A Case for Brevity

I have a somewhat keen interest in speed reading, because the world is fascinating and I only have so many years to learn it’s secrets. One speed reading technique involves reading only the first few sentences of a paragraph, because that’s where the author makes their point. The rest is just to convince you of it’s validity. I have seen this true in most places, especially on the internet in blog posts.

Which is why I find myself wondering why I even write posts, every time I write a post. What am I trying to say? If I have something to say, is it worth an entire post? Do I need to convince people it’s true?

I just read a post about perseverence being the key to success, and it was quite long. At least 600 words. I read the first few sentences, then the first sentence of each paragraph and gained no new insights. The author spent their entire post trying to convince me that perseverence is essential for success in anything. Is that something that people need to be convinced of? Are there really people who don’t already know this? If so, would they likely be reading this article? I don’t think so.
The entire article could have been replaced with “Natural talent is mistakenly assumed to be largely responsible for success; perseverence has more effect on success”.

That’s what’s been holding me back from blogging a lot. I find it difficult to justify padding a simple point out to a “respectable” sized post. I think it’s time I embraced brevity.