The Competitive Advantage of the Future
Image generated by Jared Belcher with DALL-E
Imagine a business school one hundred years from now. When business students in the year 2124 study the most successful organizational leaders of our time, of the 21st century, what patterns will they notice? What will stand out among the vast majority of Fortune 500 CEOs, or faithful church pastors who led with integrity, or the most brilliant musicians and filmmakers?
I have a theory. I refer to it as “The Competitive Advantage of the Future.”
Well, it’s not my theory, but I have adopted it. It’s an idea I first heard in 2020 and think about constantly. It begins with a simple question.
“What if disconnection is the competitive advantage of the 21st century?”
Pause and read that again and really feel the weight of what it’s asking. It’s haunting.
I have thought about that question almost every day since I first heard it in February of 2020. It’s the last line in a podcast episode with Adobe’s COO Scott Belsky.
Disconnection is the competitive advantage of the future.
Why is this idea such a big deal? Let me explain.
You are only a human— meaning, you only have 17 waking hours in your day and of that, likely around 9 hours working at your job. So in terms of work, you are constrained by time. We know this and it’s the reason why productivity books exist, to answer the question “How do I get more done in the limited time I have?”
But your humanity also means you’re constrained by your attention. We think about our attention budget a lot less than we do our time.
This is crucial, because your attention- the focus of your God-given brain- is what makes you able to create and do things that no machine ever can. Your attention is the only thing that gives you the power to solve complex problems, invent new ideas, build new skills, or create something meaningful.
And like your time, your attention is inherently limited.
Even worse, to do what Cal Newport would call “deep work,” the stuff that is really important in your life, you need to give undivided attention (about 52 minutes per work session, followed by a 17 minute recharge, the data tells us. We’ll call it an hour).
What do I mean by “undivided?” I mean no Slack messages, no emails, no phone breaks, no text messages, no scrolling, no bouncing between separate projects.
Email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, meetings upon meetings, project management apps, time tracking- all that is a lot of distraction in itself, just in support of the real work you do. But also add into that mix personal texts, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, your news app, Netflix, ESPN, maybe video games. Plus, studies of Gen-Z workers have found that even when the youngest of us are not on our phones, we’re still thinking about what we might be missing.
When was the last time your attention could be described as “undivided” for nearly an hour? How many undivided hours do you get in a day?
Almost none, I’ll bet.
The latest data tells us you will spend a collective 7 hours today looking at a screen for reasons other than work and check your phone nearly 150 separate times. Nevermind that if you did that from birth to death, you’d have wasted 30 years looking at a glowing rectangle - how on earth can we get any deep work done with constant interruptions and context-switching? In 2024, our attention is shot.
So I’ll return to that question that has haunted me since 2020:
“What if disconnection is the competitive advantage of the 21st century?”
I think it is.
I think in 20 years from now, the most successful people will be those who intentionally disconnected from the digital world. Not all the time- because actually (healthy) breaks are crucial, too- but for a large portion of their normal day/week.
The greatest students, artists, laborers, scientists, leaders, inventors, pastors, parents, will be the weirdos who disconnected themselves from the deluge of constant digital content.
The sad reality is that the vast majority of America (at least) will not choose disconnection and I guarantee you there will be differences over time. We're already seeing it.
Your brain needs the time and emptiness to wonder. You need the undistracted space to do your best work. Your mind needs the nothingness and even boredom to build new ideas.
So let’s do it together. You and me. Let’s get offline, leave our phones at home, shut the laptop, stop streaming, stop scrolling, and let’s give our attention to the stuff that matters.
If you need a few ideas on how to start, I have some suggestions:
Don’t bring your phone to the shower
Don’t listen to anything in the car
Read a book. Bonus: read fiction!
Set “Do Not Disturb” or “Pause Notifications” for an hour at a time during your work and then deal with all the messages in batches between those focused hours
Don’t look at your phone while you stand in line for something
When you go for a walk/run outside (and please, please do), don’t put on headphones. Leave your phone if you can (or at least turn on Do Not Disturb)
Set Focus modes on your phone to limit distracting apps except during intentional times
Buy single-purpose devices (like a Kindle or Remarkable or iPod) instead of multi-purpose devices (like a smartphone or iPad)
Delete social media (I know...)
To rise above the rest, to do your best work, to make a difference in the world... you’re going to have to disconnect.
Disconnection is the competitive advantage of the future.
For further reading, here are some books that have really shaped my thinking on this subject:
Ever wondered if stepping back could push you forward? I delve into how disconnection could be our secret edge in a hyper-connected world.