If you’re a normal human being, you surround yourself with attention debt.

Baskets of unfolded clothes are normal. Dishes in the sink are normal. Emails that sit in your inbox are normal. Delaying uncomfortable phone calls: normal.

Charging the expense of immediate gratification to your attention credit account and sending the bill to your future self is totally normal.

But if you’d only just spend a few pennies of your time up front, these loans of attention would never accrete. Better, you’d spend less periodic attention servicing the compound interest on your life’s notional liabilities.

That’s so abnormal, though. It’s not you. You’re just like everyone else: Uncomfortably normal and in debt.