The art of knowing something at exactly the right time

Someone recently alerted me to a Guardian blog talking about how the way we speed read things on the Internet has made us all more stupid with much shorter attention spans. Or something like that anyway, I was just skimming it and got distracted by something else...

I would have to boldly disagree with this argument as the vast amounts of content constantly being fed to me through social media and online journals bombards me with knowledge that sometimes I didn't even know I had. I'll just be sitting in a pub and someone will say to me 'hey, did you hear about that bank robbery in East Croydon where the crooks used water pistols?' or 'what's the capital of Luxembourg?' and for some reason that I simply can't explain I'll know the answer. It's because at some point during my time on the web I'll have seen the link on Facebook, or noticed a headline on a news page; maybe seen something trending on Twitter, and my minds is slowly being trained to put two and two together without the need to even look further into the story.

This is why monitoring business activity and market spaces can be so very vital. Even just a quick scan of a daily email, no matter how thoroughly read can make all the difference. Because in a difficult moment during a sales pitch, on a cold call, or maybe just in conversation at a conference, a story that you've seen floating around will pop into your head and make you look like the don. You won't know where it came from but that prospect will undoubtedly be impressed. Yes, we may have shorter attention spans, but with the right monitoring we can be anything but stupid. (If you read this far, you've already proved the Guardian wrong!)