Have you noticed you have an attention problem?
There are only so many TV shows we can binge watch on Netflix, photos we can scroll, books we can read, games we can play, and on and on.
Our attention problem is due to an exponential growth in things to do, content to consume, and things to distract ourselves with. On YouTube alone, some 300 minutes of new video content are uploaded every minute.
That’s one type of content on one platform.
Outside of content like video, news, opinions, and social media, there are millions of apps, each promising to do some job better, provide an ever more delightful distraction, whatever.
It’s on this infinite supply of distractions that we spend our attention. But it’s never enough. So we busy ourselves in our boredom.
Active boredom.
And we have no choice but to limit what content we consume, directing our attention to whatever’s most satisfying or worse, what’s most engagingly distracting—ignoring all else.
Welcome to the Age of Too Much.