Attention Budgeting is the Magic Bullet

In business, we have a solution for managing limited resources — budgeting. Spend more money than you’re taking in, and you are in debt. Attention, like money, is a limited resource. Attention budgeting is how you manage that resource.

Many of us budget our time unconsciously, reacting to situations as they arise and adjusting the burners on the fly. This is one way to live, but it doesn’t work for people with serious responsibilities.

The Sherpas of Nepal are experts at getting people to the tops of the highest mountains in the world. They are masters at budgeting the tradeoffs, risks, equipment loads, and food and water supplies.

You can learn a lot by watching them deal with harsh conditions, limited resources, and unpredictable circumstances.

Think of your attention budget as the quantity of supplies you can carry on a successful trip to the summit. I like to do things by the numbers. The numbers tell you the answer.

FACTS:

Our time, attention, and cognitive capacity are finite resources. Just like money!
When we multitask or get caught in the storm, we waste resources and fail to achieve our priorities.
Just like money, you can fall into attention debt. For example, you stay up all night working on a project, but you’re exhausted the next two days and can’t focus.

While financial budgeting and attention budgeting are similar, they’re not identical. You have different energy levels and mental states throughout the day, with higher-and lower-quality hours.

When I work with clients, we use an attention budgeting spreadsheet to make a schedule and track their performance. You can access these tools for free at https://www.sherpapg.com/tools

SOLUTIONS:

Use an attention budget with hard numbers.

Collect metrics on your budget from the last 7 days.

Revise your budget every 7 days based on your metrics.

Use the power of Intentions to guarantee execution on budgeted tasks.

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are.”

– Steve Jobs