The Attention Calculator
The feed is paid in the time you love with.
Every half-second and every hour handed to a feed is attention subtracted from the people in front of you. Here is the arithmetic.
Hours a day on your phone & feeds 3.5h
0h4h8h
Your age 30yrs
164370
53Days a year given to the feed
That's 7.3 years of the life you have left — to roughly 80 — spent looking at a glowing rectangle.
Held against a life: those are days that never reach the dinner table, the bedtime story, the long phone call with the parent who won't always be on the other end. The feed feels nothing for you. They do.
The half-second adds up.
What the habit costs, in honest numbers
144×
Pickups a day
Roughly how often we reach for the phone — most of them a glance away from whoever is in the room.
47 sec
Average focus span
How long our attention tends to stay on one thing before it jumps — including, often, the person mid-sentence.
#1
Relationships, not money
After 80+ years, the Harvard Study of Adult Development found close relationships are the strongest predictor of a long, good life. They're built from attention given, not just time logged.
Figures are illustrative and rounded. The math assumes 365 days a year and a life to roughly 80; the point isn't the decimal, it's the direction.
Give your attention back to what actually deserves it.
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