Stop Writing 50-Page Reports No One Reads

I listened to Kublai Khan TX's most excellent album Nomad while writing this essay.

Consider Your Audience

The modern attention span is extremely short. You cannot change this fact. There are two paths that most people take when presenting their ideas:

1. My ideas are special and demand longer sustained attention.
2. I will distill the essence of my idea and package it for a short-attention-span audience.

I'm Special

Some ideas demand long-form. You're probably not working on one of these ideas at your job.

Prepare a long report or rambling email and you are either: not aware of the limitations of your audience, or, believe that you and your idea are somehow special - "Stop everything! I have something long-winded and visionary to say about how we're solving a solved problem!"

Building a CRUD app can be explained in one sentence. Changing a process can be explained with a few bullet points.

If you respect your audience, you will edit yourself aggressively - keeping the essence of your idea but packaging it neatly.

Edit

How much frivolous rambling was in the last email, powerpoint slide, or Slack message you wrote?

None at all you say? Here's how to truly find out: imagine the worst coworker you've ever in your career wrote your last email but you need the information it contains - does it seem fluffy when every second of reading it is pain? Now you know where you can tighten things up.

The best thing you can do for your audience isn't writing, it's deleting!