decisions diluted and delayed.

What’s even worse is that it becomes a habit. You end up conditioning your brain to respond in a similar fashion in the future. In essence, you are re-wiring your brain to work against you [I’ll share the research that supports this notion, and how you can re-condition your attention, in Part 2 of the Attention Age Doctrine, coming out next month.]

Look, there’s a real reason why many racehorses run with blinders on. It’s so they’ll stay focused on the task at hand – winning.

So why is it so difficult for entrepreneurs to do the same? Why don’t we work with blinders on, avoiding interruptions so we can focus on growing our business and achieving our goals?

Maybe it’s because you love being in the race more than you love achieving the results. You enjoy the “busyness” of your business, but are unwilling to get serious about doing what it takes to succeed. You’re allowing distractions and interruptions to pull you away from your business goals.

My coaching clients often ask: How can I avoid the interruptions that are distracting me from my work?

An easy answer is to work in solitary confinement, but that has its own downside. A better answer comes from asking a better question: Why am I allowing myself to be so easily distracted?

No one makes us answer e-mails. There is no law, under penalty of death, to respond immediately to instant messages or a ringing telephone.

We can avoid interruptions and distractions if we want to do so. So why do we allow this to happen?

It’s always easier to blame an outside source for our troubles – a computer, a colleague, a PDA – rather than take that terrifying look inside ourselves to see what is lurking among the cobwebs.

Are we are our own worst enemy when it comes to distraction? Are we the cause of our own interruptions that take us off the path to success and down a spiraling path toward procrastination and diminished productivity?

Think about it for a moment. Each time you sit down in front of the computer you should do so with an ultimate goal: task completion. But getting from Point A to Point B in your business is rarely a direct line of progression – at least, that’s what you’ve been telling yourself.

The demands on our attention are infinite, but our attention is finite. So we have to keep focused on the goal of winning.

Every time we turn our attention away from our purpose – task completion – and toward something else (i.e., reading e-mail, mindlessly surfing the Web, chasing butterflies, chatting on the phone), we imperil our business goals and do our customers a great disservice.

We can choose to blame technology, our neighbors, family and friends, but really the blame is our own. It is our own refusal – note, I did not say “inability” – to eliminate the interruptions and distractions that cause frustration and prevent us from achieving ultimate success.

By allowing interruptions to sidetrack us – by giving in to the pull of distraction – we simply delay our primary gratification: the knowledge and pride in a job well done and the financial reward that comes with it.

Instead of doing what your business needs you to do, you end up doing what you want to do.

Let’s put that in perspective. You may not want to change diapers, but your children need you to do it. You may not want to pay taxes, but it’s probably a good idea to complete them on time each year. In both cases, you just have to hold your nose and get it done.

Successful entrepreneurs (in the right business) love their businesses. They shouldn’t “have to” do the job; they should “want to” do what is best for business development and ultimate reward.

This creates another immediate concern:

Do you know what your business really needs of you?

If not, all of the time you waste through “distraction” may really be the fault of your own “indecision.” You must decide what your business needs from you (in a step-by-step list of tasks) and eliminate the interruptions and distractions so you can get it done.

Two days ago I attended a networking event in Texas that will most likely go down in history as one of the biggest gatherings of influential men and women in business and marketing.  It was hosted by my good friend Stephen Pierce. Some of the powerful people in attendance were T Harv Eker, Jay Abraham, John Reese, and Jeff Walker; Tim Ferris, Armand Morin, Russell Brunson, and John Carlton; Mike Filsaime, Tom Beal, Jerry Clark, and Shawn Casey; Eben Pegan, Mike Litman, and Dave Lakhani; Janet Switzer, Yanik Silver, and Lori Morgan Ferraro.

At the event I had a great conversation with Internet Marketing legend John Reese. Besides getting some great marketing advice from him regarding our upcoming seminar in February, we also compared our approaches to getting our work done. And we both had a similar approach.

We both think about the goal we are trying to accomplish and list all the steps we need to do in order to accomplish it. Then, we get to work. John said (and I agreed) that often people get sidetracked or procrastinate because they haven’t taken the time to layout all the steps they need to take to accomplish their goals.

The list of steps helps grab and focus their attention.

Early radio and television programs used to be interrupted by breathless announcers with a familiar refrain: “We interrupt this message to bring you a special announcement…” The message grabbed your attention and wouldn’t let go until you absorbed it, at which time you were “returned to your regularly scheduled programming.”

It’s time to get clear about what you need to do, focus your attention and “get with the program” of working on what matters.

So, why are you not achieving your business goals faster?

Do you have an interruption problem, a distraction problem, or an indecision problem? (Share your thoughts on this here)

Sometimes introspection can be a painful journey of discovery, but one we all must take.

So do it right now, right here… Then get back to work!

Post a comment about this article 

Most online entrepreneurs just like you either suffer from too little or way too much information: There simply is no in-between.

Where do you stand? How do you figure out which amount of information is “just right?”

Today, we’ll continue the conversation on information overload that we started in an earlier blog post. And, boy, is there a lot of material to cover …

Let’s begin with one of the biggest issues.

I’m often asked by nervous entrepreneurs:

When is “enough” information really enough?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this question from clients – “newbie” business owners and veteran business leaders alike.

So many smart people are convincing themselves that they are just not smart enough. Stop doing this to yourself and your business.

As we mentioned in an Aug. 15 posting on this blog about information overload, you can’t possibly know everything, so don’t even try. You just need to recognize what you don’t know and fill in the gaps along the way.

One of our blog readers, Dan Scott, put this urgency in perspective: “Often we keep acquiring more information so we can put off pulling the trigger … at some point, you’ve got sufficient information and should just act.”

Excellent point, Dan.

Think about it:

It’s great to have an impressive vocabulary, but you don’t need to memorize an entire dictionary in order to enjoy a good book. If you don’t understand a new word, simply look it up. It’s that easy to do.

You just have to trust yourself – and your brain. After all, even Albert Einstein couldn’t remember his own telephone number. He reasoned, quite accurately, that he didn’t need to memorize his phone number because he knew where to find it in the phone book.

Einstein didn’t question his knowledge of the unknown, even for little things like remembering a phone number. You shouldn’t either.

Sometimes knowing how to access information is more important than the information itself. Remember that – I’m sure it will become more and more important to you as your business grows.

There’s another puzzling question I hear a lot, and this one is funny when you say it out loud:

How do I know that I’ll know what I need to know when I need to know it?

Questions like these reveal a disturbing unease about strategic business process – and a lack of confidence among business owners. The questions don’t lead to business solutions; they just heighten our anxieties and pick at the scab of uncertainty that irritates us all.

“What if I can’t keep up with my competitors?” …

“What if I don’t buy every business book, read every e-mail, and scan every RSS feed?” …

“What if I miss the one bit of information that could truly set my business on fire?”

“What if …”

This kind of paranoia freezes growth opportunity.

It discourages risk-taking and leads to indecision, inefficiency, and ultimately, paralysis.

This is no way to run a successful business.

Information anxiety plagues many good business people. But the great ones are able to sort through the clutter of information and inaction and get to the part that really matters – the information that leads you to take action.

Again, knowing how to access and interpret information is sometimes more important than the information itself.

Think about this example. What turns the lights on in your house? Simple answer: A light switch.

You don’t need to know about volts, ohms and amperes in order to turn on the lights. You just need the lights to work so you can see what is in front of you.

The ability to see what is in front of you: This is what so many of us seem to have lost.

Instead, we block our own view, and distort our business vision, with needless stacks of irrelevant information. The “stacks” don’t have to be physical. Even a virtual impediment is a blockade to creativity and productive thought.

Oh yeah, one more thing …

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. You’ll still make them, no matter how much information you have in your memory and at your fingertips.

Let me share a secret with you.

If you’ve done anything at all – not just business – then you have valuable experiences locked inside you that are just waiting to be rediscovered

You know what has worked and what hasn’t in certain situations. This will ALWAYS provide the best information you need to succeed. It is personal to you and it is timely: Two strong reasons why it’s more valuable to you than most information you’ll come across.

Most likely, no other business guru has ever shared this secret with you ­– because, if they did, it would be bad for business.

But I’m willing to do this for you because I believe you really must understand this. I’ve had some of the best mentors in the world – Jay Abraham, Michael Masterson, etc. – but even with that star-quality guidance, I needed something more.

The most important, impactful and relevant information I ever received that has helped me be successful has come directly from my own experiences – good and bad.

You are the best source of information for your business.

You know what works best and what doesn’t. You’ve thrown yourself into the fire and perhaps you’ve been burned by a few failed business decisions.

So what? That’s nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary, it may be just what you need to assure success in the future.

Your experiences, your passions, your successes and failures, all come into play as you move forward in any business venture. Each bit of experience you have gained along the way becomes a pebble on the path toward future growth.

Don’t turn that pebble into a boulder by blocking your ability to move forward with confidence.

Often, clients tell me that watching me make a mistake, rebound and leverage it for future growth has inspired them to really change their way of thinking. They are no longer timid with fear of failure. Instead, they are ready to pounce on opportunity, even if it is born of error.

While you may be tempted to ingest all sorts of information from outside sources, and many of these sources may prove remarkably helpful, the ultimate business decisions are made by you.

It is essential that you take control of that decision-making function.

And no matter what, do not discount what you know already or make your own knowledge any less important than anyone else’s. It is your wisdom that has value because you are living with it.

Last year, in a Sept. 8 blog posting, I offered tips on how to attack information overload and the resulting anxiety it causes.

In it, I asked my readers to overcome “the single biggest obstacle to achieving lasting success online and offline.” That obstacle, for many, is their own personal craving for more and more information.

You may be an information junkie, but don’t let information anxiety turn your business into junk.

What’s causing you to delay action in favor of more research? What impulses are preventing you from “pulling the trigger” on action-oriented solutions?

Your responses on information overload have been illuminating, and I’m learning from all that I receive and read.

Share your secrets to “getting going” on new tasks. Do you have a certain ritual you follow? A certain method you use to kick-start your productivity? How do you know when enough is enough?

Let me know how you do it … There are a lot of people hungry for your ideas.

To Higher Profits,

Rich Schefren