"Why do I get out of bed and go to work?"

Have you ever looked at a job description and wonder "What makes the person in that job get out of bed in the morning and come to work?" What about those days when you hit the brick wall and wonder "Why do I want to get out of bed this morning and go to work?" We've all been there, we've all had days where we are just warming the chair and not being our most productive selves. We still carry on through meetings, webinars, training, etc. but on these days are we learning? How do we as designers engage our learners on these days?

I don't know about you, but when these days are around for me if something doesn't catch my attention within the first 5 seconds I'm gone and on to something else that might provoke my interest and engage my attention. So there is an answer for designing, it needs to grab your attention immediately, no big long lead in about what you're going to learn, no pages of text telling you what is coming next, you need to get the attention of the learner NOW or you won't get to later.

There is a lot of information out there about designing attention grabbing graphics and those are great but they also need to be followed up with continued attention grabbing content. In this fast paced world, were it is admitted that most people don't read past the first three lines of an email, if our learners aren't interested and engaged they are gone and our work has been for nought and we begin to wonder "why do I get out of bed this morning to go to work?". It is up to us to get our learners engaged and then keep them that way so we ourselves can stay motivated and know why we get out of bed in the morning.