Slowing down to save time
Pascal
“I’m sorry I wrote you such a long letter. I didn’t have time to write a short one.” So Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician and philosopher, allegedly excused himself once. Or perhaps it was Mark Twain or George Bernard Shaw.
It’s witty, it’s ironic, it’s true: that’s why any of them might have said it.
Here is how I know that: I write for The Economist, and most of our articles are short. I’ve opined on the subject of optimal length in writing before, but in this context, let’s just say that it is the shortening that takes all of the time.
Because I have so little time, I got into the bad habit of not shortening, and not cleaning up, my emails. You see, there were too many emails, and I was too busy to take time for any one of them. (Bear with me. You’re supposed to find an irony building.)
But why were there so many emails in the first place? Oh yes, because all sorts of people (mainly PR people, but also others) are writing me emails. And those are all busy, busy, busy people, with very little time. So their emails are long and sloppy. They refer to an attachment that is missing. They invite me to an event on the wrong date, or omit the date, or the place, even as they somehow find paragraphs of other things to say.
So then, since we are all so very, very busy, we shoot the emails back and forth to clarify this and rectify that, and the threads grow and take more of our time, making us even busier and requiring us to write even faster, thus making our emails longer and sloppier….
So, for a few months, I’ve been trying an experiment. I respond less fast, and often not at all. When I do email, I take more time. I actually read through emails before I push Send. I check that phone numbers and dates are correct, and that all the information is there. I think about what is extraneous and what I can cut.
Lo, the threads are getting ever so slightly shorter, the iterations fewer, the decisions more decisive.
Fewer words → more meaning
Less activity → more action
To my surprise, I am finding that, by slowing down, I have more time. If, like Pascal, I need to write a letter, I might now be able to make it … shorter. I hope I can keep this up.
So true! Too many of my colleagues confuse activity and productivity and feel that if they aren’t always doing something (i.e., looking busy) they won’t live up to expectations of how a self-importantly busy person should appear.
That’s problem one, problem two is instant communication telecommunications devices in the hands of those same people–they feel obligated to use them even if they have nothing to say.
Thus, to be infinitely brief takes an eternity. Shouldn’t be too hard to prove mathematically.
b = 1/t
brilliant
You appear, in so many words, to advocate *a little less conversation* (ie words) and a little more action……..
A little more bite and a little less bark……..
Well said.
In this spirit of my post, I did not log on to see all of your comments for a full day.
less touchy => more feely
It looks like “Hannibal and Me” may at last have *crossed the 49th parallel.*
Thanks for that, Christopher. It’s not really a “review”, is it? More like a brief description. But it’s great that I’ve crossed the 49th.
…..It’s not really a “review”, is it? More like a brief description………
We northerners like to read our books uninfluenced by what anyone thinks about them.
It’s the way we are.
Once again, you nailed it! I was grousing a few weeks ago about the amount of email and my wise assistant said, “look how little mail we now get.” Yet, when a letter was in the inbox, we never felt that we had to drop what we were doing to reply in two sentences. It takes discipline since I do believe that there is something addictive about the machines we enjoy so much but I have been trying this year (well, four weeks is a start.), to restrict my email “time” to a few periods each day instead of a continuous treadmill, believing that quality is better than quantity or speed of response.
“Discipline”: Indeed, that’s what is required nowadays.
I seem to recall reading somewhere that our neurological response to our devices is the same as when we gamble. There’s an addictive thing going on.
Thanks, Jim.
Had you seen this *quite glowing review* by an authority on Hannibal, of your book?
The reviewer describes your Großonkel as “charismatic”.
Was he?
Wow. Thank you, Christopher!
The reviewer is not any old reviewer. Patrick Hunt is the leading living Hannibal scholar, so this means a lot. I’ll do a blog post about it later today.
Thanks again!