Do Yourself a Favour and Keep It Short

The little communication technique with big benefits

This blog is no stranger to promoting slowing down as a smart communication technique, as well as a general wellness tip. It’s a simple and effective, yet surprisingly overlooked, way to control, improve and make the most of your communication. Here’s another one: keep it short.

As a writer and editor, one of my main tasks is reducing length and cutting out superfluous text. As a coach, I also frequently explore ‘keeping it short’ with my clients. Often, because of habit or a lack of confidence, we tend to say too much, usually by over-explaining and justifying. When we practise restraining our need to give more because we don’t feel like we are enough, we build our self-esteem. It is an empowering exercise, and important and effective when practising assertiveness.

Keeping it short is a useful communication strategy for many other reasons. Read on to discover how and why to keep it short.

Manage your speech

When speaking, keeping it short helps you to slow down and manage your speech. Use of shorter sentences and passages will give you more opportunities to breathe and control your pace, making speech easier and more effective.

Be better understood

People will understand you better when you keep it short. Long sentences/passages can be hard for others to follow, and hard for you to keep going. Choose full stops over commas. Learn to punctuate your speech with pauses too, and watch your conversations become more successful.

Reduce errors

Keeping it short helps us to keep our writing under control and leaves fewer chances for errors. This is especially useful with social media, which can be instant and unforgiving. When we do make errors, they are easier to correct when we’ve kept it short.

Keep their attention

Time is precious and attention spans are short. That’s one reason Instagram Stories and TikTok videos are so popular and only a few seconds long. Whether we like it or not, we have to adapt to that fact as best we can, and our audiences will thank us for it. If they want more, they’ll ask for it.

Make an impact

Most of us have endured wedding speeches or work presentations that drag on and lose their impact. Learn from them — say only what needs to be said, and say it briefly and simply. Make your point and move on.

Sound confident

Shorter statements are interpreted as more direct and confident.

Save your energy

Keeping it short will save you time and energy too. Use them for other things that are more important to you.

Remember …

Remember, if in doubt, go without; quality over quantity; short is sweet, and less is more.

Which of these tips will you implement to make your communication more successful?

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Siobhán Gallagher specialises in self-leadership coaching and holistic communication coaching/training. She is an EMCC-accredited coach practitioner, qualified discourse analyst and writer. Join her mailing list. Connect with her at siobhangallagher.co and Instagram.

Originally published at https://www.siobhangallagher.co on August 31, 2021.