Halve your communications

Most communications are too long:

1. 60-minute meetings that could’ve taken 30
2. 20-slide presentations that could’ve been 10 (or none!)
3. War and Peace emails that could’ve been… well anything would’ve been better!

And since most communications are too long…

…that probably means that some of your communications are too long.

The solution?

Shorten them. A lot.

I always set my customers the target of halving their communications. To halve one or more of the following:

1. Quantity
2. Frequency
3. Duration
4. Content
5. Number of pages/slides
6. Meeting’s attendees

And even if someone ‘fails’ and ‘only’ reduces their communications by 20%…

… they’ve just removed the worst 20% of all their communications. Twenty per cent!

Here are some simple ways to halve your communications:

1. Review all last week’s communications. All those that achieved nothing – stop doing them
2. All those that could’ve been shorter – halve something(s) about them. The above bullets will help
3. Halve your default meeting duration. That way, for all future meetings, your calendar automatically schedules them for half the time they take now
4. For all your lengthy written comms, ask yourself “could I have called them, agreed the content verbally, and then sent a much shorter written confirmation?”
5. Ask your time efficient colleagues “how do you do it?”
6. Etc etc

How much time could you save if you halved your communications?

Or if you ‘failed’ in halving them – and ‘only’ reduced them by 20% – how much time would that save you?

Action Point

An obvious one this week – halve your communications!