Why We're Boring Even Though We Hate to Be Bored
How many times have you sat through a colleague’s PowerPoint presentation and thought: “Pretty good presentation. It could’ve been a bit drier, though.”
How many times have you met someone and thought: “Seems like a nice enough person, but she should really use more jargon when she talks.”
I think I can speak for all of humanity here: We hate boring presentations—be it a PowerPoint slide show, a personal introduction, a sales pitch or a wooden phone script. We hate stiff, bland, formal language.
But despite this universality of feeling, we’ve all given boring, stale and uninspired presentations. We’ve crammed slides full of bullet points and indecipherable charts and tables. We’re all guilty of throwing in cheesy clip art to “spice up” a totally vanilla presentation. We’ve all droned on like the Borg in meetings.
It’s easy to be boring. It’s easy to use trite, ready-made language. It’s easy because we’re all familiar with the boring presentation model (heavily scripted; bullets—lots of them in no particular order) and the delivery (monotone, heavy on jargon and light on content).
The other cause of dullness is the most insidious of all: the notion that boring is more professional then exciting; that boring equals serious; and that boring has “gravitas” and demands respect, whereas exciting is frivolous. Oddly enough, dull has become safe, standard, expected.
Why? Why don’t we challenge the boring-is-more-credible myth?
Comments
Jeb, I couldn't agree more. As a consumer, I'm always drawn toward the more exciting and interesting, yet I still see people using this boring brand of marketing. Apple IPhones' "hello" commercial, Vista's "wow"...those commericals are enertaining and even inspiring...and let's face it, way more effective.
Posted by: Anonymous | February 27, 2007 08:52 AM
Im one who is interested in insurance matters so when it comes to a 4 hour CE course id rather it be filled with meat not puns and soforth... also a couple star trek references couldnt hurt =)
Posted by: Aaron Wallrich | February 27, 2007 08:59 AM
Aaron: I think you're falling for another set of false equations: boring equals depth and exciting equals superficiality.
On a personal note, if I’m in a four-hour class on insurance, it had better not be boring. Why? Because I won’t learn as much. Puns and Star Trek references not only liven things up, they also help us to remember essential content.
On my way to work this morning, there was a story on NPR about how in 1957 Dr. Seuss’s “The Cat in the Hat” replaced “Dick and Jane” as the go-to primer for kids learning to read. Why? “The Cat in the Hat” is fun. Dick and Jane stories are, well, boring. As it happened, kids learned to read much faster with Dr. Seuss’s playful language than with the bore-me-to-tears Dick and Jane stories.
Posted by: Jeb | March 1, 2007 09:02 AM