to
the venue, and find parking in a crowded lot, just to listen to someone
speak for only 15 minutes, you’d be rightly upset. Either that, or you
wouldn’t bother going at all. Time is an easy way to measure value, which
we can apply before we pay for whatever the thing happens to be. And for
the host of the event, it’s more convenient to schedule sessions for an
hour or 90 minutes. It’s challenging enough to wrangle one decent speaker
(let alone managing his schedule and panic attacks); finding three or four
additional speakers to fill each hour would only multiply the event
planner’s overhead. People often complain that they only learned a few
things in an hour-long lecture, but would they be willing to go at all if
the talk was only 10 minutes long?
Sadly, we’ll always have long lectures for reasons that have nothing
to do with the actual lectures at all. It’s an artifact of culture, the
logistics of putting together events, and the reluctance to change that
ensures most people, until the end of time, will lecture longer than their
audience can tolerate. And the cynical icing on this paragraph of
frustrations is that even if you limit the average speaker to 20 minutes,
or 10, there’s no guarantee he’ll use that time well. A true dullard can
make any amount of time feel like too much.
But there’s a solution. The answer to most attention problems is POWER .
Power is a fun word, even more so when you put it in bold and all
caps for no reason. People get upset when you say you want more of it, but
I’m going to claim every speaker should seek more power. I know in America
we like to believe in democracy and the even distribution of power, but
any political science major knows the United States, technically, is a
republic. We distribute power unevenly by design; for example, we have 100
senators, 50 governors, and only one president, and each has magnitudes
more power than the citizens he or she represents. Uneven distribution of
power is necessary to get things done efficiently, which is exactly what
you need when trying to give a lecture. If you think things are bad in
America now, in a true democracy of 300 million people, they would be much
worse.
The setup for public speaking is beyond republican—in the political
science sense of the word—it’s tyrannical. Only one person is on stage,
only one person is given an introductory round of applause, and only one
person gets the microphone. If the aliens landed during the TED
Conference, they’d obviously assume the guy standing on stage holding the
microphone was supreme overlord of the planet. For much of the history of
civilization, the only public speakers were chiefs, kings, and pharaohs.
But few speakers use the enormous potential of this power. Most speakers
are so afraid to do anything out of the ordinary that they squander the
very power the audience hopes they will use.
Set the pace
The easiest way to use power is to set the pace. Everyone
fantasizes about being the lead guitarist or singer of his favorite
band, but the real power is in the rhythm section. It controls the speed
at which everything happens—too fast, too slow, or hopefully just right.
That task usually falls to the drummer, the guy who is always near the
back of the stage (in part because he has the loudest instrument). At
any time, he could bring things to a halt by stopping playing altogether
or by slamming on the bass drum as fast as he can. In either case, that
fancy guitar solo will end embarrassingly fast. Other than smashing the
drummer on the head with his Stratocaster, the guitarist can never
overpower the drummer’s rhythm.
The drummer is really the person with the mostpower, just as the person with the microphone at a lecture
is. A speaker must set thepace for the audience if he wants to keep their attention.
Your average dive bar cover band can get a crowd moving simply because
they set a clear
the venue, and find parking in a crowded lot, just to listen to someone
speak for only 15 minutes, you’d be rightly upset. Either that, or you
wouldn’t bother going at all. Time is an easy way to measure value, which
we can apply before we pay for whatever the thing happens to be. And for
the host of the event, it’s more convenient to schedule sessions for an
hour or 90 minutes. It’s challenging enough to wrangle one decent speaker
(let alone managing his schedule and panic attacks); finding three or four
additional speakers to fill each hour would only multiply the event
planner’s overhead. People often complain that they only learned a few
things in an hour-long lecture, but would they be willing to go at all if
the talk was only 10 minutes long?
Sadly, we’ll always have long lectures for reasons that have nothing
to do with the actual lectures at all. It’s an artifact of culture, the
logistics of putting together events, and the reluctance to change that
ensures most people, until the end of time, will lecture longer than their
audience can tolerate. And the cynical icing on this paragraph of
frustrations is that even if you limit the average speaker to 20 minutes,
or 10, there’s no guarantee he’ll use that time well. A true dullard can
make any amount of time feel like too much.
But there’s a solution. The answer to most attention problems is POWER .
Power is a fun word, even more so when you put it in bold and all
caps for no reason. People get upset when you say you want more of it, but
I’m going to claim every speaker should seek more power. I know in America
we like to believe in democracy and the even distribution of power, but
any political science major knows the United States, technically, is a
republic. We distribute power unevenly by design; for example, we have 100
senators, 50 governors, and only one president, and each has magnitudes
more power than the citizens he or she represents. Uneven distribution of
power is necessary to get things done efficiently, which is exactly what
you need when trying to give a lecture. If you think things are bad in
America now, in a true democracy of 300 million people, they would be much
worse.
The setup for public speaking is beyond republican—in the political
science sense of the word—it’s tyrannical. Only one person is on stage,
only one person is given an introductory round of applause, and only one
person gets the microphone. If the aliens landed during the TED
Conference, they’d obviously assume the guy standing on stage holding the
microphone was supreme overlord of the planet. For much of the history of
civilization, the only public speakers were chiefs, kings, and pharaohs.
But few speakers use the enormous potential of this power. Most speakers
are so afraid to do anything out of the ordinary that they squander the
very power the audience hopes they will use.
Set the pace
The easiest way to use power is to set the pace. Everyone
fantasizes about being the lead guitarist or singer of his favorite
band, but the real power is in the rhythm section. It controls the speed
at which everything happens—too fast, too slow, or hopefully just right.
That task usually falls to the drummer, the guy who is always near the
back of the stage (in part because he has the loudest instrument). At
any time, he could bring things to a halt by stopping playing altogether
or by slamming on the bass drum as fast as he can. In either case, that
fancy guitar solo will end embarrassingly fast. Other than smashing the
drummer on the head with his Stratocaster, the guitarist can never
overpower the drummer’s rhythm.
The drummer is really the person with the mostpower, just as the person with the microphone at a lecture
is. A speaker must set thepace for the audience if he wants to keep their attention.
Your average dive bar cover band can get a crowd moving simply because
they set a clear
Similar Books
