Use ‘em. Or lose ‘em.

The 5-second Rule:

How I learned it and why it matters even more now

I was just a kid. Not my first job, but my first job with any real responsibility. Real visibility. People in town knew me. Said hello when I walked into the local coffee shop. I’d written things some of them loved. And some things some of them still held a grudge about. I felt like I mattered to them. It was intimidating.

I was the local editor for a weekly paper in New Jersey. It was the primary source of local news for that area. I was just a kid, really. Early 20s. Learning the biz.

And our owners hosted a seminar on media and how our audience absorbed it. 24-hour news was still a fairly new thing. Not everyone watched cable news the way they do now. People still read newspapers, especially local papers and didn’t expect to get their news for free.

And there’s still one thing I remember from that seminar so long ago that I use every single day.

Call it the 5-second rule then or the 3-second rule now. The amount of time is almost irrelevant - except that it’s short. It’s the mentality that’s most important. The approach is what matters.

Our presenter that day, a longtime editor at the Asbury Park Press and good friend of our Executive Editor, took some time to go over a study that had been done recently (at that time) that showed just how people read the news.

It wasn’t a major focal point of the seminar. But it stuck with me more than anything else. And from where I’m sitting, still applies.

They used to teach us about how people broke the paper and news articles into different blocks. How they focused on the different quadrants of a broadsheet page. How the most important headline was always at the top, “above the fold,” and usually in the top-right quadrant. And readers scanned down and to the left to find the headlines that mattered most to them. Then, they’d read the headline, then the lede paragraph and decide if they wanted to read the whole thing.

Unfortunately, none of that was true.

And the data showed it clear as day.

Sure people scanned the headlines for what mattered to them. Usually emotionally. But once they started reading, there was something different happening.

They’d start reading an article. About 5 seconds worth. Whatever that meant in their internal clock.

Then, they would make a decision. To continue or to bail.

If they decided to continue, they’d grant you another bit of time. An equal-ish amount of time. Whereupon they would make the same decision again.

To continue or to bail.

Did they expect something more out of this piece? Did they have what they needed to be an expert around the water cooler? Were they hanging a cliff?

Basically, if they were, they’d continue. If they weren’t, they were on to the next thing down the page.

Then, the Internet came for us all.

But we still all read in basically the same way.

People, especially executives, like to say “people don’t read anymore.” As if it’s some kind of natural truth.

But I don’t find this to be true. At all.

People don’t read. Much. Until they want to. Then they want to read everything.

And this is what the 5-second rule is all about.

When people are reading, they need to feel as if they’re gaining as they go. Learning more than their cohorts as they move along. Otherwise, they’ll look for something else.

The story needs to be a journey for them.

If you don’t lay a trail for them, they’ll get lost in the woods.

When you lay a trail that’s satisfying to them, they’ll follow it just about anywhere.

It’s the same reason Harlan Coben’s novels translate into British world on Netflix. And true crime podcasts rule the medium. And also why misinformation works so effectively. The misinformers out there are VERY good at this. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Most people don’t think to write this way. But it’s exactly the way most people absorb their reading.

And that is one of my best two or three bits of writing advice.

Put it to use.

Let me know if it helps you.