Nobody wants to be ‘that guy’ who goes on and on. Besides, one-liners are cool.
So if you have a lot to say, maybe you should blog (kettle? black?)? Of course, that’s why I do – right now I’m channelling Seth Godin.
Yet sometimes extreme brevity is uncool. Like:
- More haste, less speed.
- Oh boy. A work colleague sends you an email. It’s 3 words. It might be ambiguous, so at the risk of looking a bit silly, you reply asking: Did you mean x or y? they reply, tersely, in what appears to be confirmation. So you then say: So what we are saying is the blah blah is x and not y because of [reason]. You don’t need me to tell you how much longer that took.
- And multitasking is a myth. Every time the inbox pings, your concentration on that important thing pings away. Hey.
- Some things can’t be explained in a text, or a one-line email.
- Like love, or systems.
- Or why? why usually needs space, which, increasingly, we ‘don’t have time for’.
Call me Captain Prolixity, for reasons that you don’t have time for.
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