Taxing attention

One of my university professors used to say, “If you’re not sweating through your shirt after you’ve given a lecture, you haven’t done it right.” His speeches were so animated, he managed to make the driest medieval history sound thrilling.

Something he did successfully was ask a lot of rhetorical questions. “Imagine,” he would boom, “you’re a wealthy Florentine merchant, and suddenly your tax bill is based not on your actual income, but on how rich the Medici think you are!” while pacing the front of the lecture hall, “How would you react? Would you flaunt your wealth or hide it?”

It wasn’t just his energy that pulled me in, it’s the way he made me feel: that my thoughts mattered. Sure, we all left the lecture theatre and snapped back into normality where old tax laws were no longer thrilling, but for those sixty minutes, we were gripped!

Too many presentations involve one person talking endlessly who doesn’t seem to care what their audience thinks, which is ironic, because the reason they’re giving a presentation is usually to elicit some kind of reaction.

How many times have we been in meetings where people are checking their phones or making mental grocery lists? It’s not that the topics aren’t important—they often are. It’s the delivery that falls flat. If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that if I can get excited about sixteenth-century tax law, I can get excited about anything.