Continuous notifications, urgent headlines, chained short videos, streaming series , personalized ads, after-hours work emails…

Today, our brain is no longer a serene and orderly space, but a constant battlefield where hundreds of actors fiercely compete to win our attention.

The economist and Nobel laureate Herbert Simon already warned in the 1970s of a paradox that is central today: “An excess of information creates a poverty of attention.”

This statement now resonates more strongly than ever and has become a shared idea among psychologists, neuroscientists, and communicators: attention is the scarcest commodity of the 21st century.

One of the authors who has explored this idea is Johann Hari, who in his book The Value of Attention confronts us with an uncomfortable truth: “We live in the age of systematic distraction.”

An industrialized distraction

Every day, our minds are pulled in, fragmented, and torn apart by a digital environment that not only tolerates distraction but has industrialized it. This environment has been designed, quite literally, to steal our attention and sell it to the highest bidder.

The data Hari presents is alarming: teenagers can only maintain concentration for 65 seconds at a time. Adults, when performing digital tasks, barely reach three minutes.

In that time frame, a complex idea cannot be born, much less grow.

According to Hari, we haven’t lost focus due to disinterest, but because an economic and technological model thrives on our fragmentation. And the more fragmented we are, the easier it is to segment, predict, and manipulate us.

Social media promises us connection, but it actually disconnects us from reality, fragments it, and empties it of content.

This loss of attention means that deep reading fades, memory weakens, and the ability to reflect plummets.

All of this is lethal for politics, which needs precisely the opposite: spaces to build a narrative, the ability to nuance, and a minimum of shared attention to collectively look towards the future.

Algorithms do not seek deep thought, but the fastest possible emotional response, and in this context, political communication is dragged along by a logic that does not belong to it.

For political communication, understanding this theft of attention is fundamental, because we cannot build a narrative or discourse if silence is not created first.

Creative political communication

Today, a speech filled only with good arguments is not enough to connect with the public and can be ignored by a kitten meme.

In contrast, a well-designed creative discourse can break the inertia of scrolling , can generate a pause where there is haste, can invite thought where everything pushes to react.

It’s about building narratives that create context and spark curiosity. Not about writing more messages, but about crafting a memorable one. In this scenario, creativity can be our greatest ally.

Creative political communication proposes applying the techniques of advertising copywriting , narrative, scriptwriting, and humor in the creation of institutional or political speeches to turn key messages into attractive stories capable of connecting with and seducing citizens.

If we apply the creative process to the conceptualization and writing of speeches, we will obtain texts that are more relatable, different, and memorable.

How to gain citizen attention

John Cleese, a founding member of the comedy troupe Monty Python , states in his book Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide that “creativity is the ability to find a better way of doing anything.”

In a world of endless scrolling and constant interruptions, creativity is not just an aesthetic or narrative resource, but a strategic tool to gain the trust and attention of citizens.

A creative discourse knows how to create pause, seduce, provoke genuine emotions, use powerful metaphors that remain in the memory, rhythms that invite calm listening, silences full of meaning, narrative structures that generate expectation, twists that break patterns.

Creative discourse allows us to transform cold, raw data into stories that connect with values ​​shared by citizens based on the concrete benefits of these values.

When a speech is creative, it produces what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls a “flow state” : the audience is captivated, forgets about time, connects emotionally, and wants to keep listening.

Therefore, in a world where fragmentation is the norm, creativity opens the door to immersion, sustained narrative, and deep connection.

In other words, it cultivates the ground where transformative ideas take root and creates spaces where reflection and emotional connection can flourish.

Regaining focus through creativity is an opportunity to transform noise into conversation, distraction into participation, and passivity into collective action.

Author Bio: Jordi Caballé May is Professor of Creativity, Storytelling and Creative Political Communication at UOC – Universitat Oberta de Catalunya