Did you know the average attention span of an adult in 2024 is 8.25 seconds? 8 freaking seconds, that’s not even an entire short on YouTube. In an era of instant gratification, how can we reclaim our lives, our minds, and our time.
Is your life aimless? Are you spending hours scrolling through TikToks but don’t know why?
Well hopefully this article helps.
The Problem
Attention spans are more than just about what we find interesting, they’re the gatekeepers to knowledge. If you can’t even sit through a 15 minute video, where someone is literally spoon-feeding knowledge to you, how are you ever gonna read a book – the source of the greatest well of knowledge we have?
I mean think about it, we live in the information age, we have more information at your fingertips than most people had in their entire lifetime in the past. And what do most people do with it? Watch TikToks of course. We all know those people that get all their news from social media, and most of the time, they will read just the headline and not even the article before they post it.
This is the world we live in.
And if you don’t see the problem in that, you might be part of the problem. Although if you’re taking your time to read a blog in 2024, you might be one of the lucky few that hasn’t gotten their attention span zapped to oblivion. So kudos to you friend, you have made it this far.
Purpose
Now purpose is an elusive concept. Have you ever asked yourself: “what am I doing on this planet?”. For some people purpose is as simple as: get a job, pop out some babies, and live happily (?) ever after. But you’re a reader of tetra, clearly life is more intricate for you. With all the noise in the world, how does one find purpose in life?
I believe purpose is the culmination of your actions and life’s lessons imparted to you. We’re all unique, we all have unique story lines. One man’s purpose is another man’s trash. For some purpose is grand, for others, it’s just about helping as many people as they can.
I have a purpose, or a driving force, I want to travel the world. Now I’ll get to the why of that another time. But it’s quite simple, the world is large, I want adventure, and travelling the world is an endless adventure. There’s more to it, but that’s the gist of it.
This purpose of mine has been the driving force behind a lot of my actions. Because to travel the world, you need a decent bit of money. Unless you plan to hitchhike around the globe that is. But my purpose started a long time ago, I was watching youtube videos of people travelling and documenting their journeys. And I was like, I know what I wanna do with my life, I wanna be a travel vlogger. For as long as I can remember, this has always been my purpose, modus operandi.
But how can you find your purpose? You need to ask yourself the question: “what am I doing on this planet?”. What brings you joy even if it’s hard work? What’s something you loved doing as a child? What legacy would you like to leave behind?
The Fleeting Nature of Time
Time is the thing we can never get back. We can’t go backwards in time and fix our mistakes, we can’t go forward and speed it up. Time is the great equalizer. We are all subject to it.
But time is precious, much more precious than to be wasted on doomscrolling for days on end. You gotta find something that lights a fire within you man. You gotta wake up in the morning and be on a mission. Don’t worry about the how, find out the why. If you have a why you can overcome any how.
Reclaim your time, reclaim your life. It’s as simple as that really. Time, a finite valuable resource. And we just squander it away, don’t worry I’m not preaching from a mountain top at you, I also doomscroll once in a while. But the whole time I feel guilty. Like what am I doing? Is this the culmination of all I’m doing in life? I’m just gonna settle? I’m just gonna be mediocre?
NOT IF I CAN DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT
We gotta fight for our lives man, we gotta fight for meaning. We can’t just let days go by. We gotta make each one count. I urge you, I implore you. Find meaning, find purpose. Don’t let time slip out of your hands. You can have the life of your dreams. But it’s not gonna be easy, you’re gonna have to fight for it. Fight through the doubt, fight through laziness. Make it happen any way you can.
‘Cuz this is the only life we got man. No one knows what’s coming next. We can’t just load up another saved file and transport to another universe. So make it count.
Peace 