"Attention is a resource -- a person only has so much of it," said economist Matthew Crawford.

Recently, I've been thinking of attention as more of a resource and commodity than just the natural inclinations of our minds. Although I really don't like President Trump, I think he has mastered the attention economy of our national media and our political sphere. I have expressed prior frustration that my fellow liberals and Democrats have somehow made everything about Trump, or Russia, while neglecting the daily issues that face Americans trying to make ends meet, like jobs, education, and healthcare.

Say what you want about Trump, but he has surely knows how to consume people's attention as a currency. Every outrageous or inflammatory tweet and statement gets a maelstrom of media coverage. And it's hard to look away when he defies convention as a reality TV star so often using shock factors.

What we fail to realize, so often, is that giving Trump that attention is giving him the rights to the conversation, and playing into his own hands. Going into the 2016 Presidential Election, Trump earned $5 billion in free press coverage, significantly more than any other candidate. I continue to try my best not to pay attention to Trump news and instead to local news, but it's pretty difficult, even for someone like myself actively trying to divert my attention to things I have control over.

So what do we take away from the attention economy, and Trump's manipulation of it? I don't think that all effective manipulations of the attention economy is bad -- just look at how Bernie Sanders, despite losing the 2016 Democratic Primary, dramatically shifted the conversation in this year's Democratic Primary. The fact that Democrats have spent whole debates talking about Medicare-for-all and universal health care means that Bernie, too, has won.

And I see the attention economy at full display in my day-to-day work in its purest form: I teach in a middle school. And I don't know if this is universal across all middle schools, but middle schoolers crave a lot of attention. They tend to react abrasively when you don't give it to them, so I've done the best I can to make my middle schoolers feel heard and recognized. Despite the inner-city environment that I work in, I have observed the need for attention and other psychological commonalities to be at work between an underresourced inner-city school and a wealthy suburban school.

For what it counts, Elizabeth Warren seems to have gotten the message from Trump and Bernie about getting people's attention, all without the typical Democratic mistake of making it all about Trump. She knows that she needs drastic change and drastic rhetoric so people pay attention -- and that's part of why she's currently leading the polls of the Democratic primary. And she has "What drives people crazy is not necessarily the policies—it's the rhetoric," one Obama Administration official said. "I think she gets that. She needs the rhetoric to get the attention."

Charisma is defined as "a personal magic of leadership arousing special popular loyalty or enthusiasm for a public figure," by the Merriam-Webster dictionary. But the prerequisite to charisma is the ability to gain people's attention and do it almost overwhelmingly. If you have a sibling, a partner (or ex-partner), or a parent that you think about all the time, then those people are conquering your attention. In a way, they are charismatic enough to be thought about all the time. I would even go as far as to say if your attention is fixated on a single person or grudge, then that person has power over you.

And what does this mean for us, in our day-to-day lives? The majority of us aren't going to spend all of our time thinking about politicians, but the attention economy is still at play all the time. In 2018, Maura Thomas wrote a Harvard Business Review blog titled "To Control Your Life, Control What You Pay Attention To." In our modern-day world, Thomas argues, we spend far too much time focused on the trees than the forest, as leaders become fixated on putting our fires at work and keeping their e-mail inbox manageable rather than coaching and supporting their mentees. Although a leader does want to be a supportive figure or mentor, with the best of intentions, real life gets in the way and the leader has to become focused on immediate solutions rather than meaningful choices.

To better manage our attention, Thomas advocates trying to control our external environments, but also managing our internal environments. We must manage our behavior and our thoughts. The latter of these is much easier said than done. If I could manage my thoughts my life would be infinitely easier, and we so often can't control it when we become distracted or when our minds wander. The closest I've come to managing my thoughts is when I became a Christian a year and a half ago, and "Trust God" became a mantra that taught me to look at how everything that happened was a part of God's plan.

And so managing our attention is much easier said than done for all of us, but the first step in fighting the war for our attention from our relationships with people, technology, news, and other vices of day-to-day life is the simple recognition that our attention is valuable. It has power. Whatever we choose to turn our attention to is us giving power to that thing, and that thing holding power over us.

I think about my brother all the time, for example. I think about whether he's doing better than he has in previous years and whether he needs any help. In my mind and heart, I give him a lot of my attention. Some would say that it's a distraction from the infinite pressing and immediate tasks I have on a daily basis. But like turning towards God is a gooddistraction as a Christian, so is thinking about family, at least for me.

Recognize what you're paying attention to, too, because the reason that you're giving your ex, a past traumatic event, or a recently passed family member in your mind is because they still hold a certain sway over you that you haven't been able to shake. You might never be able to shake them.

And how do we capture other people's attention when we need to? Do something bold. Something drastic. But above all, be authentic. The truth is I'm still undecided for the 2020 Democratic Primary, but that's what the honesty of Bernie and Warren have taught me.

I have caught my principal's attention because of my sheer commitment and willingness to go the extra mile for my students, allowing them to stay in my room for lunch and afterschool in time I should have reserved for my own. A veteran teacher urged me to reconsider, to take the time for my own self-care. It's not that I didn't take his advice, it's just that I have an unorthodox definition of self-care: you can't help yourself if you don't help others. As a Christian, loving God and loving your neighbor are the two golden rules, and I endeavor to catch people's attention by showing my devotion and effort rather than talking about them in a job interview.

It may seem like I'm offering contradictory advice, but your ability to create a following and gain people's attention means that you are someone or have done something worth recognizing. It doesn't matter what the deed is, whether you have what you deem positive or negative attention -- what matters is that you have people's attention in the first place and what you do next with it really counts. Use it to bring attention to an underserved cause or under-discussed issue, or use it to get a necessary point across. Use it to bring positive change -- much like the Ice Bucket Challenge raised $115 million for ALS Research.

All of what to do with people's attention is up to your discretion, because people pay attention to you in the first place for a reason. So be confident in your ability to discern what's positive or not, because what will matter to the people paying attention to you is what you think and what you do.