The first five seconds

Have you heard the latest report? Research today says that the average attention span for adults is five seconds. Yes, five seconds. And they say that goldfish have an attention span of six seconds. But I have always wondered how they measured goldfish.

Book author and creative director Steven Bartlett says success often depends on the first five seconds. If you get those first five seconds right, you will succeed. If you don’t, you will fail. I have a very short attention span and quickly get bored. When I was in high school, I would creatively do anything or everything except listen to the teacher’s lecture. This may be why I earned my Ph.D. in high school. Ph.D. for me means “Passing High School with Difficulty.”

In college, I began wondering why I learned most when the professor was articulate, and learned a little when the professor was boring. Regular listening to a professor talking in monotone triggers my brain to snooze button.

Now that I am deep into my craft as a trainer and a public speaker, I have realized one thing: to earn the attention and interest of the audience, the first five seconds of the presentation triggers judgment in the audience and make them decide whether I am worth listening to.

There is a reason why many speakers and presenters are ineffective and author Steven Bartlett says this is because of a distorted, self-absorbed perspective. One of the most common and treacherous traps is that the creator, speaker or trainer believes their audience cares as much as they do about them, their product, their hard work and their innovation. When this happens, their story becomes long, lackluster and logical.

Conversely, when a storyteller understands that nobody, absolutely nobody, cares about them, so it’s not about them but what they can dish out to help the audience, the quality of the presentation, as well as the delivery, turns out better. They tell captivating, emotional, punchy stories that leave you with no choice but to commit your undivided attention to every word they say.

The most famous YouTuber in the world is Mr. Beast. He currently has over 150 million subscribers and will soon make a record as the first billionaire (in US dollars) on YouTube. He has 30 billion video views on all of his combined channels. And he’s reportedly generating hundreds of millions of dollars from his videos. This makes us wonder how he does it. In his own words, the first few seconds of every video are the most important. In the opening five seconds, he delivers a “hook,” offering a clear, compelling promise explaining why you should watch the video. This bypasses your brain’s wallpaper filter and prevents the viewer from shooting out and clicking away. He says you shouldn’t start with anything else, avoid introducing yourself, over-explaining, or even have the typical B-roll footage overlaid with music.

We are increasingly distracted. On average, an office worker will pick up their phones more than 1500 times per week, three hours and 16 minutes daily. And we’ll check our email inbox 30 times every hour. The average web page visit lasts just 10 seconds. According to Barlette, the UK’s communications regulator reported in August 2018 that people check their smartphones almost every 10 minutes while awake.

Nobody has the attention bandwidth for long and winded speech introductions, presentation preambles, or even lengthy and protracted mission and vision statements that are nice to look at. Still, nobody cares about internalizing and much less memorizing. Drop the warm introduction, the pleasantries and the musical overture. Urgently, get the most compelling promise, point or provocation that you can. No matter the medium, you must earn the right to the attention you’re speaking within those first five seconds, as this might be the most generous gift that anyone can give you.

This is why I never post lengthy posts on all of my social media spaces and do not start my speech by addressing or acknowledging the VIPs in the audience. By the time I finish doing this and start doing my thing, many in the audience have fallen into a deep state of sleep, while the young ones among them may have been “adding to the cart.” This is how I respect my audience’s attention and earn the right to be heard.

Francis Kong’s “Inspiring Excellence” podcast is now available on Spotify, Apple, Google or other podcast streaming platforms.