Actually, attention spans are not shrinking…

At about minute 34:45 in this speech…

…Kevin Spacey makes a very good point: Many people complain about their audience’s shrinking attention span, and yet people still find 12 hours to binge-watch a TV show.

So instead of trying to trim things until you can meet an impossibly short standard, think of it this way:

There’s a lot of crap out there, and people are really good at sorting through it quickly. Attention spans are not shrinking, not at all. In fact, people have almost unlimited attention spans for things that are important to them.

If your audience is looking at their phones, the problem is probably not their attention spans. The problem is probably that you didn’t find out what was important to them before you opened your mouth.

Related Posts

Slides are a crutch

Slides are a crutch

It was the most important presentation of her life. Not just of HER life. Of the lives of every single one of the people who worked for her, too. After all, their jobs at her company were how they put food on the table to feed their children. But they weren't going to...

Don’t feed the monster

Don’t feed the monster

Don't feed the monster. Kill it. You don't need prettier slides. You don't need fancy animations or most of the bells and whistles that are built into PowerPoint. You probably don't need to spend hours and hours preparing, if you're already an expert on the subject....

You don’t need more noise

You don’t need more noise

Slides are noise. There are 30 million new slides made every day. No one wakes up in the morning and says, "You know what I need more of in my life? PowerPoint slides." What the world needs more of is the ability to take a one-hour idea and crush it down into 3 or 4...