articulate my thoughts clearly, concisely and completely

Prompted by my favourite person, I’ve reworked this goal to be a more accurate (in terms of objective and grammar!) wording.

• Clear: When I talk, write or make a request, I need to be unambiguous. The person I’m talking to should know exactly what I want, need, or am saying.
• Concise: I’ve never really been one for, how can I put this, utilising an unnecessary amount of verbiage. However, there’s a difference between using few words and actually using enough words to get my point across. So rather than aiming for the fewest possible words, I need to use an appropriate number of words.
• Complete: This clause reinforces the first two, but also provides some natty alliteration as well as filling in an important gap: knowledge gaps. Knowledge gaps are dangerous, because you can never predict how people will fill in the gaps. Some people may ask, some people may assume (and we know what assuming means…) , some people may see the opposite of the original intent and any number of alternatives, none of which are actually what was meant.

I worked on this a little bit in several meetings I was in this afternoon, and I felt like I was a lot more effective. I’m not exactly sure how I can best measure my progress on this (suggestions welcome!), but the 3C wording should at least make it memorable for me.

Some progress was made regarding work, although there’s still more that can be done.

Sometimes I’ll say something, but my nature is to use as few words as possible, or my mind will move on to something else, and then it ends up where my point isn’t apparent to the listener, because I’ve missed whole bits of information out that I assume everyone else knows because I know it.

It can’t always be the listeners fault when my words are misinterpreted, so I need to include more information and be more explicit about what I actually mean.

I need to get a lot more specific in the language I use when I ask people to do things – as in “I need you to do this task X, but only after you’ve finished the more important task Y that you were already working on.”

...and his girlfriend bought me a book from my wishlist about clarity. It seems quite short and readable from a first glance, so I might read it tomorrow or Friday.

I should think about things for a second or two longer before I speak out.

I’m going to attend the Edinburgh group’s meeting this coming Tuesday. Should be… interesting.

Seems like I’m all about passing on interesting articles just now. Here’s another one:

In way too many meetings, the fastest talkers win. And by “fastest talkers”, I mean those who are the first to articulate an idea, challenge, issue, whatever. Too many of us assume that if it sounds smart, it probably is, especially when we aren’t given the chance to think about it. The problem is, the guy with the “gut feeling”-the one who senses that something’s not right, but has no idea how to explain it, let alone articulate it on the spot-might be right. Too bad, though, because the glib usually rule.

Let’s face it—the clever, witty, glib talkers can make the non-clever, non-witty, and non-glib sound like slow dolts. Slow-to-articulate is mistaken for slow-in-the-head. And as the world speeds up and decisions have to be made right frickin’ NOW, it just gets worse.

So there’s the heart of the problem—if you’re not able to explain your thoughts, ideas, and concerns quickly and articulately, you are often at a disadvantage. I’ve been there. I am there. I’m capable of thinking (some would debate that), willing to do the research, and reasonably articulate. But I need time! I have never been one of those think-on-your-feet types. With the exception of those few things in which I have a lot of expertise and experience, I pretty much suck at having to explain, defend, or promote something in real-time.

The problem is that I can’t get anything back out of memory on demand, by which I mean it only re-appears when triggered in a conversation or something by someone else—I can’t trigger it myself. That makes it pretty hard to justify any claims I happen to make, such as say, in an 8 hour meeting where I know I know more than the person I’m debating against, but I’m unable to process anything in order to form a coherent argument.

Why can’t I write down what’s in my brain? Why does my mouth sometimes use hitherto undiscovered words and imaginary grammatical structures?

Isn’t there some sort of brain anti-freeze available?

[THUD as forehead makes contact with desk]