The modern economy has every material resource accounted for. We can slap a barcode on anything and put a price tag on it that justifies the cost of the production and distribution of that material resource. Even clean air can be taxed if necessary.

The problem with historical conceptualization of “economy” is that they only do this for resources of value in the external world. There are resources of value within each of us. The object of focus here is our attention.

Each of us has the ability to generate and offer our attention to objects outside of us. And there is a significant infrastructure to harness the consumption of attention generated by average human beings. It is almost a shadow economy, where only those who have managed to pay attention to the flow of this resource seem to have mastered the harnessing of this resource. Most human beings are oblivious to the existence of this shadow economy of attention.

Imagine an application like Tik Tok or Instagram or YouTube. If we were to anthromorphize it, we can liken these applications to different people who thrive on the attention of others. We may call them attention whores. And that’s nothing new. We’ve always had people who are attention-seeking and seem to thrive on the attention that they receive from others. What is fame if not a state of perceived success where the famous can demand and harness the attention of others.

If we were to treat attention as precious commodity, we wouldn’t have to struggle to observe this shadow economy. In fact, my thesis is that attention is a precious commodity. It is akin to gold. Everyone cherishes it. It is in fact possible to convert one’s control of the attention of others to wealth. Why is it that movie stars are celebrated more when they can harness the attention of more people? Anyone or anything in the world that is of value, attracts attention. And the corollary is also true, in that anything that manages to attract attention can become of value as a consequence.

What does this mean to each of us, who are independent sources of this precious commodity? We can either harness our attention for ourselves and then proceed to harness that of others for our own benefit. Or we can fail to harness our own attention and therefore become the source for someone else who could be farming your attention.

The nominal reality is that everyone does a combination of both - in consuming one’s own attention and contributing to others with it. Of course we each do it at different combinations. The key observation is that those who demand the attention of others predominantly tend to be of influence. And those who fail to harness their own attention adequately tend to be the influenced. And those who generate and consume their own attention predominantly tend to be independent of these societal exchange.

It is a matter of personal preference as to which segment of the spectrum you fit in. I believe the goal for each of us should be to consciously in charge of where you put yourself.