Shorter attention spans or higher standards?
Maybe we aren't goldfish after all
Everyone seems to agree that society’s collective attention span has fallen off a cliff.
It’s tempting to believe this when you consider all of the stuff battling for your attention right now: texts, missed calls, emails, Slack, social media, and even these words I’m writing. Our ancestors wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell. But let’s dig a little deeper before we mindlessly nod our heads in agreement.
I like Alex Hormozi’s take, “People don’t have shorter attention spans, they have a higher standard.”
Allow me to share a quick story to show just how low our standards once were:
Back on October 16, 1854, in Peoria, Illinois, one of a series of now famous debates took place between Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln.
Can you guess what they were cleverly called? The Lincoln-Douglas debates.
At 2pm, Douglas stood in front of an audience of a few hundred and got the party started with a three hour opening monologue discussing a bunch of obscure political issues of the time. Following this was supposed to be Lincoln’s turn with a three hour speech of his own. Then Douglas was allotted a sixty minute rebuttal to wrap things up.
But honest Abe, being the sweetheart he was, looked down at his pocket watch before his turn and noticed it was already 5pm. So he told the audience to go home, grab a bite to eat, freshen up a bit, and return… for four more hours of talking.
And the craziest thing happened…
They all did as they were told and actually came back!
It is important to note that neither of them were presidential candidates at the time. Not even U.S. senatorial candidates. They were running for the 1858 Illinois state senatorial campaign.
What kind of audience was this? Who were these people who could so cheerfully sit and listen with rapt attention for so long? Is there any audience in the world today who could endure seven hours of talk? Or three? Or one?
Also, as far as I can tell, neither of them had access to PowerPoint slides to at least throw up a funny meme or two.
This story blew my mind and I’m still trying to pick up the pieces.
My initial reaction was, “Geez, those people had way too much time on their hands.”
My second reaction was, “That’s gotta be the lamest group of individuals there ever was.”
Then my third (slightly more mature) reaction was, “That makes perfect sense. What else was competing for their attention back then?”
There are currently over three million podcasts today.
I will happily listen to a three hour episode of The Tim Ferriss Show without a pinch of difficulty. Granted I’ll do so while washing the dishes, walking the dog, driving to the gym, taking a dump, or whatever. But still, it proves that we do have the ability to extend our attention span if we choose to.
It’s just gotta be of an extremely high quality these days.
The only difference between us and that audience from 1854 is that we are faced with information glut, not information scarcity.
Those folks in Peoria, Illinois treated that debate as THE major event for the entire town. They looked forward to it for months in advance. It must have been a festival-like atmosphere with food vendors and snake oil salespeople selling their potions to the crowd.
It was one of the rare times where they could escape their mind-numbing, back-breaking, fourteen hour days on the farm.
So what’s my point?
I no longer believe that our attention spans have shrunk to the level of a goldfish. We just have infinitely higher standards for what we allow to earn our attention. And I don’t consider that to be a bad thing.
Quite the opposite in fact.
The modern struggle is sifting through the mountains of junk to find the hidden gems.
We used to gleefully sit and listen to two old white guys talk about painfully dull political topics for seven hours straight because there was practically nothing else fighting for our attention.
Now many of us are willing to devote about four seconds to a TikTok before we decide if it’s worth sticking around or not.
Because we know there’s always a chance that there could be something incredibly fascinating waiting for us just one tiny thumb swipe away.
But…. for those of us who recognize that humans do still have the ability to dedicate our attention to one thing for an extended period of time will have a major advantage moving forward.
Why?
Because the best insights are rarely found in the first paragraph of a book, or the first thirty seconds of a podcast, or whatever else.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve come across a line in a book that stopped me in my tracks and made me reconsider some fundamental belief I’ve been clinging to buried on page 234.
Or a phrase uttered by an interviewee on a podcast that made me hit pause and ponder the idea at the two and half hour mark.
What a shame that so few of us will devote enough attention points to discover these gems hidden in plain sight.
Now I won’t lie – I love a dose of quick dopamine as much as the next fellow.
But tapping into our longer attention spans could be the key that unlocks us from the prison of the instant gratification masses of monkeys most of us have become.
Sure, it may result in us reading a few books that weren’t worth reading.
Or listening to a few podcasts that weren’t worth listening to.
Or, God forbid, watching a few crime documentaries that weren’t worth watching.
But if we are willing to give things a bit more time to prove themselves as being worthy of our attention, who knows where that could lead.
Now, I’m not saying we should go listen to a seven hour debate between two slimy politicians any time soon.
But I have found from countless personal experiences that there are incredible payoffs when you’re willing to give something a puncher’s chance before instantly determining, “Nah, this didn’t grab my attention immediately, I’m out!”
This was originally a much longer essay, but I cut out all the nonessential gunk. You’re welcome.
Likes and comments below
I remember reading about these debates from Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death". Which of course is all about this subject you're addressing. Funny how he predicted all of this in 1984, where this book started, from a talk he gave at the Frankfurt book fair, commemorating George Orwell's 1984, which foretold where we are now as well. Anyway, I was similarly struck by how amazing it was that people used to gather, debate, and talk like this. Their speeches were not even scripted apparently. They memorized this stuff and had the brain power for it!