Follow these tips to defeat distractions.
Interruptions plague today’s business readers more than ever before. Between notifications, emails, text messages, voicemails, and physical interruptions, most people find it challenging to sit down and read through a written message. Research indicates that our brains carom off in another direction about every 44 to 50 seconds when we are engaged with a screen.
Yet as business writers, we want our readers to read through our messages and comprehend them. An important project may depend on everyone reading a report. A major sale may hinge on the prospect reading our proposal.
To defeat digital distraction, we need to understand it and work around it when we write.
How is Digitally Distracted Reading Different?
Dr. Anastasia Dedyukhina (www.consciously-digital.com) studies digital distraction and its effects on learning and productivity. She notes that leaping from stimulus to stimulus without pausing to process what we’ve learned is contrary to the brain’s evolutionary path for retaining information.
Dashing from email to email or text to text short-circuits the organic process of integrating information. Modern readers may lack the time or will to pause and incorporate the information you are sharing with them. Even worse, they may fail to absorb key parts of your message.
So what can a manager, salesperson, or team member do to increase their chances of breaking through the noise?
Adapting Our Writing to Deal With the Distracted Mind
When I asked Dr. Dedyukhina how the reality of distraction squares with the need to write at work, she replied, “People are spreading their attention very thinly, so accept that they are not reading closely. They are skimming.”
She notes that writers need to compose with these conditions in mind, making their language accessible and allowing places for the reader to look away from the text and easily return to it.
Here are five ways to increase your chances of being understood by the digitally distracted reader.
- Put your main point first.
People are paying the most attention at the beginning of your message.
Deliver the main message within the first 40 words to ensure it is received. In a short text, this is easy. In an email, don’t start with the back story: Cut to the chase.
- Use clear, simple, language.
- Aim for a reading level of around eighth grade. I promise you, if you write for a twelfth-grade level, your readers will either skip your message or save it for “later”, which may never happen. Use MSWord’s Check Readability Statistics function to determine your document’s grade level.
- Clean up your word choice. Write use instead of utilize, and before instead of prior to.
- Be concise.
- No one has patience for roundabout language.
- Purge quaint phrases and buzzwords. Don’t write at the end of the day; instead, write, in the end, or ultimately. Shun low-hanging fruit: embrace opportunities
- Avoid unnecessary words in phrases like personal belief, plain fact, or advance reservation. Instead, write belief, fact, or reservation.
- Simplify your sentences.
- Long sentences bore people. Maintain an average sentence length of around 20 words as measured by MSWord’s Check Readability Statistics function.
- Include a maximum of two clauses beginning with that, which, or who.
- Don’t glue together two word gobs with and or but and imagine that your readers will follow your train of thought. They won’t.
- Break up the text.
Subheads, bulleted lists, and blank spaces all add to your readability. By varying the visual format of your message, you make it easier for readers to skim and look for keywords.
Digital distractions are here to stay. As writers, we must be mindful of our readers’ world. By being concise and clear and by formatting for readability, we help our readers break free of the hamster wheel of diversion and focus on our message.
Did you make it to the end of this column? Congratulations on overcoming the allure of digital distraction!