Our attention may be the most valuable currency we have - and the one we give away most freely.

As Merlin Mann says, "Although your time and attention are finite, the demands on your time and attention are infinite."

If you feel that you can't manage this finite / infinite balance, you're not alone and you're not a defective human being. You are also not powerless. I came across two recent pieces in the media that helped expand my thinking about attention management and wanted to share them:

You've probably known for some time that your phone and all its apps are made to capture your time and attention (and thus your money) -- but this piece in The Atlantic explains exactly how. It focuses on a renegade in the field who is trying to get tech companies to reckon with the effects of the ongoing war for our limited attention, and offer more humane alternatives.

And in this interview, author Cal Newport talks about the difference between "deep work" and "shallow work" and how to allocate our time between the two. This is a framework that I think will resonate with a lot of my clients.

How do you manage relentless demands on your attention?