Ideas and insights are more important than form and length. Conciseness is underrated!
I can never agree with requests to write a minimum number of characters, words or pages for an article, research paper, feedback field, blog post or even books. Is the quantity of the work more important than the quality of the content?
In our school system everyone is still taught to write a minimum number of pages. Publishing firms still ask for books to have over a certain number of pages. Research papers still have to be long and boring.
But in a fast moving society we have less and less time to spend on reading between the lines to uncover ideas worth spreading and meaningful insights. If there is something worth knowing, something that can make a change in our life – it better be to the point, short and easy to read.
The business world and the society as a whole is moving towards ideas and meaningful insights presented briefly but having a huge impact. Sales people are constantly under time pressure and need to close sales in less and less time. Business consultants need to get results instantly. News need to be delivered a minute ago. Everything needs to be as fast and as compact as possible.
Even stories. No matter how inspiring you want to make them, if they’re too long people will just refuse to read them. More and more people first look at how big is what they have to read and only after that, upon brief context analysis, start reading.
How about setting a minimum number of great ideas, useful insights or meaningful research instead?