Microsoft looked into our dwindling attention span situation, and it's not looking good, folks. Microsoft concludes that the average human attention span has taken a nosedive since the year 2000. The average person now has roughly the attention span of a goldfish, give or take on second.
That's right. As you try to focus on this blog post as you multi-task and debate what to have for lunch, there's a goldfish swimming in a bowl somewhere thinking random goldfish thoughts, but it's spending one second longer focusing on them than we modern-day, smartphone-mumbling humans!
Then again, the average goldfish, as far as we know, isn't responding to texts while reading emails and catching up on the latest Buzzfeed articles, but still. The average human attention span is now less than that of a goldfish.
A goldfish!
Our fault lies, of course, in navigating too many gadgets and sources of information. As Engadget (no pun intended) reports:
While people could focus on a task for 12 seconds back in 2000, that figure dropped to 8 seconds in 2013 -- about one second less than a goldfish. Reportedly, a lot of that reduction stems from a combination of smartphones and an avalanche of content. Many younger people find themselves compulsively checking their phones, and the glut of things to do on the web (such as social networking) makes it all too easy to find diversions.The key at work these days is to keep messages short, as in, 8-second bursts of content that can sink into our colleagues' craniums. Instead of sending a one-page memo about focus group results, simply get straight to the point. For example:
The focus group said that our Beta product blows in a major way. Emergency team meeting at 2 p.m. in conference room. Donuts.Think "inverted pyramid," which is a newspaper writing technique that prioritizes information by leading with the most important facts. Have you ever noticed how the first few paragraphs of a newspaper story contain the most important details (what, where, when, why, how), and then the story gets more and more general (statistics, trends, quotes, etc.) from there? Apply this technique to your work emails and memos and you can't go wrong, because A GOLDFISH HAS A LONGER ATTENTION SPAN THAN YOUR CO-WORKER.
I think I've made my point. Besides, I'm way past my 8-second limit.
This is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Accordingly, it is difficult to figure out when to end it. But then, this is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Period.
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