5 things you can do to get a hold of your attention

Filter more: Not everything deserves valuable real estate in your frontal cortex. Some things can be routed and stored for batch processing later on.  Try to filter email that is routine and requires minimal attention.  Make things like bills and coupons available when you need them, but out of your in-box and brain.  Save these for later for when you ultimately climb into the elusive “paying bills and balancing the checkbook” zone.

in-box zero

Delegate? Sounds great!: Some things you procrastinate on maybe be other people’s problem. Knowing it’s in some one else’s hands will free you from the guilt and let you worry about other, more important things.

Home based chore delegation: chorebuster.com

Work based project task delegation: Google Sites

Step back and pause: Think of things in context, the big picture. Getting lost in minutia and process often leads to missing the actual goal.  Set aside a time every week to get a grip.  About an hour would be ideal.

Life laundry day

GTD weekly review

“Golden Rule” communication: Do unto others as you would have done unto you. Don’t write long emails. Don’t leave long messages. Don’t forward what doesn’t need to be forwarded to those who don’t need to know.  Here we are hoping that our investments in effective communication make their way back to you.

And be ready to enforce your rule. If you get a long email, that would take longer than 2 minutes to read, reply back courteously asking what you need to know.

Meditate: Lower your stress and learn how your brain works in the process. You’ll be better able to direct where your attention goes  with practice, and achieve a more serene existence in the pursuit.

Post 3: Attention Tools

Gathering data on attention will yield more than just a general sense of, “Oh, that’s cool.” Having insight into the way people think in your organization is an opportunity for better coaching, more effective motivation, correct job placement, and well-managed flowing projects.

Example of an AttentionScape

Once you know where the attention is, you can begin to correct it.

Correct Attention Imbalances

The AttenionScape tracks subjects over 3 variables (the attention types ) This was designed for groups but can be done on individuals if the same things are queried over time and averaged.  Here are some and applications for this type of Attention study.

• Attention Modeling: With clear individual attention patterns, you will be able to match-up poor-performers with high-performers of similar composition. This will allow for more efficient coaching and encouragement customized to the temperament of the employee.
• Increase Selling Opportunities: In-house surveys could cover products and sales tactics and the attention to them. Knowing not only what needs to be worked on but what the best way to approach the problem is a great tool. Leads to more effective product knowledge coaching and the emergence of consensus best practices.
• Measuring Communication Effectiveness: For example, surveys could track the read rate of a single email or emails, uncovering how many details were remembered. Assigning control and variable groupings over multiple surveys would yield evidence as to the most effective way to convey information in your given office.
• Tracking New-Hires: With surveys before, during, and after training, you could track concerns and opinions and their attention volatility. By addressing them as they arise you may be able to increase retention and further fine-tune training regimes

Part 2: Measuring Attention

Attention, like most things, can be measured in a variety of ways; how much, accuracy, level of precision, etc.  Study is advancing very quickly in this area and has shown that most of us can’t pay attention longer than 40 minutes.  Brains tend shut off and try something new at that point if they haven’t already been interrupted and lost 15 min by then.

From a business perspective, you should be interested in what employees pay attention to about their job and to what degree.  Are they thinking about leaving for another company?  Which competitor and how much of the time do they do this?  Do they care about the important project?  How much and for the right reasons?

Using the 3 different aspects of attention as variables (Part 1: What is Attn?) we can begin to map the responses according to attention type.  A neat way to accomplish this was pioneered by Accenture for the AttentionScape explained in the book Attention Economy.  Designed for groups, they had survey takers decide on a single response for a given subject.  They choose their response from the 6 available below.

1. I really concentrated on this; spending quality time on it.
2. I’m excited by this; it is something that makes me happy.
3. I did not feel like I could avoid this; it was necessary or imperative.
4. I might have suffered negative consequences had I not paid attention to this; it was no necessarily positive
5. This was on my mind but at a subconscious level; I didn’t really have to concentrate on it.
6. I chose to focus on this; it was voluntary.

Each response affects the 3 attention aspects in different ways, and with multiple responses averaged, you would start to see where a group’s attention is relative to each other.  For example, let’s say you have an entire department that responds “b” and “f” to an inquiry.  Great, you have an excited group focusing voluntarily on a project for positive attention.  On the other hand, do they have other responsibilities?  Are those getting lost amidst all the excitement and front-of-the-mind bandwidth?  Do they need to be reminded about how important timely TPS reports are?

With this set up, you can ask about multiple subjects floating around the office.  Throw in some questions regarding productivity and suddenly you have a tool showing you what the most successful in the office people pay attention too…  Next post soon.

Part 1: What is Attention?

This is part of a series that will explore what attention is, how we deal with it, and how it can be measured and focused. What is Attention?

Attention is a physical allotment of mental focus. Attention is limited as you only have so much; a zero sum game. Even attention you planned to use this weekend not doing anything is taken and not available for anything else.

Everyone uses and manipulates attention in their work, at play, in love and hate. You can push a co-worker’s button to get their cooperation. Procrastination is a lack of attention. Answering emails as they pop into your in-box diverts your attention from what you are doing, making it harder to re-focus your attention. Attention is everything you do; the filter or bottleneck to your mind.

Attention is made of three distinct types of focus:

Attractive/ Aversive: Is the product of applied attention good or bad? The carrot or stick part of ourselves. Are we focusing on something in hopes of reward or fear of the whip?

Front-of-the-mind/ Back-of-the-mind: Is this something that requires higher level brain processes? Like a hungry bear descending from above in a hang glider? You will pay attention to his rate of descent and trajectory. Or is it something that requires little mental capacity, like the level of force to apply to the accelerator at an intersection?

Voluntary/ Compulsory: Has someone given you something to do, or did you decide to do it yourself? A part of a social species, we depend on each other for everything. Your decision to do something today probably will force someone to pay attention to something they wouldn’t have otherwise tomorrow. The type of attention that deals with nagging your fellow man and guilty consciousnesses.

$650 Billion

“Some of the biggest technology firms, including Microsoft, Intel, Google and I.B.M., are banding together to fight information overload”

That amount of money reported by a reputable paper like the Wall Street journal more than legitimizes study and action concerning attention. Yay for not being irrelevant!
New trends will emerge as “attention resources” and “attention management” become corporate buzzwords.

• New positions: Look for HR to add positions in middle management to help shape corporate and inter-office communications. Basically, they will be filters; distilling needs and core messages from everything flying around the office.
• New tech: Knowledge Management will be getting an overall as companies notice the often conflicting messages between corporate communications and available information resources. Wikis, search engines, meta-tags are the best bets to handle research needs and to promote company consensus on any given issue.
• New Equipment: Dual-Screens for everyone? No blackberry zones? Watch and see how “form follows function” will gain strict new adherents. Companies will need to learn to balance moral against cutting access to the web and email because for some, no access to facebook is a deal breaker
• New Services: Look for consultants to add Attention Management to their list of services. Much of what they do does affect attention so it won’t be much of a stretch. Productivity specialist should be in much higher demand.

Update: L*A*H ended being kinda cool

L*A*H turned out to be an attempt at a text adventure/ health game. The author was trying to get see how many would respond to a weird email. Then convert them through a text adventure into working out turning those in stats in an RPG.
Cool, but I think I am one of like 10 in a potential consumer base.

Update: L*A*H not spam but some type of text adventure

Previous post turned out not to be spam but some sort of unique text adventure.  Currently, my brother and I are progressing through it at a pretty fast pace.  Updates to follow.  I hope I am not eaten by a grue.

L*A*H gets my attention

Some pretty amazing spam caught my attention this morning. I could not help but take a look. Personalization and relevance is how to get and keep someones attention. And if had any confidence that a robot or simulation existed that could help me become “awesome”, I would consider buying into it.

Hello… I am L*A*H. A futuristic training simulation trainer. I understand through your inter web history that you are interested in personal fitness and porn. I am offering my services as a futuristic training simulation trainer to make you capable of being awesome.
Respond with a yes. Any other information will be disregarded

Here is the binary in case you had doubts about this being a robot

{ 01001001 01100110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110011 01110000 01101111 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01100001 00100000 01111001 01100101 01110011 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01100110 01101001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101

MD2: d9d71d94b1d923df6863c851070cf687
MD4: ff24a77a233c9560fa86f0ae5d87dc2c
MD5: 97bc541f4ac04745a1396c529702e0ec
CRC 8, ccitt, 16, 32 : 11, 95d7, a6af, 8763fd12

Google’s AdPlanner to leverage Attention as Tool

With the focus on showing advertisers where their key demographics spend time on-line, Google’s AdPlanner empowers companies to build more effective messages. AdPlanner doesn’t do anything new or revolutionary.  Normal demographic info will be available (gender, age, income, etc) and
supplemented by outside consumer like the rest of the metric industry. Google Analytics data will add unique page views to a site’s stats.

Currently in beta, and offered only to advertising agencies and companies, AdPlanner may have some kinks to work out. It is rumored to be able to track ad-buying in print, TV, radio, blogs, web, etc so it sounds pretty functional. Gmail is still beta and was only opened to the public after an extended “invite-only” period that reminded you where you were in the hierarchy of the internet.

I am interested in ways that this Google app may interact with the web. With an API for AdPlanner and access to its HUGE AMOUNTS of demographic info, wider use is just around the corner…

• Will dating sites offer “updates” on where rich old men/women congregate?
• Realtors could offer social website membership density maps of neighborhoods
• Local politicians with big party ability to target specific voting blocs

CNN on AdPlanner
Google Blog on AdPlanner

Attention influences Knowledge Management

Modern knowledge management strives to make information available when needed. In a service economy, with specialized reps in different departments, the need to access unfamiliar information is vital to providing quality customer service.

Companies like Zappos sell to a niche market (shoes) but have to differentiate themselves with an amazing reputation for customer service. That type of service is only available through empowered, knowledgeable representatives. Knowledge is power; reps need to know what they are doing.

In the situation when a rep needs to access something that is at the edge of his/her responsibility, their attention is key.

• Are they focused on terminology?
• Are they skimming large documents?
• How much time are they spending looking for it?
• Is the validity of the info unquestionable?

Form should follow function. A quick, responsive customer service team’s attention should be on the customer an. A fast and flexible modern KM(knowledge management) system should include the following.

• Search capability: Find what you are looking for when you know what it is.
• Wiki-like structure: Break procedures into articles and link them to like items. Including your employees in the editing pool and you can gain the tacit knowledge built up through years of experience. Linear thinking will get results because they already know what is associated.
• Meta-tags: Let the users decide it’s effectiveness. One article may tagged useful for one reason and another department may find it useful for something else. Tags allow for quick recall and consensus.