AUSTIN, Texas – October 07, 2026 – Ethan James Caldwell spent the better part of a decade designing software that was meant to be hard to put down. His new book explains why he stopped.
The Attention Dividend: How to Stop Spending Your Focus and Start Investing It, now available on Amazon, is Mr. Caldwell’s argument that the technology industry has been keeping the wrong score. For years, consumer products were judged by how much time they could capture. Mr. Caldwell, the founder and chief executive of the Austin technology company Northlight, contends that they should instead be judged by how much focus they give back.
The book’s premise rests on a simple distinction borrowed from finance. Attention spent on idle scrolling and reflexive alerts is consumed and gone. Attention invested in sustained, uninterrupted work compounds over time, yielding sharper ideas, better products, and sounder decisions. The dividend of the title is what accrues to people and organizations that stop surrendering their focus to default settings.
“Your focus is the most valuable thing you own,” Mr. Caldwell said. “I spent years helping build products that were designed to take it. What I learned is that distraction is a design problem, not a personal failing, which means it can be designed away. This book is about treating attention as an investment instead of an expense.” [Draft quote for client approval]
Written for founders, managers, creative professionals, and anyone whose working day unfolds on a screen, the book takes up four questions:
The book arrives as artificial intelligence floods the workday with more messages, drafts and notifications than ever before. As information grows cheaper to produce, Mr. Caldwell argues, sustained human attention becomes the most valuable input a company has, and the one it is most likely to squander.
Book details
The Attention Dividend: How to Stop Spending Your Focus and Start Investing It by Ethan James Caldwell (ISBN 979-8-1878-9735-3) is available now on Amazon and Google Books.
About Ethan James Caldwell
Ethan James Caldwell is the founder and CEO of Northlight, an Austin, Texas technology company that helps people notice their digital habits, reclaim deep focus, and use technology intentionally. Before founding Northlight in 2021, he spent roughly ten years as a product designer in consumer software. A native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, he holds a BFA in Art & Design from the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design. Caldwell speaks to teams and audiences on attention, focus, and calm technology, and writes regularly on Substack, Medium, and YouTube. Learn more at ethanjamescaldwell.com.
About Northlight
Northlight is an Austin-based technology company founded in 2021 on the principle that products should be judged by the focus they return to people, not the time they take from them. Its community of hundreds of thousands of users shares a goal of building a healthier relationship with their devices. Learn more at ethanjamescaldwell.com/northlight.
Media ContactCompany Name: NorthlightContact Person: Ethan James CaldwellEmail: Send EmailCity: AustinState: TexasCountry: United StatesWebsite: https://ethanjamescaldwell.com/about
