Satire|Humor|Real Life

When People aren’t listening, this is what you Do

One rule to live by

People are not listening. Their ears are live and functioning. Their eyes are on you, but the mind is pin-balling through the universe at warp speed, trying to cope with the Pandemic, Trump’s tweets, America’s lurching towards greatness and miscellaneous world leaders looking at neighboring countries like Wile E Coyote looks at The Roadrunner.

There is too much noise and distraction and if words are beginning to appear like three dimensional objects in an LSD-fueled dream, then something needs to change.

I suggest adopting this rule as soon as possible.

Tell them what you are going to tell them. Then, tell them. Then tell them exactly what you just told them.

Simply getting an idea. Affirming its brilliance and then shouting it out to whoever is passing by, just won’t do.

There are simply too many voices vying for your attention. Too many messages being blasted out of every media orifice, that unless we get people’s attention first, the message will die en route or simply keel over from exhaustion.

Turn on your television set and spin the dial to an appropriate News Network. Any channel will do.

How many people are seated at the dais? How many are talking? Probably at least two.

For whatever reason, newscasters seem to believe that talking over one another actually gets their message across more easily.

Wrong. All it does is make it impossible to hear an already uniquely flawed message from transporting itself across the ether into our living rooms, before washing over us, like a fire hose possessed.

We need to calm the hell down.

It’s simple, the more you do it.

Gather Your Thoughts — I know, like herding cats at times, but it’s worth the effort.

Verify your facts — seriously, it’s important. We are already being pinged with more false data than a 12-hour Binge of Hollywood Squares.

Use Your Words — meaning find the words that have the best chance at piercing through the haze caused by years of random information, vaporizing around your intended target.

Now, it’s time, so again:

Tell them what you are going to tell them. Be specific. Then, tell them. Just get those words out clearly. Then tell them exactly what you just told them.

This is a proven method used by generations of drill sergeants and primary school teachers. It works.

It can be annoying as hell, sure. No one likes the echo of words bouncing around like demented flies, but fuck it, this is important.

Come on, try it.

Go find a kid or parent. Pick a topic — something that will resonate with them. Then steps 1–2–3.

If there’s any doubt lingering that we are in danger of information overload and being in a position where we will start walking away from data that we need to hear and see, maybe this will allay those concerns.

These stats are taken from a Forbes article written May 21, 2018 by Bernard Marr. It’s already gotten worse.

• Google process 40,000 searches EVERY second. • In the past two years alone, 90% of the data in the world was generated. • 3.7 billion people use the Internet • 1.5 billion people are active on Facebook daily • EVERY minute: Snapchat users share 527,760 photos; Users watch 4,146,600 YouTube videos; 456,000 tweets are sent on Twitter and Instagram users post 46,740 photos. • EVERY Minute we send 16 million text messages (it’s gone up); 156 Million emails are sent; 990,000 Tinder swipes take place and 103,447,520 Spam emails are sent on their way • For you math types, that 2,304,000,000 text messages every day!

Oh, and every minute The Weather Channel receives 18,055,556 forecast requests.

We need to control the narrative. We need to ignore the crap. We need to listen to what is actually important.

Not all the time. That’s even crazier than the amount of information hitting us from all sides every day. But sometimes, and you’ll know when those times are, use this rule or any method that works and get the facts understood and the people informed.

We’re already talking and watching and reading and texting 24/7. All this does is help change the outcome.

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” — Stephen R. Covey

“Mental Pez: To be hit with so much information that it becomes impossible to focus on one thing, so stuff goes from top-of-mind to tip-of-tongue, only to eventually fall out of our head completely … sort of like a mental Pez. (From the ‘Sally Forth’ comic strip.)” — BuzzWhack

“An environment with excess information devours the one thing that information truly demands: attention. Attention is becoming scarce, so we have to use it wisely when we get it.” Alistair Croll — Founder Fwd50

“The strongest human instinct is to impart information. The second strongest is to resist it.” Kenneth Graeme — Novelist

“We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.” John Naisbitt — Social Researcher

Joe Luca is writer and editor for ILLUMINATION and a published author and writer of children’s stories, short fiction, non-fiction articles, screenplays and poetry. Publications include Child’s Life, Children’s Playmate and others. There are some other articles below — have a read. And thank you for stopping by.