Image by Nicholas Konrad / The New Yorker

You’re Oversharing: Smart Brevity Book Review

The One Big Thing:

Most people share too much information and focus on extraneous details when writing and speaking. Just like we do in our coaching practice, Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More With Less brings attention to these blind spots and gives practical tips to improve your communications.

Big Picture:

People talk and write for themselves—we see it regularly with our senior-level career coaching and executive coaching clients. These professionals neglect what the listener needs to hear and, in the process, overwhelms—or underwhelms—their audience.

Mark Twain, writing to a friend in 1871, confessed, “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.”

It’s common to overindulge in words. It’s easier to write (or speak) than to edit—and you were likely taught that length equals depth (remember 500 word-count essay requirements?). The risk is that your key message will be missed completely.

Why It Matters:

It’s 2023 and we’re inundated with communications. Social media, emails, texts, DMs, podcasts, streaming services—the list is endless and distractions are constant. We have less time and more information, yet people are writing in the same way they have been for generations. Smart Brevity explains: “People’s consumption habits have evolved, but communication hasn’t.”

If you see or hear everything, you remember nothing. Don’t let your audience choose what to remember—pick for them.

Go Deeper:

With information coming at us in a rapid fire pace from every angle, how do you get anyone to focus on what matters? The authors respond:

“Adapt to how people consume content—not how you wish they did, or they did once upon a time. Then, change how you communicate, immediately.”

Through chapters on everything from writing emails to delivering presentations to impactful emoji use, Smart Brevity reinforces how to be heard on what matters most.

Our favorite tips include:

• Write like you speak. Would you use these words at a bar or on the beach? Stop using fancy SAT words or business-speak.
• Always use the active voice. Tell me a story, don’t tell me about a story.
• Use visuals like bullets and bold type to break up the flow.
• Shorter is always better. A one-syllable word is more powerful than a two-syllable word.
• Review each line of your communication. If that were the only thing the person sees or hears, is it exactly what you want to stick?

The Bottom Line:

We tend to think too much about what we want to say versus what others need to hear. We abandon our audience.

Being frugal with words for the sake of brevity results in approachable, clear, and simple communications that can realistically be digested in our modern world. Brevity is confidence.

At CloseCohen, we teach our career coaching and executive coaching clients to communicate in defense of the listener—from resume writing and interview preparation to meeting leadership, presentations, and promo docs. Ready to uplevel your communication style for impact? Book a consultation to get started.