What if Your Attention Span too Short to Read This?

Entrepreneur Office Hours - Issue #277

Photo by Brad on Unsplash

This week I was on a panel at Raleigh-Durham Startup Week (RDSW) about how entrepreneurs can leverage social media, Throughout the hour-long session, multiple people — panelists and audience members alike — used some form of the phrase: “People just have shorter attention spans these days.”

It’s the kind of thing we say all the time without questioning it, but I feel like we should. I’m not sure it’s as true as we want to believe. Or, at the very least, I don’t think it’s the right explanation for what’s happening.

Sure, people scroll faster. They skip content. They click away. But is that because our brains have somehow lost the ability to focus? Or is it because we’ve built technologies that can deliver huge volumes of information more efficiently than ever before?

Think about that old phrase: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” That’s not just a poetic saying — it’s describing a powerful and true data compression algorithm. A single image really can communicate emotion, story, setting, and tone instantly in ways that take language much longer. And that’s just a picture! What’s a 90-second TikTok worth? A good one might be worth 100,000 words. Maybe more. A meme? A perfectly timed reaction GIF? These are compact, high-efficiency vehicles for emotion, insight, humor, or education.

I find myself wondering if what we’re really witnessing isn’t a shorter attention span; it’s an evolution of storytelling tools. The tools we have for engaging with each other are simply much better at compressing and distributing complex ideas in shorter bursts. That doesn’t mean our attention spans are shrinking. It means we’ve gotten more efficient at recognizing quality. We’ve raised our standards. And we’ve gotten much better at knowing, almost instantly, when something is — or isn’t — worth our time.

Remember, time is still the most precious resource we have. Plus, we’re all walking around with access to more content than any single human could consume in a hundred lifetimes. Infinite choice and the preciousness of time means we’ve trained ourselves to recognize fluff, disengagement, and irrelevance quickly. We didn’t do this because we’re lazy or distracted or incapable of depth. We did because we’ve had to.

In fact, when something is worth our time — when it captures us, resonates with us, challenges us — we’ll watch. We’ll listen. We’ll binge an entire show in a weekend. We’ll read an entire article or sit through a two-hour podcast. Not because it’s short, but because it’s good. The demand for depth hasn’t gone away. The tolerance for wasted time has.

So if you’re a creator — or an entrepreneur, or anyone trying to capture attention in a crowded world — don’t take shorter attention spans as a reason to dumb things down. Take it as a challenge to make your message clearer, tighter, sharper. Respect the time you’re asking for, and earn it. After all, the issue isn’t that people struggle to focus. It’s that they don’t need to focus as much anymore unless you give them a compelling reason to.

And honestly? That feels like progress.

-Aaron

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This week’s new articles…

The Easiest Entrepreneurial Opportunity in the World Right Now Isn’t What You Think

How a conversation with a high school history teacher uncovered a different type of startup.

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I Messed Up Hiring My First Developer So You Don’t Have To

Why entrepreneurs struggle hiring good tech talent and how you can avoid making the same mistake.

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Office Hours Q&A

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QUESTION:

Hey Aaron!

I’ve been working on a startup with a couple of close friends, and so far it’s been going well… but I’m starting to notice little cracks—differences in work ethic, priorities, and communication styles. I don’t want to ruin our friendship, but I also don’t want the business to suffer.

Any advice on how to navigate early co-founder tensions before they become full-blown problems?

Thanks,
Jules

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Let’s go ahead and call this the classic “we started this thing as friends and now I’m low-key wondering if it’s going to destroy us” moment. Totally normal. Totally tricky. But definitely something you can handle if you get in front of it now.

You have to understand that co-founder relationships are less like business partnerships and more like marriages. You don’t just need to like each other. You need to trust each other under pressure, communicate through stress, and figure out how to divide responsibilities without keeping score. And just like in a marriage, the problems don’t usually show up as dramatic explosions. They show up as little things that slowly compound — slightly mismatched expectations, unspoken frustrations, subtle resentment when someone doesn’t pull their weight.

The good news is tension isn’t a sign something’s broken. It’s a sign you’re growing into the next stage of working together. The mistake is ignoring it.

My first piece of advice is to talk about it — early, directly, and kindly. Don’t wait for some dramatic moment to force the conversation. Sit down and say, “Hey, I love working with you, but I’ve been noticing a few differences in how we’re showing up, and I want to make sure we’re aligned before anything festers.” Use “I” language, not “you” language. Focus on how you’re feeling and what you’re observing — not accusations or assumptions.

Next, get clear on roles and responsibilities. Most co-founder tension I see stems from fuzzy boundaries. Who’s owning what? Who has final say? What does “pulling your weight” actually look like? The more ambiguity you remove, the fewer chances there are for things to go sideways. Write it down. Seriously. A simple one-pager outlining who’s responsible for what and how decisions get made will save you so many headaches later.

Finally, build in a rhythm for regular check-ins. I know it sounds corporate, but having a standing co-founder “retrospective” every few weeks — where you each reflect on what’s going well, what’s frustrating you, and what you want to adjust — can keep things healthy. You don’t need to fix everything overnight. You just need to keep the lines of communication open so trust has space to grow. After all, co-founder relationships don’t fall apart because of differences — they fall apart because people stop talking about them. So be the one who keeps the conversation going. You’ll strengthen the friendship and the company in the process.

Got startup questions of your own? Reply to this email with whatever you want to know, and I’ll do my best to answer.