People often ask me:
"What are you spending your time on?"
But almost no one ever asked me a more important question:
"Where are you focusing your attention –
and what is that quietly turning you into?"
I used to think time was the most precious thing.
Until Naval Ravikant dropped a bomb into my mind:
"The currency of life is not money.
Not even time.
It's attention."
That saying was like a tap.
Gentle – but flung open the door into the machine room inside me.
Time can pass by without me noticing.
Money can be lost and earned back.
But attention—
the only light I truly own—
every time I give it to meaningless things for too long,
I quietly lose myself.
There are no warnings.
There are no alarms.
Just... gradual depletion.
I'm starting to understand:
Every second of life
is not just a unit of time,
but a unit of reprogramming the self.
Every time I sink into an angry status,
Every time I get caught up in messy videos,
Every time I indulge in cheap dopamine on the feed...
Is every time I allow the outside world
to rewrite my source code
without taking command.
There is no compulsion.
Just get my attention—
everything else happens automatically.
And I realized one thing:
Attention is not innocent.
It rewrites my identity
gently,
but extremely effectively.
I'm starting to see clearly:
I am not what I believe.
I am what I pay attention to every day.
What I look at the longest,
eventually,
I become that thing.
So now, I check again
something very small –
but extremely vital:
"What am I looking at?
What am I listening to?
What am I thinking about for too long?"
I'm not doing this to be more productive.
I do this
to get back closer to myself.
Because living mindfully
is not seeing everything.
But knowing very well:
"What is worth
for me to look at a little longer."
If attention is the original currency of life…
then where am I spending it?
And who is quietly
profiting
from my carelessness?
…
That question –
I'm still learning how not to... ignore... .