44. Sustained Attention Lasts About 10 Minutes

44. Sustained Attention Lasts About 10 Minutes

Most people can only really focus on something for about 7-10 minutes at a time. Things like videos, presentations and classes, often exceed this by several hours without any breaks to give the viewers a chance to refocus. In the visual world of art and design and advertising, most people only give about 5-10 seconds to the presented media unless it attracts their attention. Think about your Instagram home feed, how long do you look at each image as you scroll though?

Assume that you have at most 7-10 minutes of a person’s attention. If you must hold attention longer than 7-10 minutes, introduce novel information or a break. Keep online demos or tutorials under 7-10 minutes in length

Takeaways