The Only Interest Rate Going Down
Rising Professionals and Attention Currency
James Williams would say, “None of the above.” This former Google employee and now Oxford-educated, TEDx philosopher guy, would say that the toughest reality for rising professionals today is a deficit of attention—and not just because kids these days are on TikTok too much. The problem, according to Williams’s book Stand out of Our Light, is not with the undisciplined individual, but with corporate platforms that monetize our eyes to the max. I’m thinking this week, not just about the big problems in the graphic above, but about the ways climate troubles seem to be intensifying (even in pristine places like the waters around the pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac). All these crises will continue to be hard to address if we cannot repair the attention economy.
So, this week, we examine interest rates in today’s currencies of attention. As usual, I interviewed early-career professionals—Lexie Delk, Alex D'Agostino, Min Ki Kim, Sarah Hao, and Hannah Biddlecome—asking them how they and their organizations are dealing with attentional costs. These conversations, conducted separately one evening this week, have been stitched together into a sort of panel discussion—and then edited for brevity and clarity. Because my interviewees spoke frankly about their companies and colleagues, I have veiled the names of their organizations.
Craig: You know, the meme, right—“You expect me to do what—in this economy?” And the answer for rising professionals is always, yes. So, let me check my notes here about what you’ve been doing in this attention economy. Sarah, you’ve worked as a UX designer for a Chinese insurance company. Min Ki, you’ve been an entrepreneur in Korea. And what about the rest of you? Lexie, you work for a fashion company, right?
Lexie: I originally applied to be a stylist, but they curated a position for me. I'm a sales assistant. If they need like certain closets pulled, I'll pull out different outfits. I do most of the visual work, like putting all the outfits together for the mannequins for the storefront.
Hannah: I'm video production manager. I'm not necessarily creating content for social media. I'm also creating content for the video board. There's a big Jumbotron. It's me and one kid who works under me. I send him out to collect footage, and we can edit and push out stuff together.
Alex: I've held two positions since I graduated from college. My first was as a communications coordinator for an educational nonprofit. In my current position, we're pushing into this digital space. We write for dentists.
When someone has ADHD—“Just go to clinic. That’s your problem.” But is it?
Craig: Let me ask about how the attention economy pressurizes your organizations.
Min Ki - I have never heard about the attention economy. But I knew the phenomenon. In Korea, there's a huge problem.
Lexie: We don't we do a lot of advertising. A lot of it is by word of mouth. In order for us to get people to come, a lot of our shoppers have to do the reaching out. They also encourage workers to post on their Instagrams.
Craig: I’m fashion-ignorant. What kind of content does your store push out on socials?
Lexie: Even when there aren't events, they are still pumping out—they post all the new arrivals. “Oohhh, check out these fall styles! Check out this new bag or these new shoes that we just got in. You would love this look!” And then they also send out emails throughout the day, too, so it's like you get their emails, but then you also see our social media.
Craig: Flood the zone, in other words.
Lexie: You're gonna see it multiple times through the day.
Hannah: I'm trying to stay up to date with what our people are pushing out on social media—and then trying to keep it consistent with what I'm making. I'm struggling with that. The people in our marketing department get really excited, and they take off with it on all different platforms. That’s where I feel like I'm lagging behind: there are so many accounts and so many social media outlets.
Craig: You are a careful craftsperson, but you have so much content to create! And then, there's this collective aspect: you have so many creators. And you’re asking, “How do we get a consistent voice across all these platforms?”
Hannah: Yeah, I think especially the cross-platform aspect of it—I’m more worried that attention is getting pulled in different directions, which isn't gonna bring us to our end goal.
Craig: Do you folks ever find yourself making content you feel uncomfortable with?
Alex: As a communications coordinator for an educational nonprofit, I was in charge of personal interactions with students who are minorities, struggling to get by, getting their education to improve their lives. I gathered a full directory of resources—anything from transportation, housing, food vouchers, any of your basic needs. And I didn't have a clear picture of who the students were or how to navigate conversations with them. So, I was interested in going to different campuses and getting to see where they go to school—I just wanted to see who the students were and get a feel for who I was pushing content out to, right? And who is on the other end of the phone call.
Craig: And your CEO was down for this?
Alex: To an extent. The CEO did take me to campus: we showed up in his decked-out BMW. We had to wear professional business. My pencil skirt and blazer! Yeah, that's not what it's about.
Craig: Anybody else feeling a tad bit disconnected from those you’re trying to help?
Sarah: We call our people “users”—we have to get their attention all the time, using all the tools that we could use.
Craig: Give me an example.
Sarah: If you put the button in the middle of the interface, it's easier to recognize and the user would more likely click on it. We assume that users will start from the center or the upper center. We study how they look at our page during the usability test. We make a prototype, a fake page. You click on the button, they will still do the thing, but everything's fixed. We have their screen-share, so that we can see how the mouse moves around the screen. We ask them to tell us what they're thinking.
Craig: Do you ever do anything for your company that you don’t feel great about?
Sarah: You know, sometimes I feel our interface is too overwhelming.
Craig: Who’s got another story about moral challenges in the attention economy?
Hannah: I was creating a larger scale shoot with lighting equipment, fog machines, strobe lights. And while I was pushing this out and trying to create this at a high level by myself, doing the whole shoot, pre-production and then post, my worker got a different idea from our boss and made a great video. But it was completely different from what I was pushing out, and I felt like what I was doing would have been done a lot better had we come together.
Craig: But the demands move so fast. You're all trying desperately to create stuff to keep up with your organization and its audiences. How do we repair the attention economy? Who’s fault is it that things move so fast and get so crazy?
Min Ki: When someone has the problem, we call it ADHD. “Just go to clinic. That is your problem.” Whereas James Williams is saying, “Don't go to the clinic. That is not going to solve the problem.”
Craig: You bring up James Williams. He’s talked about three kinds of attention: spotlight attention for your immediate tasks, starlight attention for your highest values, daylight attention for how to think about things in general. Doing, being, and knowing, in other words. What kind matters to you in your early-career work?
Alex: Definitely, the spotlight. I think the issue between me and my boss is, we don't actually have the practical steps.
Lexie: Spotlight. I have my focus on trying to the next thing.
Craig: Let your boss think about the starlight.
Lexie: It's very easy to get sidetracked.
Hannah: I think for me personally, starlight.
Craig: Those values, the guiding values?
Hannah: Yes, I think I need to coordinate what those are for me now and keep following those.
Craig: You guys are great. Thanks for helping me understand the mode-switching you have to do—in this economy.
Who I’m Learning From
Nobody’s taught me more about attention than the historian Jonathan Crary, especially his difficult but, you know, doable Suspensions of Perception. He’s also written some popular stuff, including the book in the upper left corner of the graphic above: 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. L. M. Sacasas is a media ecologist, and his Substack (featured in the upper right of the graphic) is worth signing up for. In this week’s conversation with early-careerists, you heard references to James Williams. His book Stand out of Our Light has been pushed out for free here. The screen shot below from his TED Talk digest of the same argument is good for taking a walk with on an autumnal day.