ATTENTION! TO RECEIVE OR TO PAY, THAT IS THE REAL QUESTION.

How seeking attention affects our creativity.

First of all, at the very beginning of this piece, I’d like to thank you for your attention. There’s nothing quite like being able to reach people like this and grab hold of their attention, where you’re just focusing on me and my words. It’s quite a powerful feeling, to be honest- to get attention. I am a writer, so well, I am good at pretty much nothing but words.

But, I’ve been fortunate enough to know what it’s like to get attention. I’ve been lucky enough to experience it a lot, as a writer from all the views and comments I get. It’s a powerful feeling, to have so many people engage with your work. But what’s more is that, as a writer, I have experienced something even more powerful, which is PAYING attention.

When I’m writing, I am so invested in my words and my research, that all I do is pay attention to that one thing which is my article. I am so engrossed in the sounds of those clicks that the rest of the world, everything else that’s bothering me, it all just comes to a standstill and in that moment it’s just me and my words. This is why I am so grateful to be a writer.

So, basically, there are two powerful feelings- getting attention and paying attention. Technology has furthered and increased its reach so rapidly, that it has enabled more and more people to get attention. Be it any kind of creative expression, not just writing. It could be acting, singing, dancing, you name it.

But, in my humble opinion, there definitely is a consequence- completely unintended, for anybody with an urge for creative expression. Including myself of course, because I definitely am not immune to it. I think our creativity is slowly reducing to a mere means to an end- the end is getting attention.  And honestly, the more we go after the powerful feeling of paying attention, the happier we find ourselves to be. But the more we crave getting attention, the unhappier we find ourselves to be.

So, something that really goes back for me is an embarrassing first experience where I tried to use my writing to gain attention. Back in grade 3, my teacher read out one of my essays in class and praised my writing skills. She made me feel so confident about this gift I possessed that I started to brag about it. At first, a lot of classmates gave me attention but then it gradually became really annoying. They practically cancelled me, and my best friend called me a show-off. It really hurt and ever since then, I’ve hesitated to use my writing in order to gain attention.

People would ask me why I post my work if I’m so hesitant to seek attention and my simple reply would be that it’s my craft and I still want to put it out into the world, not for the views but just so I could help someone who reads my work and is impacted by it.

After I joined Twitter though, I got hooked to it. I tried to be witty and posted all day and I actually thought my followers were there just because of my tweets and not because they knew me through my blogs.

This eventually started having a huge impact on my creative process because I started to associate social media into my work. I’d be working on a post and keep thinking “How can I make it interesting enough for people to notice me?” “What possible response could I give to someone on Twitter that could get me retweets?” I wanted attention in reel life and I let it affect my creativity in real life. I’m not implying that social media kills creativity. I don’t hold that opinion. Social media and technology actually have unprecedented levels to foster creativity, for example, this blog right here. So no, I do not exactly think social media or smartphones possess the individual power to deprive us of our creative growth. But, let’s discuss the attention driven business models of all social media business models.

To quote Joseph Gordon-Levitt from his famous TedTalk, “This will be familiar territory for some of you, but it’s a really relevant question here: How does a social media platform like, for example, Instagram, make money? It’s not selling a photo-sharing service — that part’s free. So what is it selling? It’s selling attention. It’s selling the attention of its users to advertisers. And there’s a lot of discussions right now about how much attention we’re all giving to things like Instagram, but my question is: How is Instagram getting so much attention?

We get it for them. Anytime somebody posts on Instagram, they get a certain amount of attention from their followers, whether they have a few followers or a few million followers. And the more attention you’re able to get, the more attention Instagram is able to sell. So it’s in Instagram’s interest for you to get as much attention as possible. And so it trains you to want that attention, to crave it, to feel stressed out when you’re not getting enough of it. Instagram gets its users addicted to the powerful feeling of getting attention. And I know we all joke, like, “Oh my God, I’m so addicted to my phone,” but this is a real addiction. There’s a whole science to it. If you’re curious, I recommend the work of Jaron Lanier, Tristan Harris, Nir Eyal.”

This is how these companies work and this is why they are the richest companies in the world.

This is what I can tell you- being addicted to seeking attention is like being addicted to any other thing. You’re never happy, no matter how many followers you gain. You reach 1K and you tell yourself you’ll be happier at 100K, then you reach there and tell yourself you’ll be happier at 1M, and the cycle continues. You’re never happy. You’re never satisfied.

I get more than 309 views per article, and personally, I am not happy with myself. We tend to keep tabs on other people’s activities, just to make ourselves grow and feel better about the attention we get on these platforms and the amount of followers we receive. We feel terrible about the number of followers we have compared to others because that count makes everybody feel terrible about themselves. That feeling makes you post in order to gain more attention, and that attention is what these companies sell, that’s how they make their money, and no amount of attention will make you feel like you’ve arrived someplace safe. Someplace where you can stop chasing attention.

And of course, there are a lot of writers and bloggers who are more famous than I am, have more followers than I do, but I bet you they would tell you the same thing. If your work and creativity is driven by a desire to gain attention, you will never be creatively satisfied.

Some good news, there is another powerful thing that you can do with your attention, besides letting a huge tech company control it and sell it. This is that feeling I was talking about, why I love writing so much — it’s being able to pay attention to one thing completely.

There’s some science behind this, psychologists and neuroscientists study a phenomenon called Flow, which occurs when you pay attention to just one thing, something creative that you love doing. Turns out, the more regularly you do this, the happier you can be.

I am not a psychologist or a neuroscientist, but I can tell you that this is very true for me. And, mind you, it’s not easy at all- it’s really hard. To really pay attention like this takes a lot of practice, everybody does it their own way, in whatever way works best for them. But if there’s one thing I can share that I think helps me focus and really pay attention, it’s this: I try not to see other creative people as my competitors.Instead, I try to find collaborators. If I am writing something and if I start comparing my work with someone else’s, I’m probably going to suck at what I do.

But when I see the other writers as collaborators, then it becomes almost easy to focus, because I’m just paying attention to them and deriving inspiration from their work. We can just decide to put in differential views on a subject and come up with the best quality content, because it’s two minds instead of one, working on the same subject. The diversity in ideas will make it stand out. And I feel like in all creative professional fields, collaborations are extremely fun to create and some of the best content is created through collaborations.

Some of the best ideas I’ve come up with have been collaborations with people I have never physically met. And yes, it turned out great.

And this is the beauty of the internet, at least for me. If we stop trying to gain attention, the internet is actually a great place to find people to collaborate with. And when I’m collaborating with someone, whether it’s in person or online, it’s so easy to find that flow, because we’re all just paying attention to the one thing that we’re creating together. You feel like you’re a part of something larger than yourself, and you’re all just shielding each other from anything else that tries to grab your attention and just focus on that one thing.

This is something that works for me. Sometimes though. I still find myself otherwise falling into the downward spiral of wanting attention. And that is okay, as long as I know how to get myself out of it.

So whether or not I get attention, which is views and comments on this piece, it won’t really affect me. Because I know I focused and paid full attention to something I love doing.

So, regardless of how much attention I get or don’t, I’m glad I did it anyway and I am grateful to this platform for letting me. So thank you for reading this,  you can give your attention to someone else now.

Thanks again.