Here’s your latest issue of Influence Anyone—where you get a playbook each week to shape decisions, change behavior, and become impossible to ignore, from Howie and the Behavioring Company team.
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Do we really have the attention span of a goldfish?
No. A few years ago, researchers tried tracing that stat back to its source. They followed citation after citation. It led nowhere. The number was never real, it just got repeated until it felt true.
And if you need more proof, here’s a quick exercise. Think about the last time you watched four hours of a show without touching your phone once, or lost yourself in a book. That's not a goldfish's brain doing that (plus, how the heck would you measure the attention span of a fish anyway?)
So what's actually going on? Today I'm breaking down why that myth stuck around so long, and the seven signals your brain actually uses to decide who's worth listening to.
Let’s go…
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⚡️ 60 SEC INFLUENCE
(If you want the deep dive, keep scrolling 👇🏽)
Here's the strange part. The goldfish stat has been debunked for years. Researchers have said so publicly. Journalists have written about it. And it's still repeated in TED Talks, keynotes, and a thousand LinkedIn posts.
Psychologists have a name for that: the illusory truth effect. The more we hear something, the more believable it sounds whether or not it's accurate.
The myth, though false has a terrible effect on all professionals.
Think about the last meeting you sat in. Someone checked their phone within minutes. If you just accepted the myth that our attention spans are short, you’ll likely just throw up your hands, accepting your fate if someone checked their phones while you presented. But not you, you’re a professional of influence (phew!)
So what is actually going on in the brain?
Here’s what I found. Every second, your senses take in billions of bits of information — sounds, movement, notifications, conversations. If your brain paid attention to all of it, you'd never get anything done. So it filters almost everything out, and only lets a fraction through.
So what makes it through the filter you ask? Good question.
Seven signals: relevance, novelty, consequences, emotion, curiosity, simplicity and identity.
The takeaway: it’s not that our attention spans are short, it’s that most people do a bad job grabbing and keeping people’s attention.
As promised, influence in 60 seconds.
NEW EPISODE:
Neuroscientist: “Attention spans are NOT shorter” (7 tactics to get anyone’s attention)
My latest episode dives into the science of attention:
Why the goldfish stat is one of the most repeated lies in modern communication
The seven signals your brain uses before it decides you're worth listening to
Why the smartest-sounding people in the room are often the least remembered
🔎 INFLUENCE DEEP DIVE
Before anyone makes a decision about you, they have to first pay attention to you.
Is this worth paying attention to?
That calculation might be the most important moment in all of influence — earlier than the pitch, earlier than the close, the moment when someone's brain decides whether you're even worth thinking about.
So what makes the cut? After going through neuroscience papers, marketing research, and behavioral studies that all looked unrelated at first, the same handful of signals kept showing up. Here are seven of them.
Relevance. Say someone's name across a crowded, noisy airport, and they'll hear it instantly — not because their hearing improved, but because their brain recognized something that mattered to them. That's what attention does constantly: it asks, "does this matter to me?"
Application:
Open every update or pitch with the metric leadership already tracks — not your project's backstory.
Your homepage or first email shouldn't open with your bio. Open with the sentence your ideal client already says to themselves about their problem.
Novelty. Your brain is a prediction engine. It expects the next moment to look like the last one, which is efficient — until reality breaks the pattern. That's why "everything you thought about X is wrong" headlines work. Novelty doesn't require being outrageous. When Apple launched the iPod, they didn't talk about gigabytes. They said "1,000 songs in your pocket." Same product. New angle.
Application:
Don't just report the number. Report what surprised you about it. "Revenue held steady" gets skimmed. "Revenue held steady after we cut the budget" gets read.
Reframe a familiar offer the way Apple reframed storage. Not "I do executive coaching." Try "I help executives stop avoiding conversations they're afraid to have."
Consequences. "When you get a chance, I'd love your opinion" lands differently than "we have a client about to make a million-dollar decision." Same person, same office, different stakes. Loss aversion is one of the most replicated findings in behavioral science — we're wired to notice what could hurt us before what could help us.
Application:
Before asking for buy-in, name what happens if nothing changes — specifically, in numbers or timeline, not vague risk language.
In sales conversations, name the cost of staying where your client is for another quarter. That's often the more persuasive half of the pitch.
Emotion. Compare two sentences. "Employees were significantly more likely to stay after their manager regularly recognized their contributions." Or: an employee gets a competing offer, and in an ordinary meeting, their manager looks them in the eye and says, "I don't think you realize how important you've been to this team." They turn down the offer. Same finding. One you forget by lunch. The other you remember next year.
Application:
Replace one stat in your next update with a one-person story behind it.
Your case studies shouldn't open with the result. Open with what your client believed or feared right before they hired you.
Curiosity. Psychologist George Loewenstein calls it the information gap — the space between what you know and what you want to know. Once your brain notices something's missing, it wants to close the gap.
Application:
Open your next meeting with the open question your data raised, not the agenda. Let the room want the answer before you give it.
Your content and emails shouldn't teach immediately. Open the gap first — "I spent years wondering why clients who did everything right still didn't get promoted" — then close it.
Simplicity. Complexity doesn't signal intelligence. Clarity does. Psychologist Daniel Oppenheimer took dense academic writing, rewrote it in simpler language without losing the meaning, and had people evaluate both versions. The simpler version wasn't just easier to read — the author was rated as more intelligent.
Application:
If your explanation needs more than one idea per slide, it's not ready yet.
Kill the jargon in your messaging. "I optimize go-to-market strategy" gets skimmed. "I help founders stop guessing at pricing" gets remembered.
Identity. The most powerful signal of all. We don't just make decisions — we make decisions that match who we believe we are. "You should exercise more" describes behavior. "You're the kind of person who follows through" describes identity. That's why the best leaders don't assign tasks. They remind people who they already are. You're an engineer. You're a caregiver. You're a professional of influence.
Application:
Reframe requests as identity, not tasks. "Can you take this on" becomes "you're the person on this team who actually finishes things."
Your marketing should describe who your client becomes, not what they get. Not "ten templates." "The kind of leader who never freezes before a big meeting."
Relevance, novelty, consequences, emotion, curiosity, simplicity, identity. None of these are manipulation tactics. They're the reasons your brain evolved to notice anything at all. And once you can name them, you start seeing them everywhere — in the headlines that stop your scroll, the leaders who hold a room, the emails that actually get a reply.
Closing Reflection
Psychologist William James once wrote, "My experience is what I agree to attend to." What you let in becomes what shapes you.
The books you finished. The conversations you replayed. The ideas you keep returning to… they didn't just inform you. They shaped who you became. And all of it started the same way: you paid attention.
So maybe the better question is what you're doing with the attention you already have. (Are you glad you opened this email and paid attention?)
This Week's Invitation
If any of these seven signals stood out to you, hit reply and tell me: which one does a professional of influence like you use the least? I read every response, and it usually tells me exactly what to write about next.
Ok beautiful professionals of influence, I’ll see you next Sunday!
Change behavior, change lives 🤘🏽
Howie Chan
Creator of Influence Anyone
P.S. If you want to see what happens after you earn someone's attention, watch my conversation with Dr. Carmen Simon on making ideas unforgettable.