Smart Brevity

The Takeaway
Smart Brevity is fantastic and game-changing for what it is and what it tries to be, though it's helpfulness is much more limited than its authors seem to realize.

The Big Picture
The authors of this book are the founders of both Politico and Axios. If you've ever been to the Axios website, you know what “smart brevity” is. It is the philosophy they use in their writing and visual design. It's a way to communicate the most things in as brief a way as possible to respect the time and limited attention spans of readers online.

Go Deeper
The book itself unsurprisingly follows these same principles. It is short, but not shallow. It offers sobering statistics about how little time people spend actually reading things online, and gives simple, clear, actionable advice for communicators to implement these principles in a wide range of applications and mediums. It also serves as a mini-advertisement of their AI program they built to help businesses implement this throughout their work.

The Upside
They apply these principles to many, many areas–and I'm convinced! For businesses, newsletter writers, marketing and communications, social media, leaders and supervisors of all kinds, I see how smart brevity is the way the current world needs to function.

It feels like a superpower once you start trying to work with it, but it's a muscle that needs to be exercised. I have been trying to use it in emails, text messages, and conversations with my wife and she has really appreciated it. (I am naturally very wordy).

Yes, But...
Smart brevity's applications are more limited than the authors imply. They offer smart brevity as the greatest way of communicating and transmitting information today. But outside of a brief mention of fiction and poetry in the introduction, they don't talk about where they think smart brevity doesn't work well.

I mainly communicate in academia, religious preaching, and this blog. I am often not just sharing facts, but making an argument–a form of communication which, in a polarized world, is dominating more of our interactions. They never talk about this.

One can no longer just say a perspective and leave it there. They must anticipate rebuttals, demonstrate their knowledge of the subject, show their work logically and intellectually to show how they got somewhere. And this takes words. Not just bolded headings and bullet points.

My Take
So yes, Smart Brevity is already having a hugely positive effect on my life. Even a cursory scan of my writing shows I need to do this more. I write and say way too much.

But words still matter. The beauty of words still matter. I know the authors would say they also love words and think smart brevity can be beautiful. And that is all true. But there are realms and topics of communicating for which “short” really does mean short-changed.