Less is often more
I feel like “the American way” is to do things big. Everything is bigger here in America.
We live in a bigger is always better culture. And while it may be true in many cases, there are few that come to mind lately that I have learned are not.
For instance, writing. A lot of people put the metric for writing at a certain word count. If I am writing for a big publication, they will tell me to put out x number of words on a certain topic.
I have not thought of this much — but why put up a minimum. In theory, if you could deliver the same points across in let’s say half the time, why wouldnt you? People’s time is really valuable — the last thing I want to do is be wasting a ton of people’s time reading my unnecessarily long articles.
Most articles on the internet are way too long. Like this one is probably too long to get my point across.
The best writers do not write the lengthiest content.
The best writers say the most with the least. Succinctness is the key.
And I really love this quote. “If I had more time, I would have made this shorter.” To me, that is the simpleness and beautifulness of writing and communication. It is really hard to convey your point across quickly. Really really hard.
Originally published at Jordan Gonen.
By jordangonen on March 2, 2017.
Exported from Medium on February 17, 2018.