Be Concise

Concision. (Sounds like I made up another word.) It's the idea of being concise in our ongoing communication with others, both written and oral.

Many take forever to say so little. These are the same people who spend a lot of time in meetings. Some who may have little to say use lots of words to say what could be said in a few words. It is boring. It wastes time. It reduces productivity. Theirs and yours.

I do not suggest that all of our communications ought to be reduced to one or two words. There ought to be time in the workplace for idle chat. It leads to relationship building and a better quality of life. However, it is sometimes more productive to simply say "blah" rather than "blah, blah, blah".

As a practical matter, it is becoming more and more important to be concise as we drown in this era of information overload. We get more information impressions in one day than our great-grandparents 100 years ago got in a lifetime. Think about it. 100 years ago, you may have looked a seed catalog, a shared newspaper, and an occasional book, if you owned one. Today, we have information coming at us from all directions.

The average working businessperson receives, on average, 150 new communications each day via telephone, voicemail, mail, fax, and email. When email became available a few years ago, it was supposed to take the place of a lot of other communications, including first class mail. The truth is, all other forms of communication have held their volume (or even increased) and we now have email to deal with on top of it all.

Want to be more concise in your communications and save time? Here are two suggestions.