With Apologies to Paul Simon….

I wonder if like me, you have noticed that many LinkedIn writers have a number leading or embedded in the title of their articles: 10 Things….; 5 Key…., 3 Most….

Even I got on the act recently and came up with “7 Deadly Sins of Electronic Email”. LinkedIn contributors are not unique in this respect, you only need to flick through any newspaper / magazine or go on line to any news website to see how often numbers are employed to attract our attention and get us to stop and read. What’s that all about?

Abstract background with numbers

This fixation with an interesting digit in the title finds its way into religion, fictional writing, television, cinema, marketing, and just about every means of communication imaginable. You are not convinced? Okay, here are 8 examples (sorry):

  1. The 10 Commandments
  2. The 39 Steps (Book & Film)
  3. 3 Men in a Boat (Book)
  4. The 4 Seasons (violin concertos by Vivaldi)
  5. Famous 5 (Book series by Enid Blyton)
  6. 50 Shades of Grey (Book and Film)
  7. Snow White and the 7 Dwarves
  8. 8 Simple Rules (TV sitcom)

I am sure you can come up with your own list of at least 10 other examples. As a matter of fact, I hope many of you respond to this article with your own favourite titles you have come across.

I also noticed that speakers in general, and politicians in particular, are addicted to relatively short list of reasoning points. It would be unkind to claim all politicians are cynical and manipulative but many of them seem to be in the habit of giving us just 3 elements at a time to focus on in order to whip us in to a frenzy of excitement. They say something like:

“Ladies and gentlemen, if elected, I will make sure that in my first 100 days in office, we deal with the present crime wave by: finding the criminals; putting them through our fair and balanced justice system; and then sending them to prison for a long time!”

The first point will set the audience expectation, the second will work them up in to an excitable state, and when the third point is delivered to round off the brilliant idea the candidate has come up with, the audience will be whooping, shouting, and applauding the speaker. The whole extract will be delivered in 20 to 30 seconds and will look good on television news that evening, don’t you think?

When we browse newspapers or on-line news pages, we are automatically drawn to headlines with numbers in them. I suppose partly because in a sea of words, it is comforting to come across an island of numbers where we can rest our eyes for a while and that is enough for our interest to be drawn to at least scan through the article.

Also, numbers challenge us in a way words don’t always do. If I say to you: “let me explain to you what you have to do to become a good salesman”, you may or may not be all that interested. However, if I rephrase my offer thus: “ Here are 5 tips on how to be a better salesman”, somehow, you are challenged to explore these 5 tips. You can see a beginning, middle and end to my advice and you get your mental pencil sharpened to tick each advice as I deliver it.

You may have also noticed in the last few years the explosion of cheap television programmes which have a run down list of “100 best selling records”, “top 50 this”, “20 most that”, “30 biggest the other”. I say cheap television because all they have to do is compile a list, use old footage and intersperse it with celebrity talking heads who explain to us what we already know with strategic commercial breaks every 10 minutes or so. They run down in reverse order of course and elevate our excitement slowly because we all want to know which is number 1 so we can disagree with them or be amazed by the revelation.

Journalists (printed, radio and TV), treat us in a way that suggests we have no concept of scale or numerical quantities. Here are 4 examples of that:

  • The building is four times the height of the Eiffel Tower
  • The meteor left a crater the size of 3 football pitches and deep enough to accommodate St Paul’s Cathedral
  • A fully grown Blue Whale weighs as much as 15 school buses, with a tongue heavier than an adult elephant and a heart the size of a Mini Cooper car
  • A flea can jump up to 200 times its height so, if an average man could jump in the same proportion, he would jump the height of a 50-story building.

These examples are entertaining and interesting, but I doubt if they are helpful. The comparisons they use are sometimes more obscure than the actual situation they are describing. After all, how many of us know the actual height of the Eiffel Tower or have been anywhere near St Paul’s Cathedral?

Back to LinkedIn writers; I suppose most of them do not necessarily mean to play on our psychology but I have to believe that a few do it deliberately to attract us to read their thoughts / ideas; I raise my hand in guilt! What’s wrong with that, you ask. There are 3 things wrong with this “trick”… No just kidding.

In my case, when I wrote the “7 Deadly Sins of Electronic Mail”, I have to confess that I wrote the article before coming up with a title. I then went back and trimmed the list down from 11 items, because I thought it was too long and the other 4 items were not really well articulated so, I ended up with 7 items. It was at this point that I came up with the title, which I was pleased with and hoped it would attract more readers.

My other confession is that I almost always start my talks and presentations with an intriguing fact that is tenuously linked to the subject in question. Invariably, this fact has numbers involved somewhere. This tends to grab the attention of the audience and I am always guaranteed a longer attention span than I would normally expect.

Finally, I want to say something about Paul Simon’s song “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”, which inspired the title of this post. First, whether you know it or not, please click on the link below and listen to the song. Go ahead, it is a good song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBz81GsHloM

I am not even going to congratulate you on spotting the fact that Mr. Simon only disclosed 5 (yes, five) and not 50 ways to leave your lover:

  1. Slip out of the back, Jack
  2. Make a new plan, Stan
  3. You don’t need to be coy, Roy; just set yourself free
  4. Hop on the bus, Gus; you don’t need to discuss much
  5. Just drop off the key, Lee; and get yourself free

I suppose he used artistic licence here urging us to bite the bullet and go for a separation from our partner but, what a disappointment it must have been to the millions who were listening to the lyrics avidly to learn the other 45 clever ways of how to dump their lovers only to find they have to make do with only five basic and unguaranteed methods.

It is not quite in the same “Irritating League” as Alanis Morrisette song “Ironic” which had not a single ironic element to it nevertheless, Paul Simon has been just as misleading in his claim. I would like to think that he thought of the title of the song first, sat down to write the lyrics and could not, for love or money, think of more than 5 ways for leaving one’s lover so, he just stuck a zero in front of it and that was that. He should have given himself more time; I can think of a few other ways that can be added to his list. Here are some:

  1. Change your name, Ephraim
  2. Have a sex change, James; why be tame?
  3. Get locked up in jail, Kale; you’ll never fail
  4. Sail far away, Ray
  5. Pretend to be dead, Fred; you can come back as Ted

I can go on but you get the point.

So in conclusion, if you want the world to pay attention to you, get some numbers imbedded in your talk. I suggest you keep to your promise and deliver the number of “things” you mention in the title of your piece. Failing to do so will put you in amongst Alanis Morrisette and Paul Simon. Oh, wait a minute, that’s not a bad company to keep!