There’s a very interesting concept that most of us are psychologically burdened by: FOMO, or the Fear Of Missing Out. Everybody’s going to be there and do that, how could I miss it!
I recently read “Digital Minimalism” by Cal Newport. I highly recommend it if you haven’t read it. In the second chapter, Cal describes how he is approached by others in his professional circle regarding the fact that he doesn’t use Facebook. When he asks, “Why do I need to use Facebook?”, he’s often met with the response “I can’t tell you exactly, but what is there’s something useful to you in there that you’re missing?”.
Jason Fried (37 Signals) describes a similar way of thinking but from a slightly different perspective: JOMO, or the Joy Of Missing Out. The idea here is to embrace the extra time you have by not constantly feeling the need to be involved in everything that happens and always be “in the know”.
My philosophy is that time is our only finite asset, so it mustn’t be wasted. In an age when most people seem to “opt-in” to every new tool and every information feed, I hold a somewhat radical counter perspective. I would much prefer to default “opt-out” to most things under the assumption that they will likely waste my time. Only once I have been absolutely convinced that something will bring value to my life will I choose to let it in. I declare intentional attention to be the most important philosophy that I live by.
Everybody has agency over their own life and how they spend their time. If you have a philosophy for how you spend yours, and it differs from mine, I think that’s great. At least you’re being intentional. My concern is primarily geared towards operating without a philosophy. Be very cautious about proceeding without intention, because that’s just what makes the attention economy tick. In a world where our attention is constantly bombarded by tools which generate revenue from it, it has become increasingly important to set your own guidelines for what tools you are willing to spend your time & attention on.
If you lack a philosophy, please allow me to lend you mine; prefer JOMO to FOMO and be cut-throat and ruthless towards things which attempt to hijack your time & attention, because your time is monotonically decreasing!
P.S. Since I’ve decided to adopt intentional attention, I’ve found a lot of people who operate in a similar fashion. It’s interesting what you’ll find when you know what you’re looking for!