⚠️ Pay Attention to Your Attention

What Makes Our Brain Give a Damn (And Why It Matters) — Plus, Banks Signal a 'Dead' Year on Wall Street

Author

Katie Perry
March 27, 2025

Welcome to Tuesday Thursday Saturday! I share a snapshot of trending stories across business, tech, and culture three times a week. Subscribe and tell me what you want to hear about next! - KP

The Big Story: Maybe There’s a Reason You Can’t Stop Thinking About It

We live in an age where everything competes for our attention. Notifications, headlines, texts, tabs, alerts … the list goes on. The modern adult is interrupted or switches tasks, on average, every 47 seconds — down from 2.5 minutes just a decade ago, according to research from UC Irvine’s Gloria Mark.

Contrary to popular belief, our attention spans aren’t biologically shrinking. People like to reference the “8-second attention span” myth (shorter than a goldfish!), but this has been widely debunked. What’s really happening is more nuanced: our patterns of attention are changing. We’re increasingly reactive instead of intentional – conditioned by constant digital inputs that cause us to flit and flounce from one thing to the next.

And yet … sometimes things break through. They stick. 

So, I was curious: When everything seems to be optimized for distraction, what does it mean when something can hold our attention?

The Brain’s Gatekeeper

Attention is the mind’s filter. It decides what we notice, what we remember, and ultimately, what shapes our experience. Neuroscientists break it into different systems: top-down attention (goal-driven focus) and bottom-up attention (reactive focus to new or emotionally charged stimuli). When something sustains our attention over time, it’s tapping into both.

Sustained attention doesn’t just happen. Psychologically, it’s maintained by a cycle of engagement: relevance, novelty, and intermittent reward. If something’s too predictable, we get bored. Too chaotic, we tune out. But when the balance is right, we stay with it. We want to stay with it. We enter what researchers call a “flow state” — that sweet spot where time disappears and our brain is both challenged and satisfied.

In a world of frictionless distraction, staying engaged becomes a rare signal. Where our attention holds is itself worthy of our attention!

Is It a ‘Crush’ or Something Else?

Take a crush. It hijacks your attention. Not just once, but repeatedly. The person pops into your thoughts uninvited. You scan for their presence, notice tiny details about them, replay moments in your head. This is your attention system saying: “Something here matters.”

Not my room, but could have been! See you in Vegas, boys. (S/o Erica Perry)

Dopamine, which is the brain’s reward chemical, spikes in anticipation of seeing them or hearing from them. But to sustain that attention over time? That requires something else. Emotional complexity, evolving depth, mutual reinforcement. The crush becomes a connection. Perhaps even a bond.

Turns out, the same mechanics apply to our work, ideas, and creative pursuits. The prototype you keep sketching. The business idea you’ve been ruminating on for months (or years). The task that energizes you even when it’s hard. When something holds your attention like that, maybe it’s not just curiosity. It could be a fit, an unmet need, or a possibility.

Focus as Feedback Loop

We often talk about attention as something we lack, but we could also view it as something we use — often subconsciously — to point us toward the things that mean the most to us.

Of course, not everything that holds our attention is good for us. A lot of stuff isn’t. Social media, binge-able content, and algorithmic feeds are designed to exploit bottom-up attention triggers like novelty, fear, and unpredictability. 

But when something sustains our attention in a way that feels energizing or expansive, maybe it deserves a closer look. When our attention is sustained, it’s no longer just a distraction: It’s an insight.

In that sense, perhaps attention is a compass. Perhaps the things we keep returning to — people, projects, ideas — aren’t distractions at all, but signals. Maybe they’re showing us something about what we value.

When everything around us is designed to distract us, perhaps attention is one of the few filters we still own.

Daily Rip Live Recap: Banks Slash Their Outlook on Stocks, GME Goes Full-Saylor, and 2013 Was a Horrific Year for Music

Every weekday, Shay Boloor and I run down the biggest market news and events LIVE on Stocktwits’ morning show, The Daily Rip Live. Here’s what we recently covered on the show:

  • Consumer Confidence reaches Imagine Dragons levels of bad. According to new data from The Conference Board, U.S. consumer confidence in where the economy is headed is at its lowest level since 2013. Get a load of the Billboard Hot 100 that year — dark times, indeed!

    • For the record, “Mirrors” by Justin Timberlake, released in February that year, is a certified banger.

  • Big banks are lowering their expectations. Barclays is the latest Wall Street power player to lower their expectations for the S&P 500 this year, revising down 700 points from their original year-end target of 6,600 to 5,900 — which assumes virtually no net growth from where we’re at today. $SPY ( ▲ 0.72% )  $BCS ( ▲ 1.22% )  

  • Gamestop confirms Bitcoin Hail Mary. Gamestop investors are charged up after the company reported earnings and doubled down on its commitment to investing its cash stockpile into Bitcoin, following in the footsteps of Michael Saylor / Strategy. All this despite the embattled gaming retailer — if you can call it that — continuing to see sales declines and shudder brick-and-mortar locations. $GME ( ▲ 1.4% )  $MSTR ( ▲ 5.24% )  $BTC.X ( ▲ 0.96% )  

  • Copper is Trump’s tariff flavor of the week. The White House has indicated that a 25% hit on copper imports could come soon. Watch for potential impacts on EV manufacturers — which use 3X more copper than traditional auto manufacturers — as well as electrical infrastructure and construction-linked stocks. $CPER ( ▼ 0.75% )  

  • Hollywood is bleeding. Paramount Global investors are stuck in purgatory because the would-be Skydance deal has “turned into slog,” to use the language of the LA Times. Shay and I talked about how the Media & Entertainment sector continues to undergo seismic change, with studios that excel at theatrical releases needing to secure high-margin box office wins to stay afloat. On the other side of the barbell, you have an increasing appetite for algorithmically driven, sometimes AI-generated, content at the streaming level. $PARA ( ▲ 2.63% )  $NFLX ( ▲ 0.43% )  

  • Rivian is getting into e-bikes. I mean, why not? They make glorious-looking cars, even if they are fiscally unattainable to this writer. The skunkworks project-turned-startup is called Also, you can read more about it in TechCrunch. $RIVN ( ▲ 4.38% )  

  • These are the skills you’ll need to get a job in 2030, according to the World Economic Forum. We discuss findings that show a strange mix of highly technical, AI-based skills that will be required alongside soft skills like leadership, motivation, creativity, and charisma. Scroll down for the chart!

Hear Shay and I yap about the markets every weekday at 9 a.m. ET on X (@stocktwits), YouTube, LinkedIn, or in your Stocktwits app. Follow me there — I’m @stocktwitsKP!

Now Here’s a Chart

With AI changing just about everything, which core skills will be in demand by 2030? The World Economic Forum released a Future of Jobs Report based on a survey of global executives and business leaders. The most in-demand skills for 2030, as reflected in the blue-shaded region, include obvious hard skills (like technological and AI literacy) alongside soft skills like creativity, charisma, empathy, resilience, and self-awareness.

H/t Andreas Horn on LinkedIn, who initially got this chart on my radar.

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Tuesday Thursday Saturday is written by Katie Perry, owner of Ursa Major Media, which provides fractional marketing services and strategy in software, tech, consumer products, professional services, and other industries. She is also the co-host of Stocktwits’ Daily Rip Live show.

Disclaimer: The contents here reflect recaps and summaries of pre-reported or published data, news, and trends. I have cited sources and context for the information provided to the best of my ability. The purpose of the newsletter is to inform and educate on larger trends shaping business and culture — this is NOT investment advice. As an investor, you should always do your own research before making any decisions about your money or your portfolio.