start the group yourself.
[ 30 ] My friend and ever-diligent copyeditor, Marlowe Shaeffer,
insisted I inform you that a zillion is not a real number. In
fact, according to http://cheese.com , there
are currently 670 different kinds.
[ 31 ] The downside to revealing everything is that you lose the
element of surprise, which is useful in making narratives interesting.
But what you gain in clarity and confidence is probably worth the
trade.
Chapter 6. The science of not boring people
There is a momentat every movie, symphony, and lecture, right before the show
starts, when the entire audience goes silent. All the conversations and
rustlings stop, and everyone, at about the same time, falls into quiet
anticipation for what is about to happen. This is called the hush over the
crowd, but really it’s the moment when the crowd itself first forms. The
200 unique people with different thoughts and ideas now become one single
entity, joining together for the first time to give their unified
attention to the front of the room. And the strange part is that the
audience gives control over to the unknown. They have not seen the movie
before. They haven’t heard the lecture or seen the play. It’s an act of
respect and an act of hope—and it’s amazing. There are only a few things
in the world that can silence a room full of people, and the beginning of
a performance is one of them.
I get chills when it happens even if, like last week, I’m just in
the back row of a movie theater about to watch Crank: High
Voltage , a hopelessly silly action film. Even there, right
after the previews and before the opening credits start, the sensation of
listening to a crowded room trying to be silent is bizarre and magical at
the same time. On this day, however, I broke the silence. A peanut M&M
escaped from the stash in my hand, crashing to the floor. The sound of
each and every bounce, as it rolled down to the front row, echoed in the
ears of annoyed strangers. My clumsy violations, as embarrassing as they
were, demonstrated how silence is rare, special, and easy to break.
And when I’m the speaker, I know that special moment is the only
time I will have the entire audience’s full attention. Unless an alien
spaceship crash-lands on stage midway through the talk, the silence before
I begin is the most powerful moment I have. What defines how well I’ll do
starts with how I use the power of that moment. The balance rests on a
bigger question: how will I keep people’s attention after that moment is
gone? There’s an easy way to keep score: what percentage of the people in
attendance is listening? 70%? 50%? 1%? Even if 70% of the room is
listening, a pretty good score, how many of them understand what I’m
saying? Who knows. But for those not paying attention, there’s no chance
they’ll gain anything from my talk. For me to have value, I have to keep
the attention of as many people as possible.
The science is clear. No one can keep the undivided attention of his
audience. Not really. How much uninterrupted attention do you ever get
from your friends or coworkers? Or better yet, how often do you give all
of your attention to someone else? Nodding your head every so often, while
your spouse rambles on about his day at work, doesn’t count if you’re
thinking about what’s on TV. It’s rare today to have more than a few
undivided minutes with most people in your life. Email, Twitter, and
mobile phones have made it worse, but it’s always been a problem. Our
species has survived because of millions of years of hunting and working,
using our muscles and brains in the active pursuit of things. Sitting and
listening to someone drone on and on—which, unfortunately, so many
lecturers do—is an attention disaster. Our genetic nature opposes the
design of a basic, everyday lecture-room environment.
This is far from a surprise, considering that most people avoid
lectures when
[ 30 ] My friend and ever-diligent copyeditor, Marlowe Shaeffer,
insisted I inform you that a zillion is not a real number. In
fact, according to http://cheese.com , there
are currently 670 different kinds.
[ 31 ] The downside to revealing everything is that you lose the
element of surprise, which is useful in making narratives interesting.
But what you gain in clarity and confidence is probably worth the
trade.
Chapter 6. The science of not boring people
There is a momentat every movie, symphony, and lecture, right before the show
starts, when the entire audience goes silent. All the conversations and
rustlings stop, and everyone, at about the same time, falls into quiet
anticipation for what is about to happen. This is called the hush over the
crowd, but really it’s the moment when the crowd itself first forms. The
200 unique people with different thoughts and ideas now become one single
entity, joining together for the first time to give their unified
attention to the front of the room. And the strange part is that the
audience gives control over to the unknown. They have not seen the movie
before. They haven’t heard the lecture or seen the play. It’s an act of
respect and an act of hope—and it’s amazing. There are only a few things
in the world that can silence a room full of people, and the beginning of
a performance is one of them.
I get chills when it happens even if, like last week, I’m just in
the back row of a movie theater about to watch Crank: High
Voltage , a hopelessly silly action film. Even there, right
after the previews and before the opening credits start, the sensation of
listening to a crowded room trying to be silent is bizarre and magical at
the same time. On this day, however, I broke the silence. A peanut M&M
escaped from the stash in my hand, crashing to the floor. The sound of
each and every bounce, as it rolled down to the front row, echoed in the
ears of annoyed strangers. My clumsy violations, as embarrassing as they
were, demonstrated how silence is rare, special, and easy to break.
And when I’m the speaker, I know that special moment is the only
time I will have the entire audience’s full attention. Unless an alien
spaceship crash-lands on stage midway through the talk, the silence before
I begin is the most powerful moment I have. What defines how well I’ll do
starts with how I use the power of that moment. The balance rests on a
bigger question: how will I keep people’s attention after that moment is
gone? There’s an easy way to keep score: what percentage of the people in
attendance is listening? 70%? 50%? 1%? Even if 70% of the room is
listening, a pretty good score, how many of them understand what I’m
saying? Who knows. But for those not paying attention, there’s no chance
they’ll gain anything from my talk. For me to have value, I have to keep
the attention of as many people as possible.
The science is clear. No one can keep the undivided attention of his
audience. Not really. How much uninterrupted attention do you ever get
from your friends or coworkers? Or better yet, how often do you give all
of your attention to someone else? Nodding your head every so often, while
your spouse rambles on about his day at work, doesn’t count if you’re
thinking about what’s on TV. It’s rare today to have more than a few
undivided minutes with most people in your life. Email, Twitter, and
mobile phones have made it worse, but it’s always been a problem. Our
species has survived because of millions of years of hunting and working,
using our muscles and brains in the active pursuit of things. Sitting and
listening to someone drone on and on—which, unfortunately, so many
lecturers do—is an attention disaster. Our genetic nature opposes the
design of a basic, everyday lecture-room environment.
This is far from a surprise, considering that most people avoid
lectures when
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