Attention Span

How many times have you sent a text message to your friend or checked your Facebook in the middle of listening to an oral presentation? No matter how interesting the topic is, it is not a successful presentation if you cannot keep your audience’s attention.

As you can see on the graph attached, it has been proven that the average attention span of an adult is 15-20 minutes. Let’s say if you are doing a 30 minute presentation, you will lose about 80-90% of audience’s attention by the halfway into the presentation. Given the fact that our attention span is limited, speaker needs to organize and prepare the presentation in a way that captures and maintains the audience’s attention.