How I Decide What to Pay Attention To

Young people in Hong Kong today have access to an extraordinary amount of information. News, markets, opinions, messages and increasingly AI-generated answers arrive continuously. I grew up in a world where information was harder to obtain. The interesting reversal is that scarcity has become abundant, and the challenge now is deciding what deserves your attention.

I have been thinking about this while reading recent coverage of young people in Hong Kong. They are constantly being told what their future will look like: which industries will grow, which skills will become obsolete, whether AI will replace jobs, where opportunities will emerge and how Hong Kong itself is changing. Much of this commentary is thoughtful. Some of it will turn out to be right. The difficulty is that nobody yet knows which part.

Business gives you a healthy respect for that distinction. Over the years, I have heard many confident predictions about companies, markets and entire industries. What I remember is not how often people were wrong, but how convincing they sounded at the time. Confidence and accuracy are quite different qualities, although in the moment they can be surprisingly easy to confuse.

One habit I developed was to look for the person closest to what was actually happening. If I wanted to understand a business, I was often more interested in speaking to someone dealing with customers every day than hearing another broad prediction about the industry. The further information travels from its source, the more interpretation it tends to collect along the way.

I also learned to watch what people did, particularly when it differed from what they said. Someone might describe a market as extremely attractive while quietly reducing their own exposure to it. A company might speak enthusiastically about a new direction while allocating very little money to it. Actions involve consequences, which is why they can sometimes reveal more than words.

Another useful question is simply: who benefits if I believe this? That does not mean assuming bad intentions. Everyone sees the world partly through their own interests, whether they are investors, politicians, businesspeople, journalists or commentators. Understanding those interests gives information context, and context can completely change how the same set of facts appears.

Then there is time. This may be the hardest filter to apply today because almost everything encourages an immediate reaction. Yet urgency and importance are not the same thing. Some developments genuinely require quick decisions; others become much easier to understand after a few days, when the first wave of excitement or anxiety has passed. Knowing the difference has saved me from more than a few poor decisions.

Artificial intelligence adds an interesting dimension to all of this. I find the technology fascinating because it can gather, compare and organise information at a speed that would once have been unimaginable. But the better our tools become at producing answers, the more valuable it may become to know which questions are worth asking. Judgement has never simply been about possessing information.

Age provides one other advantage: a longer memory. I have lived through enough moments when something was declared inevitable, revolutionary or disastrous to be cautious with all three words. Some predictions came true, of course. Others disappeared so completely that it is difficult to remember why we were once so preoccupied with them. Having seen that cycle a few times makes it easier to put today's certainties into perspective.

I would not exchange today's access to information for the slower world in which I grew up. The ability to know more, connect more widely and explore an idea almost instantly is remarkable. But amid all that speed, I still find myself relying on some very old habits: get as close to the source as possible, watch what people do, understand their interests, and allow time to reveal what the first reaction cannot.

The technology for delivering information has changed beyond recognition during my lifetime. Human judgement, fortunately, still seems to improve in much the same way it always has: through curiosity, experience and knowing that not everything demanding our attention deserves it.