Infographic Visualization – How Your Brain Works
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Did you know that an Infographic is 30 times more likely to be read than text?
In my first career as a primary school teacher, I was always trained to spend no more than 20 minutes doing any one activity with my class as the students’ attention span could not handle any more than this.
So, every 15 to 20 minutes, we would change activity, jumping from table written work to sitting on the floor doing talking activities, back to going outside for a stretch or quick ball game, then back in again to some group table work, and so on, all day long.
Imagine my surprise to read this comment on Neil Patel’s recent post on Quicksprout
How long do you think your attention span is? Maybe a minute or even two, right? Sadly, your attention span is 8 seconds. That’s one second shorter than that of a goldfish. So, when you show people paragraphs of text, don’t expect them to read it all.
Now I think that is some data that has been taken out of context, perhaps referring to how long we keep our eyes on a set point or something similar.
I KNOW I have a greater attention span than a goldfish!
Aha, I just googled it and now I know where Neil got his data from – Wikipedia. Here’s a relevant quote:
Estimates for the length of human attention span are highly variable and depend on the precise definition of attention being used.
- Focused attention is a short-term response to a stimulus that attracts attention. The attention span for this level is very brief, with a maximum span, without any lapse at all, that may be as short as 8 seconds.[2] (my emphasis). This level of attention is attracted by a ringing telephone, or other unexpected occurrence. After a few seconds, it is likely that the person will look away, return to a previous task, or think about something else.
- Sustained attention is the level of attention that produces the consistent results on a task over time. If the task is handling fragile objects, such as hand-washing delicate crystal glasses, then a person showing sustained attention will stay on task and will not break any dishes. A person who loses focus may break a glass or may stop washing the dishes to do something else. Most healthy teenagers and adults are unable to sustain attention on one thing for more than about 40 minutes at a time, although they can choose repeatedly to re-focus on the same thing.[2] This ability to renew attention permits people to “pay attention” to things that last for more than a few minutes, such as long movies.
Attention span, as measured by sustained attention, or the time spent continuously on task, varies with age. Older children are capable of longer periods of attention than younger children.[3]
So it’s true, someone can only hope to hold our attention for roughly 8 seconds, then we transfer our mind to something else. That’s why my bounce rate on this blog varies from page to page 
So, back to Neil’s Infographic.
If you haven’t used an infographic in your marketing yet, maybe this one by Neil Patel will change your mind. Now mind, Neil pays to get his infographics designed but he comes up with the data and ideas. You’ll see all his link credits for the data used in the infographic at the bottom.
There’s something else interesting he does with this infographic, something I haven’t seen before. See if you can pick it up as you read it.
Did you see it? The trick Neil did with this infographic?
Leave me a comment if you did.
Well, enough words for now. You must be exhausted reading all Neil’s fabulous data in his equally interesting infographic.
You can go to Neil’s post and copy the infographic html for your own blog post.
Til Tomorrow
More of my WHY