the time-cost of content

All media has a time-cost. Anything we create will take some amount of time to consume. But not all media has the same time-cost.

For example:

• an image has almost no required time-cost. It can typically be instantly observed in its entirety; any remaining time spent is at the sole discretion of the audience
• the time-cost of written text is almost completely subjective. It is dependent on the reading speed of the audience, but it can also be skimmed and stopped or started from any point the reader wishes
• recorded audio has a semi-fixed time-cost. It can be sped up or slowed down, but with varying levels of detriment to the effect of the message (i.e. speech can be sped up to any point that the hearer can comprehend, but music will lose most of its intended impact if not heard at its original tempo)
• video has the most rigid time-cost. It can also be sped up or slowed down, but it is least desirable to do this with video because of the effect it has on both the audio and the natural movement of the visuals and pacing of the edit, etc.

In order to avoid wasting our audience’s time, it is necessary to at least make a basic assessment of how much time we are asking them to spend in the first place.

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P.S. Taking advantage of the tools in our publication platforms such as video or podcast chapters or a table of contents for a blog post are also courtesies we can extend that give the audience more agency over their time-spend with our content.

paying attention

I’ve written before about the time-cost of content, but time is not the only cost associated with consuming content.

If I were to lay out a more complete picture of this time-for-content exchange, it would probably look something like this:

content costs attention
attention costs time
time costs opportunity

Of these three costs — opportunity, time, and attention — attention is maybe the most important. I really don’t think that many people consider seriously enough the implications of asking others to pay attention to their content. After all, attention is the raw material which makes up our very experience of existence.

In her 2009 book Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, Winifred Gallagher puts it this way:

Seen in this light, I think everyone who creates content would have a much different idea of the responsibility that comes with asking others for attention.¹

One way to be conscientious about this reality is to ask yourself when you begin to create content:

“How do I want people to be different after they experience my content?”

Because people will be different after they experience your content.

1. there is also responsibility associated with the paying of attention, but that is not the issue at hand ↩︎