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Everything’s Adaptive

Your opening move determines your fate.

Many standardized tests have shifted to adaptive testing. The first question is medium difficulty. Get it right and you’re on the path to a higher score; get it wrong and the computer lobs you softballs to figure out just how dumb you are.

The first thing you say — the first line you write, the first syllables you utter — works the same way.

Your audience is judging you from the word go. Not on content: on whether this is worth their time. That assessment happens at the speed of a swipe. It always has.

A man named Edward Everett, not Lincoln, was the main speaker at Gettysburg. Everett’s opening — standing beneath this serene sky — did nothing to earn him a place in history. Coming after four score, it was probably dead before it even reached its punctuation.

This is not the time to tell them about how you thought about what to say; that’s a cue to check your phone in any language. So is opening with an unrelated personal anecdote. Don’t stall. Start.

Your opening is an enormous opportunity. Seize it. With the right words, you can neutralize whatever doubt, bias, or distraction your audience brought with them — not defeat it, but turn it sideways so they can see past it.

Jamie Oliver started a TED talk: “Sadly, in the next 18 minutes when I do our chat, four Americans that are alive will be dead from the food that they eat.”

That’s not an opening line. That’s an opening move. An opening line gets their attention; an opening move earns their investment. Know the difference, and you’re already acing the test.