Catering to Millennials in the Smartphone Era →

Kevin Clark reports on how The 49ers are changing their operations to cater to millennials:

As players arrived for voluntary workouts and minicamps this spring and summer, they noticed sweeping changes designed to cater to how research shows millennials learn. That means making concessions for people with shorter attention spans, a desire to multitask and, yes, a need to check their phones all the time.

Facing this new reality, the 49ers turned the typical meeting, which on some teams can go for as long as two hours, into 30-minute blocks, each followed by 10-minute breaks that allow players to do what young people do. That is, as Tomsula puts it, to “go grab your phone, do your multitasking and get your fix” before returning the meeting.

“The [experts] are telling me about attention spans and optimal learning,” he said. “I’m thinking, ‘My gosh, we sit in two-hour meetings. You are telling me after 27 minutes no one’s getting anything?’ ”

The bulk of the changes—from enhanced digital playbooks to weekly briefings on social media—have a common theme. Instead of the coaches making millennials change, the coaches are changing to better work with the millennials, even if that means allowing some necessary evils.

As millennials grow up and start entering the work force, catering to short attention spans will progressively become our future. Instead of resisting it, we must work with it and embrace it, in anything and everything.

One small, personal example — I've changed the way I write.

Shortly after posting my Apple Watch review, an old high school buddy of mine called me up to talk about it. He joked about how our old high school English teachers would rip me apart for my writing style.

I told him, "They can just kiss my ass."

My English teachers were experts on writing in a previous version of the world. Our world is different now and I've adapted my writing style accordingly.

I now make a very conscious effort to break up my long form posts into smaller sections. My paragraphs are usually 2-3 sentences long. And I liberally make use of tweet-size bullet points to allow for easy scanning.

Based on the response I've been receiving from my social media-savvy friends, Twitter followers, and mobile readers, my millennial-friendly writing style is working pretty well.