"In 1971, Herbert Simon, a professor of computer science and psychology at Carnegie Mellon, made a prescient prediction. “In an information-rich world,” he said, “the wealth of information creates a dearth of something else … the attention of its recipients.”9 The solution was clear: “to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” In other words, we have to get smart about what we focus on.
Simon was speaking twenty-five years before the internet—in its rudimentary, dial-up form—entered most Americans’ lives. And now, a quarter century after that, we’re realizing just how hard focusing our attention really is. We live in a world where the lure of short-term thinking—just keeping our heads down and doing, again and again—is pervasive. Our workplaces push us toward it, and often, so does our own psychology."
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