In this attention economy, where you spend your time is where success shows up. If you are spending most of your time viewing the creations made by other people, and responding to follow-ups of follow-ups from others, you aren’t going to have much success in your own efforts, simply because your focus is not high enough there. Spending two hours reading articles on the technology site TechCrunch is like a heavy message from you in support of TechCrunch, and at the same time, if you’re not spending more than two hours on your own work or content creation, you’re indirectly saying that you want TechCrunch to succeed more than yourself.
The Sum Of The Audience’s Time And Attention Makes The Company/Speaker Big
The biggest sites and companies out there are labeled successes because people willingly give them their time, attention, funds in some cases, and related assisted marketing and word-of-mouth advertising. Now, while they provide value, it is key to keep in mind how much value you are providing them in return. Your time is a commodity that you are able to give to a product or person or service, but you don’t want to allow this amount of time to surpass the amount you spend on your self, and your own products or services.
Some Support Themselves First, Some Unknowingly Support Others First
The vast majority of people spend more time building up the success of others than building up their own success. While it might look like a message like that will serve to increase competition due to more success all around, what it actually does is serve to challenge, leading to a rise in service and products that are released as a whole. If you look at Twitter and other social media sites, you can see that maybe 5% of the users run the show. You will likely never hear these individuals complain about the social media services in general, because they use them properly. They focus on their own success firsthand, and then also pass some on to others. Then, there are the bottom 80% of users of such social media services, as far as activity and built-up audience, that, if they recorded their time usage, would find that they spend most of their time and attention building up the success of people other than themselves.
Oprah Spends A Very High Percentage Of Her Time Toward Her Own Success
One of the biggest examples that matches this is that of Oprah. She runs the show as far as TV, but when she was once interviewed at one of her homes, she said that she doesn’t watch any TV. Any of her viewers wanting to attain her position of success would do well to seek to emulate that quality, but as can be seen by her continued success, that is not the case. This is fine because the viewers are likely watching in order to see the contents of the show, and not to emulate Oprah. This is not to say that she shouldn’t have viewers if she isn’t a viewer herself, but that her audience would do well to look at how much of their time and attention they send outward instead of inward, and adjust if it seems to be unsustainable in the long-term. There doesn’t need to be a mid-life crisis or financial breakdown if you auto-correct potential problems before they arise.
You Need To Support Yourself So You Are Able To Continue
In a guest post life coach Tim Brownson had on AlexShalman.com, he said:
Without you, everything else in your reality ceases to exist.
In the same way, without a focus on your own success, you can only participate or support the success of others for so long before you have to cut out that portion of your time and re-focus on your own success if you are to get to a stable point. Spending one hour on yourself and three hours on others might be enjoyable in the short-term, but spending three hours on yourself and one hour on others is the only long-term plan to have.