What Meghan Markle, a media frenzy, and a chicken joke can teach us about protecting our attention and building on PURPOSE.
This week, the Duchess of Sussex arrived back in the United Kingdom with Prince Harry and their two children after six years of living in California. The media went into overdrive. Where will they live? Why now? What does this mean for the Royal Family? What happens next?
Meanwhile, she posted a video of a tea towel.
It read:
“People who take care of chickens are literally chicken tenders.”
The family is leaving their flock behind in the move. So while much of the world was dissecting her every step, she was making a joke about her chickens.
I laughed.
Then I thought about it. Because there is a business lesson hiding underneath all those feathers.
Everything Wants Your Attention
If you are an entrepreneur, a professional, a leader, or simply a human being living in the modern world, you already know this. Your email wants your attention. Your text messages want it. Social media wants it. Your customers want it. Your job wants it. The news wants it. The algorithm definitely wants it. And sometimes your own ideas are standing in line demanding their turn.
Ask me how I know.
There are days when I have work email, personal email, LinkedIn notifications, text messages, work chats, projects, events, marketing, and enough ideas floating around in my head to start three additional companies before breakfast.
Everything is saying: look at me, deal with me, respond to me.
But attention is finite. And I am increasingly convinced it is one of the most valuable assets we have.
Random Attention Is the Cousin of Random Networking
At The Art of Business Networking (TAOBN™), I say this all the time: networking is not the problem. Random networking is the problem.
Running from event to event, collecting hundreds of contacts, exchanging cards, adding connections, and never developing a single meaningful relationship is activity. But activity and progress are not the same thing.
Attention works exactly the same way. You can spend an entire day answering emails, checking notifications, reading headlines, scrolling, and putting out little fires, and be genuinely busy the whole time. But did you move anything important forward?
Intentional networking asks: who deserves deeper investment from me?
Intentional attention asks: what deserves deeper investment from me?
Before you respond to the next thing pulling at you, run it through one question: is this mine to carry?
Most of it is not.
Not Every Opportunity Is Yours
Here is a confession. A few years ago I had an idea for a channel built entirely around commentary about a public figure. Critical commentary. I knew exactly what kind of content draws a crowd, and I suspected it would work. If I had run it consistently since then, I might be making considerable money from it today.
I did not do it. I did not want to spend hours every week hunting for something unkind to say about another human being just because unkindness performs well. I didn’t want to train my mind to seek outrage. And I did not want an audience that required me to stay angry in order to keep feeding it.
Because whatever you focus on repeatedly begins shaping how you see everything else. If your business model requires you to wake up looking for something to criticize, criticism eventually becomes part of your operating system. If people come to you because they are angry, you have to keep giving them something to be angry about.
That is a very expensive kind of success. You may make money. But what is it costing you? Your peace? Your energy? Your ability to see possibility?
Not every opportunity to make money is an opportunity you should take.
Protect the Energy You Build With
None of this means ignoring reality or sitting still and hoping things work out. Action matters. Strategy matters. Follow-up matters. Consistency matters.
But the energy you do those things from matters too.
Your energy is an asset. Spend it on what you are building.
I do not want to build from panic. I do not want to build from outrage. I do not want to build from comparison. And I certainly do not want to build something that requires me to become a version of myself I do not particularly like.
Use your energy to build, not to wrestle with every distraction that asks for it.
I would rather build more slowly and respect the woman looking back at me in the mirror when I get there.
Keep Calm. Carry On, on PURPOSE
There will always be another headline. Another notification. Another controversy. Another person asking for something. Another good idea. And yes, sometimes another chicken.
The discipline is deciding which ones belong to you.
You cannot control every narrative happening around you. You cannot control what everybody thinks of you, or whether they understand the choices you make. But you can control where you place your energy.
You can decide which relationships deserve nurturing, which opportunities deserve pursuing, and which conversations deserve joining.
Sometimes the strongest response to the noise is simply this: keep working, keep connecting, keep following up, keep building, and keep tending what belongs to you.
Let everybody else debate the coop.
Everybody wants your attention. Not everybody earns it.
