Friday🔥12: Attention Scarcity & The Integrity Dial
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Welcome to this week's edition of Friday Fire, an end of week newsletter recapping notable insights and inspirations from the past week.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the phenomenon of attention scarcity, what fuels it and how the concept of an 'integrity dial' can limit the feelings of overwhelm when we are 'out of bandwidth'.
Let's jump in!
Attention Scarcity & The Integrity Dial
Does it feel like you have completely lost track of the calendar so far this year?
Goals and ambitions for calendar year 2022 have already started turning fuzzy for me. My days of late have lacked deliberateness and intentionality towards the targets I had for myself at the beginning of the year (for me these targets revolved around swimming, my side hustle cleaning business and audience building).
Upon reflection, my breakdown can be traced to two things: (i) Attention Scarcity and (ii) what I’ll call my “Integrity Dial”.
These two concepts are deeply relatable, even if you know them by different names. I hope for some readers this public self-reflection sparks a renewed sense of inspiration and vigor towards whatever matters most to you in this season.
The Integrity Dial
For the rest of this article, discard the traditional, grade school definition of the word "integrity" and replace it with the following:
Integrity = The ability to do what you say you will do.
Notice this definition is devoid of any moral shading. No good, bad, right or wrong here.
Integrity is an indication of your personal track record for execution.
Take the age old example of working out. If at the beginning of the week you said you were going to work out 5 days during the upcoming week, and you made it to the gym 3 days, you’re integrity would be 3/5. This need not be a judgement on anyone's worth, but rather an objective scoring of your capability to do what you set out to do.
Everyone using this definition of "integrity" should recognize the power which comes from living with a high degree of integrity.
Imagine, what would life look like if we managed to consistently complete even half of our key objectives each day? Then stack that for a week, then for a month, for a quarter... I'm sure life would look and feel very different. I know for me, it'd be transformative.
Like most, I'm quite adept at developing reasons and rationalizations for why the ‘main thing’ isn’t progressing. My integrity score at the time of writing this post is low and will need to be ratcheted up if I am serious about achieving at my desired level.
But integrity is not just as simple as flipping a switch and proudly proclaiming, "today is the day I live with integrity!"
I heard someone much smarter than me eloquently described the nature of integrity:
It may sound contrived, but actually doing what you intend to do is a skill. This is not something that you wake up one day, snap your fingers and change. It takes time and deliberate effort to enhance, just like any other skill. It builds over time, 1 hour of 'practice' for 7 days is better than 7 hours on 1 day. Each day, the dial of your integrity is making small turns in a definitive direction.
With higher integrity, you can make bigger commitments (more ambitious targets) or handle more commitments at once (when compared to someone who’s integrity dial is resting at “low”).
My dial was reset in recent months. At the beginning of the year, my dial was high. I was regularly 7 or 8 of 10 on my daily priorities/commitments. This dial setting enabled me to make measurable progress across multiple pursuits simultaneously (side hustle, marriage, career, fitness, writing, etc).
During this period of time, I had multiple people ask me some variation of the same question: "How are you managing all of this stuff??"
The truth is, operating with high integrity unlocks layers of potential we can't see when the dial is turned off.
Life isn't constant, and in March/April of this year, my integrity dial started rotating lower for reasons which are too dull and irrelevant to explore further.
Commitments I made about swimming a certain number of laps per week fell away, objectives around my cleaning business side hustle eroded. This directly fueled a sense of ‘attention scarcity’.
Attention Scarcity
“I’ve got too much to do in too little time”... this refrain is the essence of attention scarcity. Nearly everyone I've ever met has a variation of this sentence they lean on when experiencing overwhelm.
Much has been written in our culture about busyness and how its often sported like a “badge”, something to wear proudly. Its a common crutch for why the important things aren’t done.
There is a direct, inverse link between your integrity dial and your attention scarcity. The lower your integrity, the higher attention scarcity you’ll experience.
Its intuitive, the more consistently you do what you intend to do (integrity dial), the less overwhelm you’ll experience from your objectives (attention scarcity). Conversely, when your dial is on "low", everything around you feels like bigger, more weighty, and eventually dismantles your belief that you can do the thing.
A whole post could unpack the impact this virtuous/vicious cycle has on your state. (high integrity dial kicks off a virtuous cycle). If you’re anything like me, a lot of your daily, first world 'suffering’ can be traced to this "integrity -> scarcity" cycle.
Whatever tools you use to manage your life (calendars, lists, apps), take notice of when you are visited by attention scarcity and if integrity has be dialed back. Just this simple notice could save a day, a week, a month of spiraling.
What I’m doing about it
My focus is now on dialing up my integrity for two reasons: (i) To reverse my own attention scarcity and (ii) Get back to taking prolific action (which requires prolific integrity).
I’m approaching this in a very simple way. Instead of puffing up my chest and thinking I can load up my plate like I was previously (me at the beginning of the year), I’m instead setting 1 objective in a given week.
Its not glamorous, it doesn't make me feel like a superhero and I'm sure I could go "faster". But I'm prioritizing the process which cultivates wins and will turn my dial.
Super Secret Recipe to Build Your Integrity Dial:
1. Pick one area of importance (health, family, fitness, finances, career, etc) and select one high impact commitment you can make for the week ahead.
2. Repeat for 2-3 weeks until integrity is re-established in that one specific area of your life.
3. Rinse, Repeat with additional commitments
Very sophisticated right? The best solutions rarely are.
The ability to create and sustain high integrity will accelerate the results we are individually after.
Anyone can realize the growth they want and lower the existential crisis of ‘not having enough time’…. but it has to start with integrity.
Gratitude
Gratitude helps cultivate a sense of joy and appreciation along the way, and need not be reserved for the big or elaborate happenings in life.
This week I'm grateful for good friends who challenge me to step outside my comfort zone a bit more each week
What are you grateful for this week?
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Until Next Week,
Ryan ✌️