Ann Brenoff is the Huff/Post50 Senior Writer and she recently wrote a great article about her realization that no one really cared about Woodstock anymore. As a result of anecdotal, yet empirical evidence, Ann, a Baby-Boomer, questioned whether Gen-Xers and Millennials even understood the sea-change the event both reflected and caused. “Do younger people even know about it?” she asked. It was clearly a personal question.
I know the feeling of something so prominent to your formative years being lost on subsequent generations and the sucker-punch reminder of your age. When my wife and I were standing in line at the Aerosmith Rockin’ Rollercoaster at Disney World with my niece and nephew, my niece pointed to a picture of Steven Tyler and shouted “Hey, it’s the guy from American Idol!” She had no idea.
So I can understand why Ann asked younger colleagues if they felt the same way about the music festival. Are younger people still interested in Woodstock? Her colleagues actually countered her feelings. It was absolutely still important, however the perceived apathy was “more a case of being over-saturated with Woodstock, not a generational disinterest.”[1]
What her story showed is that the amount of public discourse or interest in a topic doesn’t always reflect its importance, but more often reflects its novelty.
The space race and the shuttle program showed just how relatively quickly amazing feats become yawn-worthy. They don’t excite us anymore. Look at Malaysian Air Flight 370. The last time I heard anything about it was when media outlets marked the one year anniversary of it vanishing. Immediately before and since there has been almost no dialogue. Until they find the plane or a new piece of damning information our dopamine levels will remain low and, well, we’ll kind of forget about it. But it doesn’t change the fact that 239 people and a Boeing 777 completely disappeared – an incredibly important fact. Just because no one talks much about it now doesn’t mean it’s not impactful.
It doesn’t mean Woodstock wasn’t a paradigm shift, but maybe we’ve just heard enough about it already.
Why that’s important is because the converse is also true. Just because something is currently ubiquitous or part of our everyday dialogue, doesn’t mean it’s important to us. We spend time and effort on things that may not have a true value, but rather they’re just new.
I guarantee I’ve had more conversations this week about Taylor Swift than I’ve had about the Civil War.
And it goes deeper than that. Novelty affects how we react to things like changes at work or things like a company’s reorganization. Major changes tend to have far less and shorter impacts than we give them credit. However, instead of doing a reasoned analysis of the future impact of the change we often get caught up in the bemoaning dialogue with co-workers about how terrible it is, increasing our stress.
Novelty affects how we manage our communications, especially email. Whenever we hear the new message tone or see the blinking light we jump to see what’s new, and subsequently spend effort on a message that might have no relevance to us. It becomes especially difficult when we get flagged, “priority” emails. It was flagged because it’s important to someone else. Not necessarily because it’s important to you. Maybe if it’s really important someone will pick up the phone and call you. Or at the very least text you.
Novelty affects our perception of technology. The newest, fastest, biggest, or smallest must be the most important or require our engagement. New technologies and apps like SnapChat, Meerkat, and Periscope don’t inherently warrant our interest (or outrage), yet we tend to reason things like “Well, it’s a disruptive technology so you know it must be important.”
Because something is new we spend time and effort that may not be related to its importance. Novelty increases our interest, just as time and saturation decreases it. But nothing changes the importance. So as you proceed through your day and are inundated with novelty, remember to ask yourself “Is it important, or is it just new?”
[1] I’ll throw in the Woodstock ’99 debacle as having some effect too.