Tag: attention span

That Glazed Look

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 5 Comments

Not everyone admits to it, but everyone does it.

In meeting rooms, at desks, at parties, or in the privacy of your own living room.

You are in the conversation one moment, skiing down Mt. Fuji the next. Nodding at the other person one moment, nodding towards twilight the next. It’s not the buzzed look, or the intoxicated look, or the sleepy look.

It’s the glazed look.

The staring eye, the blank glance, the frozen look of concentration that comes across your face when you zone out for a brief moment.

Sometimes it’s inevitable. The meeting where the group is talking about something way over your head. The 10th time the person next to you tells the same story to a new pair of ears. Your friend is confiding something to you and their voice turns into bubbles from under water.

Why does this happen?

Your intentions are pure. You really do want to learn something in the conference room. You really do want to understand what someone is telling you. You really are interested in finding out “who-done-it”. But it’s like someone unplugged you for a moment.

Work-wise, I often wonder if I get involved in things above my pay grade. i.e., the outcome affects me, but the planning stages don’t. I’ve found myself so tired that I’ve been at parties with besties and they are telling me something important and it’s all I can do to keep my eyes open. I have sat on my sofa, watching a movie/TV show that I’ve waited forever to see, and have somehow missed the most important part because my mind has been in la la land.

How does this happen?

I have a feeling people smarter than me don’t space out the same way I do. I am surrounded by various levels of genius, and as much as I want to run off and play with them in their playland, I just can’t. I don’t understand the mumbo jumbo. So I imagine I’m in the meeting glazing, they know everything, and have no time to glaze. They probably glaze later when someone talks about Halloween Wars or the Mediterranean Diet.

This is not only on the work front. It’s on the entertainment front, the social front, the political front. I try hard not to get pumped up about anything I can’t change, so when someone else gets pumped up, I give them their space. And my space. And eventually the glaze.

Is it that I just don’t find most of the outside world interesting? Not at all!

I am all for learning and understanding and discovering every day you live and breathe. Maybe I’m finding out that, as I get older, certain spheres of knowledge are beyond my ken, and that I don’t need to understand everything to move forward. I pay attention when it comes to things that directly involve me — how I’m going to accomplish things that boil down to the Internet Data Conversion Analyst Specialist or the writer or the photographer or the friend. I don’t need the cerebral mish mash to do what I’m supposed to do. I am a good friend and a good worker. I take care of those who take care of me, and I do a pretty good job of taking care of myself.

But if one day you’re talking to me and…I…juussstt….

What were we talking about?

 

Read This Right Now!

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 9 Comments

10410939_10203578780099885_8715010658202880461_nTo all you current and wannabe bloggers, I came across some interesting statistics the other day, courtesy of Statistic Brain http://www.statisticbrain.com/attention-span-statistics .

As far as us lovers of blab go:

The average attention span in 2013 was 8 seconds.

The average attention span in 2000 was 12 seconds.

The average attention span of a gold fish is 9 seconds.

I just imagine the statistics for 2015 are even more mind blowing. What does that hold for us chatterboxes? Are we full of hot  air? Do we think we are Shakespeare when we are merely Rocky?

I tried to think of things you can do in 8 seconds.  You can:

Glance over one’s resume

Count to 8

Delete your Facebook account

Deseed a pomegranate with a spoon

Speed dial Japan

Make a bologna sandwich

So what the article was saying is — keep your message tight, short, to the point.

Right — and Abraham Lincoln wasn’t really our president, either.

I looked back at my blogs. I’ve been chatting away since 2011. I must say I have cut back on my rhetoric. Back then, Dinner with the Queen (6/22/11) was 1015 words. Chocolate and the Tuscan Sun (4/23/11) was 1016 words. My last few blogs have been more reasonable. Incredible Edibles (686).  Evidence was 452 words. BFFs was 564 words. Shhhh Kitty Kitty Kitty was 686 (am I pushing it here?). I am trying to heed the warning that these days it’s really easy to bore people. To numb people. I have them flip past your book/page/article and move onto the next. And the next.

Some articles I’ve read say you should be able to tell your story in two sentences. Anything else is wasted work. (Of course, that particular article was over 1,000 words long). I know we are all used to Yahoo headlines. After all, that’s how many of us get our news these days.

But how do you know if you’re missing anything of substance? How do you know if you’ll enjoy what you read if the story is only 20 words? How do you know what the person(s) is feeling or thinking or doing in less than two sentences? I think eating only one piece of chocolate is easier.

I could shorten my blogs to a couple of sentences:

Evidence: My cat steals things from my purse and leaves them on the dog’s pillow. She is naughty.

Incredible Edibles: Going to a Creative Leftovers School would be fun. You could learn what to do with leftovers.

They just don’t have the same panasche as the thought process of the sneaky fat cat or the  truth behind impulse buying and portion control, do they?

I suppose that’s what Facebook and Twitter are for. Short, sweet spots of information. Glance and forget. Or glance and send to yourself so you don’t forget it. I have about 15 recipes on FB that I’ve sent myself so I wouldn’t lose them in the plethora of information spinning past me every day. Don’t ask me if I’ve ever gone back to look at them, though.

I think writing, like anything else, is done half way in the middle. Sometimes it takes paragraphs to describe scenery or someone’s evil thoughts. Other times, a few words will do. You will “get it” no matter which you choose. Just be careful the tone in which you convey your message.

You may be describing a decadent desert and someone will mistake it for porn. Worse yet, you may be describing porn and someone will think you’re talking about strawberry shortcake.