Wes Kao: preference

Transcript context

…Yeah, I found this extremely powerful just like five minutes before you get into a meeting. And it could happen earlier in the day, right? It doesn't have to happen right before the meeting, or worst case, it's right before the meeting. Just, "Okay, what do I want to get out of this? What am I here? What do I want to say?" And just like giving your brain a little bit of time to prepare. Super powerful. In writing, is there like any tactics you can share for someone to be a little more concise? I think the main tactic is to remind yourself to be concise. And usually when I do that, I end up trimming 20% at least of what I wrote, tightening up some sentences. I also ask myself, how might I be adding cognitive load to whatever it is that I'm saying? So is there a tighter, clearer, cleaner way that I can ask what I'm asking or present the information I'm presenting or make the recommendation that I'm making? And usually if you even ask yourself that, your brain automatically comes up with stuff. You just see whatever you wrote differently and you're like, "Oh shit, I could trim this entire paragraph because that's secondary." And maybe you have your primary message in Slack, and then within the thread add some of the secondary stuff, right? So I find that most of us, it's reminding yourself to be concise. And once you think of it, your brain naturally will see places where you can trim. There's a layer of advice under this that you're not saying that I'm going to say, which is actually look at the thing you wrote at least once before you share it. Because I used to be really bad at this. I just like, "Okay, I don't have time. I wrote this doc, send it, get feedback. ... really bad at this. I just like, "Okay, I don't have time. We wrote this doc, send it, get feedback. All right. Send this email. I don't have time to read this email." And I find just forcing yourself to look at it solves so much of this.…

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