Brief: Make a Bigger Impact by Saying Less

Chapter 5

Mental Muscle Memory to Master Brevity

Long story, short. It's not enough to know why you need to say less. There are four proven techniques that will ensure you gain this powerful muscle.

The Exercise of Brevity

Tackling a topic like brevity is ambitious. Early on in the project, friends and family would ask me, “How's the book going?” The question was innocent enough but tough to answer briefly. So I decided I needed a metaphor.

“It's like cutting down a huge tree, like a redwood. You can show up with an ax, but it's not enough,” I'd explain. “You have to think about how you're going to do it.”

A book about brevity cannot just touch on why it's needed. You need a plan of attack—details on how you're going to change. Over the years, I've seen people in a variety of professions experience aha moments of brevity. I've helped busy executives, intense Army officers, cynical sales directors, and many others grapple with this daunting challenge.

In Part Two, I will teach you how to master this skill.

I've based it on four proven approaches. You can use each of them alone or together to create mental muscle memory, that is, habits we should adopt and never abandon because they make us better professionals.

The approach looks something like this:

• Map it. BRIEF Maps are used to condense and trim volumes of information.
• Tell it. Narrative storytelling is used to explain in a way that's clear, concise, and compelling.
• Talk it. TALC Tracks turn monologues into controlled conversations. ...