20 Seconds!

I just read something that caught my eye.  According to Wharton Business College (U Penn) the average adult attention span is just 20 seconds!  20 seconds, wow, that’s short!  What Wharton is telling us is that if don’t have someone’s attention locked in just 20 seconds that we’ve lost them.  Let’s see, we’re coming up on about 20 seconds into this blog right now.  Are you still with me?  Do I have your attention now?

Emails are no exception.  According to the website MarketingSherpa.com emails are only open an average of 15-20 seconds too.  If you’re reading this blog at this point, two things have happened.  First, I held your attention span long enough in the email I sent out notifying you about this blog, and secondly, I held your attention long enough to get past the first 20 seconds.  How am I doing so far?  I guess the real measure will be is if I hold anyone’s attention long enough in this blog for them to email me back and let me know that I held their attention long enough to do that!

How much farther does this 20 second window reach?  According to the website TechCareers.com if the average job recruiter that is reviewing your resume does find something that catches his/her attention in the first 15-20 seconds your resume will probably not get much more review.  On the Quintessential Careers website (www.quintcareers.com) Katherine Hansen says in her article The Scoop on Resume Length: How Many Pages Should Your Resume Be? “Given that employers screen resumes for between 2.5 and 20 seconds, a resume must quickly capture the reader's interest.”  Once again, here comes the wow factor.  Wow, your future is in the hand of someone who gives you your first evaluation in 20 seconds or less!

Quoting Nancy Tierney from the website UnconditionalConfidence.com where she is discussing the art of business networking “The truth is that when someone asks you that question (What do you do?), you’ve got about 20 seconds to answer, spark their curiosity, initiate a conversation and create a connection. In 20 seconds, you need to be immediately interesting and captivating while communicating the huge scope of what you have to offer. No wonder we feel pressured and on the spot!”  How many times have you heard that you’ve only got one chance to make a first impression?  Now we here that we’ve only got 20 seconds to make that first impression!

Is our world moving at such a rapid pace now that we humans are now programmed to not focus on something more then 20 seconds?  Ever wonder why when you’re sitting at home, kicking back on the ole’ sofa, enjoying a nice mellow movie and all of a sudden, whammy, you get blasted with a loud, blaring commercial?  Advertisers know that if they don’t get you’re attention in 20 seconds they’re just wasting they’re commercial time.  A prime example of this would be the current Wendy’s commercial where a guy is eating a Spicy Chicken Sandwich behind a screen and right at 20 seconds into the commercial, ka-boom!  The guy explodes.  Time some of those commercials like that sometime and you’ll find that between 15 and 20 seconds something happens to get your attention.

So what can we Christians learn from this?  We’ve got 20 seconds or less to get someone’s attention with the endless truth.  When we present the Gospel to someone, i.e. witnessing, we need to have our act together and come out on fire.  The two techniques that I use that most definitely have the 20 second hook is either Bill Faye’s Share Jesus Without Fear or Kirk Cameron/Ray Comfort’s Way of the Master which is available online a www.WayOfTheMaster.com.

So how did I do?  Did I hold your attention all of the way through this blog?  Did I hook you within 20 seconds?  Just remember we’ve only got 20 seconds, the length of time it took for you to read this paragraph.

Be Blessed!

BIG SCOTT