“I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.”

I once ran a client meeting where I spoke for 30 minutes.
And said nothing.

Seven-syllable words. Five acronyms.
Even a metaphor about “ecosystem alignment.”
(Still don’t know what I meant. Pretty sure they didn’t either.)

At the end, the client blinked and asked:
“So… what are you recommending?”

That one stung. She was right — and I was a little embarrassed.

I wasn’t clarifying the idea.
I was camouflaging it.
Trying to sound impressive instead of being helpful.

We’ve all done it. Especially when the stakes feel high.
But in today’s workplace, clarity is king.
(Move over, cash.)

Speed matters. Attention is short.
If your message meanders, your impact disappears.

There’s a line I come back to again and again — one of my favorites, often credited to Mark Twain:

“I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.”

I think about that a lot.
It’s easy to fill space. It’s harder to earn it.

Writing the short letter is the hard part.
But it’s also the part that shows respect for your audience’s time.

Clarity doesn’t always mean saying less.
It means making everything you say matter more.