Can you really change the world in just four minutes? Can anyone?
I’m going to tell you a story about a group of people who set out to do just that, how they did it, and how you can too.
One hundred years ago, America went to war in Europe to make the world safe for democracy. In a democracy, war requires not just the consent of the people, but their active participation and support. The US created the Office of Public Information and put it in the hands of George Creel, a newspaper editor from Mississippi. Creel recruited 75,000 volunteers to go out and speak to their communities, in theaters, churches and lodges. Their job was to sell war bonds, and their tool was the four minute speech.
Why four minutes? Because even then, attention spans were short, and if you could not get your point across in that time, additional time would simply create waste for both parties. Because the discipline of fitting your message into four minutes is a wonderful way to sharpen your thinking and clarify your expression. Because it’s roughly 600 words, or two double-spaced pages of type, and there’s a lot you can pack into that space.
So, how do you distill a complicated idea into just four minutes? Here are my top three suggestions, with a little help from George Creel himself:
I began this by asking if you can change the world in just four minutes. Every speech is about change, or else why deliver it? Unless you’re speaking to entertain, or to gratify your own ego, every speech or presentation should leave your audience better off at the end than they were at the beginning. If you can do that, you may not change the whole world, but you can change their world, even if only in some small way.
I urge you to take the four minute challenge.