It’s also sad but true, that many people push through their day in a fog of self-interest and distractions. We may put a large check in an envelope, then put the envelope down without focusing on where that we put it, because our mind is full of the football match which we saw last night.
Copyright © 2006 by John Williams 17. http://www.ezymagic.com/
“Maximum Memory Power” by John Williams
Page 18 of 67
The relative importance of those two things doesn’t govern which one that we concentrate on.
We retain the most secure image of whatever we decide to focus on and that’s usually the more enjoyable task, rather than the most important one.
We can’t do anything about yesterday’s match result, but the result of misplacing the check or having it arrive late at the company which we owe the money to, could be very significant.
Give due attention (that’s 100%) to the important tasks, and then you’ll have plenty of time to review the football match later, because you won’t have to rush about trying to find that check!
It is well known that we humans have trouble concentrating on just one thing for very long.
Young children often have an attention span of maybe 90 seconds, which is why performers in television and magic shows for them always have something new happening and also repeat the same phrases and actions more than once.
90 seconds is actually longer than the time which some marketing experts say that most of us take to decide whether we’ll look around a web site, or click on to a different one. The web site owners are likely to get less than 10 seconds to grab our attention and stop us clicking away!
They don’t really put those pop-ups and jiggly pictures there to annoy us; it’s because they’re what will get many people to react positively in that first few seconds on the site!
In a theatre or other event, adult audiences will usually give a speaker or performer up to 20
minutes before turning their attention to their packet of crisps, but he or she must try to lock down their interest hard in that time.