Selective addictions
A few years ago, having heard enough about the alleged genius of the Breaking Bad series, I finally decided to see what all the fuss was about. I was mildly concerned about my susceptibility to the show's famously addictive properties, so I tried to contain the risk by vowing to sample only the first episode. Eight hours later, at 4:00 a.m., I sat mouth agape in front of the TV, cursing my lack of willpower.
Thus began a nightly ritual that lasted only a few days until, bleary-eyed and begrudgingly, I pulled an all-nighter to complete the series. Finally released from the demon's claws, I stumbled upstairs into the kitchen, where I was greeted with searing looks of disapproval from my wife and daughters at the breakfast table.
"Yes, I'm an idiot," I conceded as I poured myself a gargantuan cup of coffee in preparation for an 8:00 am conference call. They just shook their heads, keenly aware that nothing needed to be said.
I can't help but associate that experience with the so-called "productivity paradox" of our age. After World War II, increasing labor productivity was the engine of prosperity, adding 2.2% annually to US economic growth and real income gains. However, over the past 15 years, productivity grew only 1.4% per year, despite a worldwide digital revolution. Such lackluster improvement has been a global, not just a US, phenomenon.
The economist Robert Solow famously observed that "computing is everywhere ... except in the productivity statistics." Clearly there are many factors that might explain this paradox, but one of them is surely the economics of attention.
Digital innovation has produced unprecedented powers of leverage, because the marginal cost of a digital product is effectively zero, and the demand is potentially enormous. Consumer attention has also become more capturable with the ubiquity of mobile, the availability of content-on-demand, and the infinity of choice. These conditions have spawned intense competition, with the economics of attention massively rewarding the victors.
That must be one of the reasons why products are now so notably, so ridiculously, so addictively good. To win the battle for attention, companies have had to become immensely sophisticated in their understanding of how to secure and sustain mindshare.
We seem to have created two sides of a productivity ledger. On one side, there are all kinds of technologies that save us time. On the other, it feels as though there are just as many innovations that hijack and divert our attention. It's not yet clear which side has an edge.
The economics of attention have created an environment in which almost everything is more addictive, and we all seem destined to become addicted to something. It's simply a matter of choosing these addictions wisely.
Selective addiction appears to be a mark of maturity in the digital age.