Think of ‘attention’ (one person’s focus of view or that of a group of people) as a spotlight. It moves in seemingly (but not actually) random ways, and is strongest when directed on one thing (and loses intensity and focus when shared between two or more things).
The bigger the number of people, the more powerful the spotlight (more focused attention) and the harder it becomes to manipulate it’s direction (inertia).
The point?
It’s much easier to move yourself to be in front of the spotlight than it is to move the spotlight to focus on you.
The spotlight doesn’t move randomly – the pattern can be predicted, certain ‘stops’ are cyclical (think seasonal or recurring events (in short and long timeframes)) and as your understanding of the pattern increases your predictions will be more accurate.
Learning where the spotlight is going to be next is one-half of what we call ‘positioning’. The other half? Knowing and giving people what they want.
That’s for another day, but if you can learn to move in sync with the spotlight instead of waiting for it to come to you (it won’t) or worse, trying to force it to come to you (again, much harder to do than it sounds), you’ve got ‘attention’. What you do with it is up to you.