How To Get & Guide Attention

Hi Reader, how do you guide attention?

Knowing that is the key to giving good talks and presentations.

Even without diving too deep into the psychology, I can give you a few powerful tips that you can implement in your next presentation.

Since the first 1% of what you say probably decides over 70% of whether people will listen, here’s why and how to do it well:

Bonus: Ever been annoyed by the amount of plastic waste in your lab?

Here is a recording of an online event on the topic for you. > In less than 30 minutes: You see how I present and get an overview of everything you need to make labs more sustainable.

Why The First 1% Matter So Much

Upcoming experiments, the weather, a WhatsApp message from a sick family member – a lot of things compete for our attention.

And most importantly, we don’t consciously decide what we pay attention to.

You may have the best intentions, but when your thoughts drift off during a boring talk it’s already too late.

In fact, what we pay attention to depends on what aligns (or unexpectedly contradicts) with our broader goals and values in life.

If you try to force attention although you are not fully bought in, it’s like trying to read right before you fall asleep.

What Does That Mean for You?

It means you can think of attention as a force that points in a certain direction.

You must align with that direction - and then introduce a small ripple that makes people curious.

To capture your audience’s attention, you must do two things:

• Show them that paying attention to you will provide them with something valuable.
• Highlight the key points you’ll discuss to prepare them mentally for what to focus on.

Let’s talk about how to make this practical.

How to Start

To guide your listeners, you must hook them first.

My tip: identify what they already know, and from there, find the insight, surprise, or curiosity that connects to your core message.

That means:

• Start with something they already know.
• Wrap it into a curiosity hook - a glimpse of your conclusion.

For posters and lab meetings, you can be more informal and start with an interesting insight or a question.

For public talks, you can sometimes do this too, but if not, you can add a few sentences after reading your title and start with a powerful first slide.

My tip to form your hook, think about what has implications for your audience:

• What would they cite later?
• What have they wondered about but never found an answer to?
• What could they tell their friends or colleagues about afterward?

Why a Hook Is More Than You Think

Please don’t think a hook is just a cheap social media trick.

If you believe you simply need to make people listen up, you might get their attention for a moment — and lose it right after.

The real purpose of a hook is to set up the entire framework for your talk.

It’s like a good movie trailer.

In other words, while it should capture attention, it should also make your talk flow.

> Once the audience is interested in the outcome, they are interested in the background that helps them understand why you chose your methods - which led to your results - which shaped your conclusions - and the implications that hooked them in the first place.

But what do you do if you have really niche data that doesn’t connect to a broader topic?

Well, we will see soon.

How We Feel Today