We often focus on the attention economy as it relates to life online, but it’s a helpful lens for thinking about the rest of our lives too.
Attention hours are a useful thing to count when thinking about how valuable an activity is, and how much time you might be wasting if you do it badly.
Ten hours of your attention preparing an hour’s presentation seems like a lot, but even if you only have twenty people in the room – twenty of the right people – and you do what you set out to do, you’ve just doubled your investment.
Attention hours also help us to see the value that we risk wasting with bad presentations. Even if your audience haven’t paid money to see you, they’re paying attention.
Some questions:
- What could you achieve with twenty hours of your audience’s work? How about a hundred hours?
- What could they – could you – buy with one hundred times their average hourly wage?
- What will you do to make the most of this valuable opportunity? What will make it worth it for them, which will also make it worth it for you?
This is so helpful. I’ve never thought of it this way. It will make my talk prep this week much easier knowing that it’s well worth the investment – and a reminder that it’s hundreds of ‘one hours’ which is a lot of time. Trusting that it will be worth multiple times the investment!