Attention Management – Distractions, Part 2

RE: Attention and the Death of 30-Second Elevator Pitch

Folks,

Speaking of attention, I'd like to make a few comments on the use of language in the States. A couple of weeks ago I sent an email to a friend. It had three parts: 1) thanking him for having helped me; 2) asking him a question; and 3) giving him a link to a valuable reference. As soon as I clicked on the "Send" button, I remembered that per M&M, I shouldn't have included nothing else in my thank-you email!

I did not hear from my friend until I had to call him and inquire about my email. Yes, he had seen it, thought it was one of those thank-you kinds and had not read it further to get to the other two remaining items!

Lesson: We might not always abide by models presented in MT even if we want to; and sometimes it even pays to scroll down the email to make sure we're not missing something!

However the issue is more serious than missing the content of an email. The other day I came across an article informing readers about the death of the "30-second elevator pitch." It described that such a pitch would be too long for people's attention span and discussed a new formula for making it much shorter.

I was saddened by the news that even our 30-second elevator pitch couldn't stand the rampant "Sound-Bite" disease. Being highly contagious, the Sound-Bite disease inflicts and paralyzes people in huge numbers. The symptoms appear as finding faults with any form of evidence presenting, logical thinking, or reflective debate in favor of quick knee-jerk sound-bites and psychological behaviors. Not only do the 30-second elevator speeches seem too long to the inflicted, but writings of more that a few short sentences seem as diatribes and tirades. (How are you feeling now? <grin>)

This reminded me of Bill Gates in Davos, Switzerland, when he was quoted as saying:

"I think it is good that the mood in Davos was bleak," Gates said, "It was a great meeting where people really had to say 'Hi, how is your economy falling apart ... Gee that is different than how mine is ... What is your solution?'"

Then I got myself into a short imaginary Tweeter exchange with him using few sound-bites:

Malekz:    We're suffering from deadly Affluenza and Sound-Bites.
Bill:           Don't "Slam-dunk" us; sure about diagnosis?
Malekz:    Yeah  
Bill:           "Step up;" "Solution?"
Malekz:    "Stimulus;""it's a no brainer!"
 

Malekz

Sheesh

I wouldn't give my 30-second pitch to anyone who couldn't marshall enough attention to listen for that long.

Perversely, it's this very problem that leads to long boring ineffective meetings.

Mark

How about Blackberries

Mark/Mike,

As usual, great post!

One questions, how do blackberries fit into the mix here. I for one, use a blackberry (actually I was assigned the electronic leash) to preview my emails. I am disciplined to keep the email notification on silent; however, I still check the blackberry several times an hour. Seems like this is a poor habit as well, hugh?

Any imsight for us crackberry users?

Tangents

Just listened to this cast this morning and want to state for the record that I enjoy Mark's tangents. A lot of times they provide context or helpful examples of the point he's trying to make.

If you guys get as many complaints/emails about the tangents you say you do, I would like to cast my vote in the other direction and say that I LIKE them and don't want to see them edited out. 

That is all.

Kate

Perversely, how do you like thought-stoppers?

Mark,

"Perversely"  that is the appropriate key word you've used. Certainly, as everything else in life, we need to strike a balance between brevity and thought/reflection. Unfortunately because of numerous emails we receive and heavy pressure to consume tweeters and blackberries, we have tilted toward "brevity" at the expense of thought and reflection.

The problem with "Sound-Bite" vocabulary such as "a slam dunk" and "a no-brainer" is that as thought stoppers they connote any further thought/reflection would be just a waste of time.

Malekz

I like tangents too...

Kate-

Thanks for the input.  There's sort of a love-hate relationship going on with my tangents.  First of all, for the record, I like them.  Leaving them out makes my job less fun.  I believe its part of the personality of our show, and it doesn't matter which personality one chooses, there wil always be detractors.

We generally believe that our core group of listeners LIKES the tangents.  And, like it or not, we will not get through my entire library without sharing tangents periodicially (often tangents are valuable but not (actionable) enough to make their own show.

Some folks don't like them.  Frankly, some folks want just the essence of the show in 5 minutes, based on comments on Itunes (some of which, frankly, seem sketchy to me).  We're trying to find a nice balance with structure.

And trying to teach management in 5 minutes is like trying to learn calculus in 2.

Cheers all,

Mark

Tangents

 I agree with Kate. Without thoses tangents, it would be harder for me to understand for a lot of reasons. One of thoses is that I'm not really good at english so tangents are really helpful to get the message smoothly.

I think this is what makes MT so great: The mix of Theory, explanations, reasons why it works and why others theories don't, Tangents and some examples.

I just wanted to say that I hated that sound of the guy screaming in pain. When I was listening, I was in a Subway (not the restaurant) and the doors were closing. I almost jumped out of my chair!

Tangents

The screaming is what prompted me to say that I do enjoy the tangents. I did laugh out loud about the screaming, but I don't think it was necessary. Why wouldn't Mark be talking about chemistry during a podcast? : )

Kate

There Are No Tangents

Tangents? What tangents? I honestly have no idea what you are all talking about.

I can scarcely get through a single day without nitrate groups on benzene rings popping up in conversations. I mean, just the other day my wife and I were talking about the latest episode of The Office, and she said, "Could you believe what Michael Scott did? That was totally like a nitrate group on a benzene ring!!"

Part of the reason I love the Manager Tools podcasts is because you two have character. I enjoy the banter back and forth, like when Mark says he'll speak slowly so Mike can keep up. (I'll have to remember not to speak too quickly at our DC/Baltimore meet-ups.) I enjoy the pitch and intonation in your voices, which is a welcome change from far-less-passionate podcasts I listen to whose hosts are monotone and boring. And I enjoy the tangents because, let's face it, they're fun.

And you HAVE to appreciate the irony of tangents in a podcast about managing distractions.

- BJ

 What I meant is that I

 What I meant is that I wasn't sure if that screaming came from the podcast or from someone in trouble out there in the Subway station. I think it's the first time I hear some "special sounds" from MT podcast, so I was sure that someone was getting injured next to me.

A good comparison would be thoses songs with Police Sirens sounds that you hear at the radio when you're driving your car. How stressful!

OK, the screaming person

OK, the screaming person kinda freaked me out. Then I laughed.

The Screaming person...

Mike sent me that (very unusual for us) sound effect when he was editing the show, and asked me if I thought it was okay.  Normally, he doesn't ask at all, in any way.  I write the shows, and he does everything else.  I *think* he has cut out some tangents in the past, but I've never known for sure because I've never listened to any of our shows.  (Yes, you read that right).  I have them all in my head all the time, talking to myself about management.  Why would I want to hear myself talk out loud about what's already in my head?

He's a better manager than me, so believe me he knows this stuff well.  But he's never suggested we make any changes (other than some cosmetic stuff).

So I was surprised that he did it, but I loved it the moment I heard it.  It ranked right up there with the April Fools cast - surely once a year  (no, wait, once every TWO years!) we can poke fun at ourselves.  (Several people HATED the April Fools cast and wrote to tell us HOW much they hated it.)

As Buffett says, "if we weren't all crazy, we would go insane."

Glad you liked it, and sorry it scared you.  :-)

blackberries and e-mail

A couple of thoughts that are a bit different from what was suggested, but are working for me.  I use Outlook, almost exclusively in "off-line" mode.  It doesn't check for mail unless I ask it to.  I can do a "send-only" by using the Tools | Send/Receive | Send All menu item.   That's useful, as finishing some of my tasks often involves sending the results via an e-mail.  It also lets me leave Outlook open, since that's a repository for a lot of the information I need to finish some tasks.  My cycle for scheduled e-mail times is to do an F9 (send/receive all) to download e-mails, then scan through to find the most important ones, look for conversation threads where I may only need to read the last one, and do a quick triage to decide which notes to tackle first (combination of important and can be dealt with/delegated/deleted quickly). 

When I'm about 10 minutes out from the end of the time, I do another F9 to send/recieve and pick up what's come in since I started.

One thing that's helped by working through things in batches (apart from finding notes where others have answered their own questions without any help from me) is that I have the opportunity to edit (or even delete) an outgoing note before it actually gets sent.  That's helped several times, where a later e-mail amplified someone's request, or provided a bit of useful information to add into a reply.

As for the Blackberry, what I've been doing with that is that I can scan through e-mails in some down minutes (waiting for the coffee to finish, waiting for the microwave, waiting in line at Wal-Mart, or in the few minutes when nobody else has arrived to a meeting).  I use it much less, since I started batchin up time to deal with e-mails a few times a day.  One thing I do have programmed, however, is that the BBerry is programmed to sound a tone when I get an e-mail flagged as urgent from my boss, his boss, either of their admins, my wife, or one of my kids.  When that tone sounds, I will look for the next reasonable break and see what it is that they've flagged as urgent.

Not bad

Refbruce-

You're totally on the right track.  You're managing your tools, rather than letting them change your activities.  Well done.