Your Message Isn't Annoying. It's Fighting Biology.

You know that message you’ve been repeating over and over? The one you’re worried everyone is tired of hearing?

Keep saying it.

Because chances are, they didn’t really hear it the first time. Or the second. Or even the third.

It’s not that your audience is ignoring you. You’re fighting biology.

Let’s start with priors.

Cognitive scientists and neuroscientists talk a lot about “priors,” which are the mental models we all carry around, based on our past experiences and learned expectations. These priors are shortcuts, and they help us navigate a complex world. But they also mean your message has to battle with a preexisting belief system just to get through.

When you say something new, people don’t hear it on a blank slate. They hear it through the lens of everything they’ve learned and experienced. So your message has to be heard, decoded, and accepted before it stands a chance of sticking.

That’s a tall order.

And then there’s the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve—a classic piece of psychology that shows how quickly we forget new information. It’s crazy fast. Within a day, we forget up to 70% of what we’ve just learned. Within 30 days, we only remember about 10%.

You might have said something once in a company meeting. Maybe twice in an email. But if that message doesn’t get reinforced, reshaped, and repeated, it’s almost guaranteed to evaporate.

So no, you’re not annoying anyone by repeating your message. You’re giving it a fighting chance to survive.

What You Can Do to Help Your Message Stick

• Say it in multiple formats. Don’t just talk about it in meetings. Put it in writing. Add it to slide decks. Drop it into Slack. The brain processes things differently depending on the medium, so hit a few.

• Repeat with variation. Repetition doesn’t mean robotic. Say the same thing, but change the example. Tell a story. Use a metaphor. The brain loves pattern, but it loves novelty, too.

• Connect to their priors. If you can’t beat priors, join them. Frame your message in ways that build on what people already believe. Start where they are, not where you wish they were.

• Make it a campaign, not an announcement. Important messages need a cadence, not a one-and-done moment. Think in weeks and months, not just meetings and memos.

• Listen for echoes. When you start hearing your message repeated back to you by others, you’re making progress. Until then, assume you still have work to do.

Communication can’t work like a broadcast. It’s has to be a campaign. And successful campaigns aren’t shy about repetition.

The brain needs it. Your message deserves it.