Decision fatigue affects your listeners just as it affects you. Every choice depletes their finite brain resources until they default to the easiest option. That option is usually “no” or opting out entirely.
Your audience is likely multitasking while listening. They might be driving or exercising or working. When you ask them to subscribe and share and download and visit a website, you overload their working memory. Recent research suggests our working memory holds only about four items rather than the previously believed seven.
In this micro-episode:
- Why multitasking listeners have lower cognitive capacity
- The link between choice overload and low conversion rates
- Why you must limit your episodes to a single Call to Action
Resources:
Choice overload: https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/choice-overload-bias
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1057740814000916
Stats: https://riverside.com/blog/podcast-statistics
Find more episodes and subscribe at stereoforest.com/minute.
Transcript
WEBVTT
::Decision fatigue can get the best of us. Our brains have a finite resource, and every choice that we make
depletes that resource until our brains start defaulting to the easiest option. And that option is
usually no or just I opt out entirely. Our listeners experience this same thing as well. If the podcast is
audio only, many listeners will have your show on while they're doing something new.
::else like driving, exercising, cooking, or walking. There are statistics out there. I'll put a link in the
show notes. Now their brain is already managing multiple demands. We ask them to make decisions in our show
if we're teaching them something perhaps or follow this thing, subscribe, consider this point that I'm
making, remember this thing. Everything that we put in there costs the listener cognitive
::resources that they might not have available in the moment. All of this is adding to the overall cognitive
load. We're depleting our listeners' resources. And I'll link some of the science that's involved in this
as well about how all these demands affect our working memory and lead to this thing called decision
. For example, a paper in the:items, plus or minus a couple, but even
::More recent research finds that the actual number is even lower. It's about four things. So this affects
how many calls to action we should include in our episodes and keep it to one spot. Tell them just do this one
thing. Go here. I used to have several in my longer episodes until I ran across this recommendation to keep
it to one place. Send them to one spot. Now if you can make that a good spot, maybe it has a couple things on the
::page you need them to see or whatever, but you just want to keep it very clear and simple what you're asking
for. So I recommend one really easy to say thing since we're saying it in our episodes verbally. So if
possible, have an easy to say and remember URL. So even if they go to the show notes, they'll remember that
that's the thing that you said verbally in your episode. Choice overload. It involves the complexity of
the choice set and the difficulty of the
::It involves uncertainty about preferences, like if you don't know which choice to make, and even whether
the person who's listening, their goal is to minimize effort. It might not be. So give them one specific
thing to do and make it easy. That's the statistically best bet that you can make, and hopefully more people
will actually do that thing that you ask. So it's my turn for this right now. I'm Jen DeHaan. This is the
Credibility Minute. You can find more episodes and get in touch with me at
::www.stereoforest.com/minute