I’m no accountant, but I do believe in making sure your numbers add up.

We often say ‘pay attention’ and yet most of us find ourselves giving it away for free. Many people and organisations  (myself included), online and offline, are competing for you to PAY your attention to them. This ‘payment’ is what keeps all of them alive and in business and the more ‘payments’ they can get from you, the better.

Your attention is big business.

I’m curious, are the payments of attention you’ve been making giving you a return on your investment? 

Whether you’re paying attention in full or paying in installments, surely it’s worth getting an ROI?

In this week’s edition of Becoming The Influential Me Podcast, I’m discussing one guaranteed way to get an ROI on your attention.

Going back to basics.

We pay attention to many things on each given day, and over time some of us are rewarded financially for paying more attention to something than others. For example, an accountant is rewarded financially for paying significantly more attention to how numbers in a business work, than the average person and a lawyer for paying attention to the law etc.

We typically bestow ‘expert’ status on those who spend a large part of their attention ‘savings account’ on one area. 

The challenge for most of us arises when society becomes a constant source of distraction and paying attention to the things that reward us in the long and short term becomes extremely difficult. Most people are now investing their attention in meaningless time killers, by telling themselves it’s harmless and free – it isn’t either of those things.

Every leader I know is judicious about how they spend their time and what they pay attention to. There’s a basic understanding that at the end of x period the books must balance i.e. attention out = long-term reward in. Long term being the operative phrase.

Don’t get me wrong, it is virtually impossible to get an ROI on everything you pay attention to (we are human after all), but it’s a good habit to at least try. Most of us find this difficult, and for me the only way to ensure I get a regular enough ROI is by reading books. It sounds overly simplistic, but if you can’t turn down the noise, then at least introduce your own playlist. Books are an anchor, and the wisdom in them, even if not directly applied will bring you one step closer to being the best version of yourself. By reading and doing so consistently, we guarantee that a good chunk of what we consume is FUBU – for us, (chosen) by us.

It’s not easy, but we owe it to ourselves to try.

Not sure what to read? Here’s my guide – Top 10 Powerful Career Making Books Every Woman Must Read

Michelle