Attention has stages; build short-term and long-term separately.
principle — attributed to Ben Parr
Parr's correction to the common assumption is that attention does not have an on-off switch. It comes in stages. Short-term attention gets built through disruption triggers (the confetti cannon, the unexpected pause). Long-term attention gets built through participation: the audience being invited to do something, contribute, engage. The two operate on different mechanisms and require different techniques. Speakers who only deploy disruption triggers produce moments of attention surrounded by drift. Speakers who only invite participation produce engaged audiences who never got captured in the first place. The skilled communicator deploys both.
For speakers, event programmers, and content creators thinking about how to architect attention across long-form content. The principle is most useful as a diagnostic when the audience is either drifting or never engaging.
stages-of-attention, short-term, long-term, participation