Why We Don't Read

January 20, 2020

If you're trying to position a complex idea to complete strangers in the U.S. you have one really big challenge in front of you.

Most Americans don't read.

I can cite all sorts of tests and studies to back up that statement, but I think we can pretty much take that as given. Those studies give us all sorts of reasons that people don't read, from bad teachers to lead in the water, but there are a couple themes.

There aren't enough hours in the day We need information and we need it fast. We don't want to sit in the library reading reams of musty old documents… in fact, if we had that download feature like in the Matrix, I'm sure most people would rather just suddenly acquire the knowledge than take time to read. I don't have context We learn new things by building on old things. That is to say, we need some kind of context to take in new stuff, and all too often we're skipping ahead trying to get an answer without processing the details we need in order to actually understand the answer. This is compounded the complexity or our world and the tendency for the smart people to skip over details because they're moving fast too (see “there aren't enough hours in the day”).

We can bemoan the fact that people don't read and blame the schools or just call people stupid, but the reality is we're trying to cram too much stuff into people's brains. So, slow down, break it apart, and think about what you're trying to say.

- Keep it short - Keep it simple - Keep it to the point

Then you can add context and build on your message by having more short, simple, to the point content to follow up with.

Let me know if you need some help taking your complex messages and turning them into easy to understand, quick to consume content.

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