Cause Related Marketing

The 16 Second Attention Span of An Entrepreneur – Still With Me?

I don’t know about you but I suffer from it.

Not the delusions of maniacal global dominance but instead the problem of attention, more specifically lack thereof.

The problems we face today are multifaceted. Our senses are assaulted with advertising messages 24/7 from every conceivable angle. You walk down the street, adverts are on walls, in windows, on signs and even on the stairs we walk up and down. The media hits us with interruptions left, right and center in the hope of having our ears and eyes for a moment or two so maybe, just maybe they can get a marketing message across.

As entrepreneurs, we are faced with the problems of running our own businesses, there are always 101 things to do, always more to be done than possible to one person, yet so many entrepreneurs try to eek out 48 hours from 24. In the vain attempt to do everything, the average entrepreneur multitasks and is constantly busy. This “busy work” is really getting in the way of growing their business.

Shiny, Shiny Distractions

• How many email lists are you subscribed to?
• How many RSS Feeds are you subscribed to?
• How many forums do you visit?
• How many social media sites do you visit?
• Are you a Facebook junkie, a Twitterholic, a MySpace meanderer?

And what do you normally hear from many marketing mavens out there – they tell you to embrace the new social media sites, get involved, blog, comment and form relationships. They’re right and they’re wrong. You only have a finite amount of time and you cannot do it all. The old adage of working smarter not harder has never been more true.

We all have the same basic limitations of time. There are those who will constantly say they need more when in fact they really need to do more with less. In fact, doing more “busy work” in the hours you have available will inevitably and ironically result in less being done. Here’s a great ironic example of how the new work ethic of attention was found using one of our social media foes (Twitter).

Let’s look at our friend and also our foe in this attention age, the humble micro-processor to see why focus is the key.

Chips With Everything

My background is in IT and without getting too technical, I want to tell you how a computer chip works. Your computer seems to do a gazillion things at once – i.e. “Multitasking”. In reality, what happens (with most computers, I shall not talk about true multitasking systems here) is your computer does one thing at a time. It executes Microsoft Word, Excel, Firefox, Explorer, Safari – whatever applications are open on your machine, they will be executed one at a time.

The magic happens as the computer switches between the applications at breakneck speed – this is called a context switch.

As impressive as all this is (you don’t see any of this switching as it happens thousands of times a second), there is a price to pay. You see this context switching has an enormous relative overhead when it comes to useful execution time.

By losing focus and switching between applications, a huge percentage of usable processing time has been lost.

We as human beings experience the same thing, whenever we lose focus and our attention wanders to another task, we also have a context switch which means we lose valuable time. The more you can minimize the switches in your working day, the more you focus on specific tasks to completion the more productive you will be.

Practical Attention

Less is more so do yourself a favour and take control of your life, the headline of this post was of course a tad facetious, the average attention span is a lot more than 16 seconds but here are 16 quick tips you can use to get back some control:

1. Unsubscribe from email lists you rarely read
2. Unsubscribe from email lists which are a thinly disguised pitch fest
3. Unsubscribe from RSS feeds you rarely read
4. Process email no more than once per day
5. Do one thing at a time
6. Reward yourself for completing (not partially completing) a project
7. Declutter
8. Ask if the task you are doing is moving you toward your goal
9. Watch less TV
10. Stop making that cup of coffee on the hour every hour (Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa)
11. Beware the hyperlink – know where it will take you and why you want to go there
12. Chunk your time – block off specific time periods for specific tasks
13. Disconnect from the Internet – go on line when you need to and only when you need to
14. Fire up communications software only when you need to. Skype, IM Clients etc… all off as and until needed
15. Finish what you start – establish the habit of finishing projects before moving on to the next “shiny distraction”
16. Eliminate distractions – TV, Chocolates, Coffee, Newspapers, Magazines etc…

Some more resources to focus and or distract your attention:

• Paying Attention
• Productivity Cheat Sheets
• Time Management Resources
• Shiny Object Syndrome
• And finally how Twitter and Attention fit together

Related posts:

1. Social Media – Your Business Needs, Your Customer Wants Part 2
2. Social Media – Your Business Needs, Your Customer Wants Part 1
3. Social Media – Your Business Needs, Your Customer Wants Part 3