what we lose when when we fear prolixity and live brevity

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.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Yet sometimes extreme brevity is uncool. Like:

1. More haste, less speed.
   1. 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.
   2. And multitasking is a myth. Every time the inbox pings, your concentration on that important thing pings away. Hey.
2.  Some things can’t be explained in a text, or a one-line email.
   1. Like love, or systems.
   2. 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.

Doctors don’t want to hear about anything that doesn’t lead to writing a prescription… Seth Roberts: Grandmother knows best about Crohn’s Disease

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/b1J5WqbQpL4/seth-roberts-grandmother-knows-best-about-crohns-disease.html