What Do We Do When Our Attention Spans Disappear?

6 min readSep 12, 2018

There’s this statistic going around.

It says how now the average human attention span is down.

Like, way down.

I think we’re clocking in just around 8 seconds. Which is about on par with a goldfish.

Thing is… I think this is the beginning of the slip down a very slippery slope. And I don’t know how far down we have to fall down the rabbit hole until we reach the bottom.

I’m really starting to wonder if our attention spans keep getting shorter and shorter… what happens if (and when) they disappear completely?

Our Brains Have Become Obese.

When you eat too much, you get fat.

When you’re inundated with more and more information and external stimuli every single day, your brain gets obese.

It starts to tune out. It gets lethargic. And lazy. And bored. And uninterested.

We only have so much attention to go around. There are only 24 hours in a day. That will never change.

But the amount of advertisements, and videos, and social posts, and memes, and tv shows, and podcasts, and courses continue to accelerate in length and production quality.

When is the breaking point coming?

The Competition For Your Customer’s Attention Is Becoming More And More Fierce.

Over 300 hours of video are uploaded to Youtube every 60 seconds.

That stat is almost a year old. Do you think that number has gone up or down in the past twelve months?

We see over 5,000 ads or marketing messages every single day. It doesn’t matter where you live. Or where you go.

Ads will find you.

Look at this:

Do we have enough long-form television yet?

Nope.

The Battle For Our Minds Rages On

Right now, I’m subscribed to seven podcasts. I have about four random Joe Rogan podcasts I want to get through. Each one is close to three hours.

I unsubscribed from the Jocko Podcast. Loved it… but after listening to one hundred and twenty something episodes ranging from one to four hours… I fell behind and couldn’t catch back up.

I have six Frank Kern courses I have to get through.

I have some Andre Chaperon courses I need to finish. (Like Sphere of Influence… which is fantastic. I just haven’t had the time to dive back in with my current workload.)

I have Mike Cernovich’s Gorilla Mindset Masterclass I need to watch. I’m thankful he broke it up into some smaller chunks so I can get through it one video at a time.

I have a course on pricing from Brennen Dunn which is great… but I’ve been too busy implementing stuff with my clients to go back and finish it (which I guess is a GOOD thing).

I just found a course from Manychat that I want to go through. It’s a video course with hours of content. It’ll have to wait.

I have seven unread books on my bookshelf. Two that are half read. Another 60+ on my Amazon wishlist. At least.

I haven’t been able to get to any of this stuff because at the time of this writing, I have a metric shit ton of client work for my advertising agency.

Which I am happy about.

And with the way things are going… I don’t ever know if I’ll have the time to devour all this content piling up on my computer.

Oh yeah… let’s not forget about all of those awesome Periscope recordings from Scott Adams on Youtube that I want to get through someday.

Now… you might be reading this and think:

“Wow… this guy has a serious problem.”

And… you might be right.

But look at your own life. Look at all of the things you want to learn. Look at all of the content you have backlogged.

NOW…

Throw Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, your favorite blogs, the news, group chats and everything else onto your plate. These are daily habits, built into our routines now.

Throw your family and your work and your friends and those people you haven’t seen in a while who you really should call.

Throw on all your big goals and dreams and aspirations that you can’t get to because you’re just too damn busy living life one day at a time.

How Your Ads (And Business) Must Change.

Our society has never been more inundated with attention-grabbing messaging before. And guess what?

Tomorrow it’s going to be even worse.

And the day after that it’ll continue to get tougher and tougher to grab attention.

So what’s the solution?

I have a few ideas.

First… let’s get really clear on who we’re trying to help. Seth Godin talks a lot about how “mass marketing” is kind of falling by the wayside… and the companies who are going to survive are the ones who find their tribes. They aren’t everything to everyone. They are something remarkable to a weird group of people. They understand the identity of their perfect customers, the story they need to tell… and they understand the aspirations their tribe has. And they provide the solutions their clients need to achieve their goals.

Second… let’s focus on creating incredible advertisements. Ads that help people. Ads that make people feel good. Ads that make people feel inspired. Ads that actually solve problems.

We don’t want more noise. We want more help.

Finally… let’s solve people’s problems quicker. You might be able to talk for 3 hours on a subject. But could you do your market a service by getting to their point in 2 minutes? Most business books are 250 pages of fluff but can be summarized on a page or two. Does your course need to take 12 weeks to get through? Or can you do it in 2 hours?

We’re going to reach a point where we just can’t ingest any more. And we’re going to seek out those who provide more by providing less.

I really think the pendulum is going to swing back the other way at some point.

It has too.

Either that or people will have to adopt an attitude of “attention minimalism.”

And guess what?

Everyone who’s vanilla won’t make the cut.

The weird, the unique, the remarkable the different… THOSE companies will win the attention war.

There will be many casualties.

You gotta decide if you and your company are going to emerge victorious.

UPDATE: The most fucked up thing about this is that 2 hours after I wrote this article, I went on Youtube. The first ad that popped up was for Visine… and the copy stated that it would help my eyes not dry out so I could keep watching and engaging with all the stuff I care about. Talk about laser-targeting. What a scary world we’ve created.

If you liked this article, please hold down the “clap” button until it reaches 50.

And… please share this with any business owner you know knows they need to make a change in their advertising and business growth strategy.

What Do We Do When Our Attention Spans Disappear?

Our Brains Have Become Obese.

The Competition For Your Customer’s Attention Is Becoming More And More Fierce.

The Battle For Our Minds Rages On

More Content Is Being Created Than Ever Before. And It’s Speeding Up.

How Your Ads (And Business) Must Change.

Written by Chris Orzechowski