Introducing your Enemy: The Brain's Crap Filter
How to fight the fact that your mind cares, but your brain couldn't care less
"Why won't they listen!?"
You have your auditorium crammed with wonderful people1 but their eyes are shutting, their postures are slouched; you've coaxed the room into having all the atmosphere of a post-heavy-lunch public library. Silence reigns and, worse, the only chance of cutting short the rule of King Snooze is through the ever-present threat of snoring. What went wrong?
Everyone seemed so ready, hungry even, before they sat down. Their eyes were bright and full of hope, but now the only hope you can see in your audience's eyes is the rapidly dwindling hope for an early release from this prison of politeness2.
The problem is that there is an enemy in the room. Many enemies in fact. They're insidious and sneaky because you can't actually see them but you can see their effect. They represent literally thousands of years of evolution brought together into the perfect resistance to your talk. It's captured in that 3 pounds of blancmange between every pair of ears in your audience.
You're not fighting them; you're fighting their brains!
A Crap Filter?
"Your brain has a crap filter," Kathy said.
The room was struck silent. It's one thing to meet an idol and a personal hero, and, make no mistake, Kathy Sierra was and is that to me, and another thing entirely to be actually taught by this living genius of meta-cognition. And now we'd all heard her swear in class!? This was going to be good.
As it turned out, actually remembering that moment, and the way Kathy grabbed our suddenly undivided attention, was exactly to the point. Kathy had us in the palms of her hands, and our brains were screaming out to know what happens next!?
What I can recall of what Kathy said next has helped me in every aspect of communication from that moment 12 years ago until this very day. I suspect I'll take it happily to the grave too.
Am I going to procreate?
Without the promise of sex, food or rock n' roll, your audience's brain is away with the fairies.
You probably have a reasonably well-behaved mind, in that your mind cares what you're trying to do. When you're reading yet another dull text book, or trying to revise, or simply trying to stay awake in a lecture, your conscious mind, the bit you label as "you", has the best of intentions and is trying to be as interested as possible.
Unfortunately your mind isn't the only thing in charge. Let's call the other side of this semi(at best) collaborative relationship your "brain"3.
While your mind is trying its best to concentrate on the possibly-important information being presented, your brain is having none of it. Your brain only cares about a few things, and mostly because they were extremely advantageous from an evolutionary point of view.
Your brain's top list of concerns include:
Am I goes to eat?
This is taken care of often before a talk, so you're screwed for this one.Am I going to get eaten?
Well, you may die of boredom, but that threat is unlikely to excite your brain in any helpful way.Am I going to procreate?
Umm, I don't know what talks *you've* been to, or what topics they covered, but in my limited experience most talks tend to have the reverse effect of decreasing the likelihood of procreation, for the good of everyone...
Your talk is not meeting any of these priorities? Then the brain is just not that interested. Without the promise of sex, food or rock n' roll, your audience's brain is away with the fairies. Rather than exciting and inspiring your audience, you've are providing a one-way ticket to snooze-ville.
Worse... it's the Brain that learns
Without your audience's brain on board, connecting to communicate effectively is impossible, which means learning is impossible. Without the brain locked in, learning is impossible and your carefully crafted bullet points will go in the proverbial one ear and out the other, not even touching the sides on the way.
So what can you do? Well, there are some things that are, legitimately, off limits. You can't starve your audience (it doesn't actually help, hunger distracts as much as anything else, I've tried it). You can't scare them mortally (also not helpful, not tried it myself though). As for the last option ... Try at your peril!
Breaking into the audience's brain, legally
Don't worry, you're not facing a moral or ethical dilemma in order to get through to your audience's brain so that you can connect and communicate with your audience, otherwise all great speakers would be in jail or worse. It turns out that the human brain has a guilty pleasure, almost an addiction, that you can work with to get your point across. An achilles heal that is just perfect to take advantage of to tease your talk's important points through the audience's brain's crap filter and into their memory.
Better still, this incredibly useful back door is the same for all of us and you already have the key (or, in fact, keys) to open it. Those keys are stories. You can skip through the brain's crap filter by telling stories, and they are the special sauce that will make your talk and its incredibly important points stick in the memory of your transfixed audience.
Your talk needs to be a story, and you will use more obvious stories throughout as arcs that simply cannot be ignored by the brains of your audience. It’s not just your talk abut your stories that will capture, and keep the attention of your audience.
TL; DRs
Your audience's minds care; their brain couldn't care less.
Your audience's brain has a crap filter, that you have to work around.
A great speaker uses every trick in the box to engage the brain of their audience, working around the brain's crap filter.
The key technique to work around the brain's crap filter is to tell compelling stories.
This was an excerpt from the Work in Progress book, “How to Speak: Tips for people who want to tell their story” by Russ Miles.
They're always wonderful, even the hecklers.
It's not always that polite either. I've seen members of the audience stomp out at moments like these, and I don't blame them! Their time is precious, and I'm wasting it.
Please forgive the gross simplification Daniel Kahneman.