Bond Never Starts at the Beginning

The first thing James Bond does is move.

He doesn’t explain the mission.
He doesn’t introduce himself.
He doesn’t tell you what’s about to happen.

He drops you straight into motion - skis already carving, breath already shallow, the ground already falling away.

By the time the title sequence rolls, your brain has already decided: this matters.

Bond doesn’t ask for attention.
He demands it.

💡 ONE IDEA WELL

Starting in medias res — in the middle of things — works because it flips the brain from judgment to prediction.

Instead of thinking:
​Is this worth listening to?

The audience starts thinking:
​What happens next?

That shift is everything.

Once prediction kicks in, attention sustains itself. The audience stops evaluating you and starts travelling with you. You don’t have to convince them. You just have to keep moving.

Bond has understood this for decades.

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• Goldfinger opens after the job is done. Bond calmly peels off a wetsuit to reveal a tuxedo. The danger has already passed. What hooks us is control.
• The Spy Who Loved Me begins in near silence — skis, breath, snow — before a sudden cliff edge forces a decision. Only then does the parachute bloom. Suspense first. Reward second.
• GoldenEye starts with a man stepping off a dam into open air. No context. Just commitment.
• Casino Royale throws us into a breathless parkour chase. Messy, improvised, human.

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Different eras. Same principle.
​Action before explanation.

🧰 LESS MESS, MORE MESSAGE

Most talks begin by clearing the throat.

Context.
Credentials.
Caveats.

Which means the audience spends the opening minutes deciding whether to listen.

Bond never does this.

He knows explanation is not an entry fee — it’s a reward.

When you start in motion, the brain stops judging and starts participating. And there’s a hidden benefit: when attention is fully engaged, time feels shorter. Talks that start this way don’t just land better — they feel better to sit through.

🎥 TRY THIS

For your next talk:

Find the moment where something changes — a mistake, a decision, a consequence

➡ Start there
➡ Add the context only once the audience is leaning forward
➡ A ruthless test:
​
If you cut your first two minutes, would anything essential be lost or would the talk improve?

🧭 ASK YOURSELF THIS

Where does my story truly begin
and where am I choosing to make people wait?

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James Bond never waits for attention.
He starts mid-stride and trusts the audience to follow.

You can too.​
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Speak soon,

Andy

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Footnotes

• Posner, M.I., 1980. Orienting of attention. Quarterly journal of experimental psychology, 32(1), pp.3-25.
• Eagleman DM. Human time perception and its illusions. Current opinion in neurobiology. 2008 Apr 1;18(2):131-6.
• Zakay D, Block RA. An attentional-gate model of prospective time estimation. Time and the dynamic control of behavior. 1995 Nov;5:167-78.
• Zeigarnik, B., 1938. On finished and unfinished tasks.