The average person can speak 125 to 150 words a minute comfortably. No rushing, taking plenty of breaths, pausing occasionally. But speaking is only half the process.
The other half is listening. Audience members can hear and comprehend as many as 700 words per minute. That means there are many opportunities for the listeners’ minds to wander. Checking Facebook. Answering emails. Daydreaming.
I’ve seen articles on active listening as a way for the audience to combat the difference. But you can’t leave all the work to them. This is a speaker problem.
We speakers need to be aggressively interesting, fascinating even. We must keep the audience from paying attention to anything else. The simple fact is that we need to speak faster than the speed of distraction.
Legacy Road 