We now produce more information every fifteen minutes than humanity did in a century. Meanwhile, the human brain hasn’t evolved in 50,000 years. Between those two realities lies the defining tension of our time: the irresistible force of infinite information and the immovable object of finite focus.
Attention explains how the modern world operates today. It is the hidden resource that fuels economies, drives politics, and defines identity. Despite its mystery, it nevertheless obeys laws as unforgiving as gravity.
To make the most of attention as a valuable resource, it’s helpful to understand how it works and why it has become such a big part of our lives.
How We Got Here: The 3 “Big Bangs” of Attention in the Past 25 Years
Attention didn’t become the operating system of the modern world overnight.
It expanded through three explosive “Big Bangs” that transformed attention into the economic, political, and cultural force it is today.
- The Search Revolution (1998–2005): Google made attention measurable and commoditized. For the first time, human curiosity became a marketplace.
- The Social Media Revolution (2008–2024): Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok turned attention into a currency that transformed our sense of personal identity and swung presidential elections.
- The AI Revolution (2023–Present): Large language models and synthetic influencers have joined the battle over attention. Machines are no longer just tools—they are rivals for your eyeballs.
These three seismic changes launched the Attention and AI Age. The first two decades were about capturing market share. The next will be about capturing mind share.
Here’s the paradox: we’ve built an economy that treats human focus as frictionless and abundant, but the laws of attention physics prove the opposite.
The Big Idea: The 5 Laws of Attention in the 21st Century
These are the immutable principles that govern attention’s behavior in the modern world.
1️⃣ Attention is the ultimate hard constraint.
Principle: Attention, like light speed, has an unbreakable limit.
Regardless of technological advances, we can only process about 120 bits of information per second—barely enough to follow a single conversation. That’s the upper bound of human cognition, and it will likely never change.
Implication: That makes attention the final truly scarce resource in an era of infinite everything else.
Executive Move: Manage your attention, not your time. End each day by rating your focus from 1 to 10. Ask yourself: how much of it was spent on things you chose to focus on—versus things that chose you?
Like the conservation of energy, attention can only be redirected, never expanded. Every decision on what to attend to carries an opportunity cost.
2️⃣ Attention cannot be created, only diverted and divided.
Principle: Companies design for simultaneous, snackable, and stackable consumption because the supply of attention is fixed.
The modern world compensates for this constraint through parallel partial focus—undemanding media designed to fit inside micro-moments. From Netflix’s “ambient TV” (think Emily in Paris) to podcasts that fill your commute, we’re increasingly living a multi-screen existence that fragments depth in favor of simultaneity.
Implication: You must design for divided minds to make your ideas resonate. Create snackable, stackable versions of your message—content that works in layers and can be consumed in bite-sized portions.
Executive Move: Put Your Brain in ‘Airplane Mode’ – These parallel streams are cognitively exhausting. Schedule intentional offline moments, such as walks, workouts, or silent drives, to avoid outside stimulation. Attention needs downtime to regenerate.
Because attention cannot expand, the system compensates by dividing it.
3️⃣ Attention’s defining value today is its convertibility.
Principle: Attention can now be exchanged frictionlessly for money, power, or influence.
It is the most fungible capital of the modern age. That’s why Elon Musk can justify paying $40B for a $10B business (Twitter), or why Taylor Swift can drive her boyfriend’s podcast to #1 with one appearance on the show. Even viral figures like Hawk Tuah Girl convert fleeting notoriety into crypto windfalls.
Increasingly, attention is the ultimate form of liquidity—instantly traded into status, capital, even self-worth. Gen Z wants to be famous over anything else for the validation it provides. It is now the end, not the means.
Implication: Every organization now needs an Attention Strategy. We’re all in the attention business now.
Executive Move: Leaders must master the mechanics of attention capture and conversion. Build deliberate pathways to turn focus into your preferred currency: revenue, influence, or trust.
4️⃣ It’s easier to attract attention than keep it.
Principle: Attention, like air, is easier to capture than to contain.
Donald Trump knows this principle well. He understands it’s harder to hold people’s attention for more than one day, so his strategy, instead, is to dominate each 24-hour news cycle with something you can’t ignore.
Implication: Evolution trained us to be drawn to novelty. While retaining your reader, client, or constituent’s attention is preferable, you may have to settle for capturing it regularly.
Executive Move: Leaders today must leverage modern media tools, like short-form vertical video, podcasts, and email newsletters, to establish a consistent presence and promote their products, services, and companies. You have to fight for people’s attention almost every day.
5️⃣ Your attention is a non-renewable currency. Start treating it that way.
Principle: Attention is more finite than time and more valuable than money, yet we give it away for free all day.
Money can be replenished; focus cannot. Every minute lost to doomscrolling is unrecoverable cognitive capital, frittered away forever.
Implication: You become what you pay attention to. Just as your schedule reveals your actual priorities, your focus is your de facto investment strategy. What are you allocating it to?
Executive Move: Be intentional about where you direct your limited attentional resources and withdraw them from low-yield distractions. Treat Attention like the most valuable asset in your portfolio.
What This Means for You
There is an inescapable paradox to productivity in 2025: We have stone-age brains in a three-screen world. Understanding the physics of attention allows you to work with your biology, not against it.
Each of the Five Laws of Attention points to a single truth: