0:04 while working on his masterpiece ulysses
0:06 the novelist james joyce ran into a
0:08 friend who asked him how the writing was going
0:09 going
0:12 joyce responded that he had been working
0:15 all day and produced only two sentences
0:16 his friend asked
0:20 you've been seeking the right words
0:22 no said joyce
0:24 i have the words already what i'm
0:26 seeking is the perfect order of the
0:29 words and the sentences i have
0:32 it took james joyce seven years to write
0:33 his novel
0:34 now you probably don't want to spend
0:36 that kind of time working on the typical
0:38 reports proposals and emails that you write
0:39 write
0:41 yet i've never met a business writer who
0:45 intended to be wordy the problem comes
0:48 in seeing what to leave out
0:51 consider these four tips to help you cut
0:53 the clutter
0:55 first don't write too soon
0:58 just as in a sprint or marathon it
1:01 doesn't matter how slowly you start
1:05 what counts is your finishing time
1:06 some people
1:08 dash off an email or report as if they're
1:09 they're
1:12 they have no strategy at all they write
1:14 it full speed keying in whatever
1:16 thoughts come to their mind and then
1:19 they organize and they rearrange on the fly
1:21 fly
1:23 by the time they get to the end of that
1:25 document they've collected quite a few
1:28 details in their path as they cut
1:30 through to the conclusion now
1:32 now
1:34 the the real problem
1:37 is that the reader has to follow that
1:39 same clutter to arrive at that conclusion
1:41 conclusion often
1:42 often
1:45 you can bypass much of the clutter if
1:48 you take your time at the start to think
1:51 about where you want to end that race
1:52 what's the key message that you want to
1:56 get across what's the shortest path to
1:57 get there
2:00 what detail is essential to arrive at
2:02 that destination
2:04 what detail would actually be irrelevant
