Brief: Make a Bigger Impact by Saying Less

Chapter 2

Mindful of Mind-filled-ness

Long story, short. Today's fast-paced world of information, inattention, interruptions, and impatience requires you to make your point before your audience gets distracted.

Brevity Is Like an Instant Stress Release

An executive coach once said to me, “You'd be hard-pressed to find a businessperson say at the end of the day, ‘I have some extra mental capacity to handle more.’”

You work around people who are mentally stretched. When you are succinct, you instantly make their life easier. And they remember and are grateful to you for that.

The source of that stress? Executives suffer growing pressure from:

1. Information inundation: an unending flood of words, images, sounds, and social media

2. Inattention: an inability to stay focused on one item for more than 10 seconds

3. Interruptions: a steady stream of problems competing for time and consideration

4. Impatience: a growing intolerance for results

This is your world—mine too. And it's only getting worse.

Battling Overcapacity

People can think clearly when they are safe on land. When they are drowning, however, there is only one thing on their mind: finding a life preserver. The new brutal reality is that people are drowning in information. It floods them everywhere they go.

Executives today wake up in the morning and immediately grab their smartphones to check texts, e-mail, updates, sports, ...