Have you ever written long post, or comment, or email, on some topic, and then lost it? You spend all this time crafting your piece, making this point and that, and then the power goes out, or you’ve timed out, or Windows crashes. Sooo frustrating! The first time this happened to me, I actually felt sick. (I had spent about twenty minutes trying to be eloquent — or was I ranting? — in some forum or other. When I clicked submit, my session had expired, and I was taken to the “your session has expired; please login again” page. No amount of clicking Back or reload helped. It was like a mini death in the family when I realized I wasn’t going to get my purple prose back.I sat there stunned for a little while, and then finally got up the courage to try to remember the more important points I had made, and rewrite the thing. Eventually I pushed something out, but it didn’t have anywhere near the satisfying feeling to it that the first draft did.
Anyhow, the other day I heard a good tip, which I thought I’d pass on. It was made in the context of communicating more efficiently, and therefore more effectively. I forget where I heard it, but it might have been Tim Ferriss’s book The 4-Hour Workweek. The tip was to always draft email messages as though I had already typed a long version and lost it, and I am just reiterating the most important points. Basically, get concise stupid! And stop treating other people’s time like my own little freewriting playground. Not only will other people appreciate their time being respected (if I do it right, maybe they don’t even notice!), but I appreciate the brain exercise and the resulting clearer thinking.
For a happy life, write like you’re summarizing yourself.
