Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less

I consult for businesses working with China. I also a teach Mandarin Chinese. The challenge of explaining culture to bridge differences, and the need to be sensitive to politics, can be a stroll through a minefield. I experience challenges with sharing information—trying to avoid sensitivities. The authors lay out the real challenge clearly: most of us take 26 seconds reading a piece of content, 15 seconds on most web pages, and decisions of like or dislike within 17 milliseconds! For me, mindfulness supports my awareness of thoughts. So, I "see" the struggle in my mind. In writing, I consider K.I.S.S. but never got the instructions. This book fulfills that! I love the simple challenge from the authors to write->a title, lede, content, and ”a choice“—all on one screen of a mobile phone! The book lays out easy-to-follow guidelines for me to abbreviate my verbosity! "Smart Brevity" makes total sense!

We all get way too many emails at work and this book teaches you how to be more concise but still get your message across. I wish all the people that send me emails would read this and learn from it so we can all get less emails with more information delivered in an interesting style. Really recommend this for anyone in business or for recent grads.

This book is worth its weight in gold. Every founder, CEO, teacher, college student, and parent needs to read "Smart Brevity." Axios has changed the game in helping us digest massive amounts of information in a way our twitter-trained-brains can understand. Smart Brevity will help you be a better leader and communicator.

This book teaches those who are verbose to use less words to make a point so you don’t lose your reader’s interest. It has helped me immeasurably!

When the news publication Axios debuted in 2017, it changed the world with its bullets, indents, and sequential sentence-by-sentence approach to reporting the news.Critics dismissed it as a fad and attack on long form writing.Readers delighted in the simplicity.A word is half what one says and half what another hears — and with Axios, readers revelled in the easy access to the most important points. They heard more because they were offered better — and less.Enter Smart Brevity — the new book by Axios co-founder Mike Allen, former chief political correspondent and co-founder of Politico, chief White house correspondent for the New York Times, Washington Post and on and on.Allen’s book seeks to teach the rest of us — in our business and personal lives — to write in short form as he does.To get our points across.And hit the highlights.Saving the longer form narrative for when you have time.As I’ve grown older, my writing is more like Hemingway than Dickens — less is more. More is more only when we have time — and no one ever has time.So get the book — and learn to get to your points quickly. This won’t disappoint you. Your teams and loved ones will delight in your simplicity.

Omg! 🚨 Smart Brevity is here!Hurry 🏃‍♀️. Don't delay. Add to 🛒.It will change you. Challenge you. Make you a kickass communicator.And you will get a raise.Especially if you write: emails, PPTs, blogs, newsletters, articles, book reviews and more!Buy this book. Seriously.It's smart and beautiful. The design, that is.5 🌟Lastly...Bless the fine folks at Workman Publishing for sharing this book with us on NetGalley so we can be the first to order our paper copies from our favorite independent bookstore!

Smart Brevity thrives as a scannable guide to efficient business communications. I'd recommend it to any professional who has read or written an email that was too long, or sat in a meeting that could've been a well-written email.Great job to Axios!

The advice from the Axios team is great. Hoping to see more companies adopt this in the coming years as the book and methodology takes off. Would highly recommend!

The way we consume information has changed so much, but the tactics and methods we use to deliver information have stayed the same.This easy-to-digest book details small yet transformative ways to reimagine your communications. I read it in under 2 hours and bought a copy for my partner's mom that's an executive and was recently complaining about how messy comms at her organization can be.

If I wanted a permanent adhesion, these would be great. I did not. And they weren't. Damaged the floor when I tried to remove the rugs to clean.

Sticks to the floor like super glue, of 8 used 5 did not adhere to the rubber backing of the rugs (rugs were new and clean). 3 did not stick to the rug but came apart as I attempted to remove them from the floor. They came off the floor like a sticky rubber band and left a thin plastic which left a residue of adhesive that was near IMPOSSIBLE to remove from the wood floor. I then used Goop, dish soap and a razor blade to remove residue. My efforts removed the gloss from the flooring but fortunately I had some Rejuvenate and restored most of the shine. Removing the adhesive residue from the three failed carpet hold downs took me the better part of an hour. I am now going to box up the 3 junk (shown in the photo), the 5 that won't stick to the rug and the 4 unused and send them back to the vendor for what I would hope is a refund. BUYER BEWARE! This is not a functional product. Who knows what product the 400 plus people received that thought this product was five star. Perhaps alcohol was involved!

I honestly doubted these rug stickies. But I will be ordering more! I ordered them for aging in-laws who have lots of older rugs with curling up corners. I followed directions applying rug corners then pressed them down for 10 seconds on hardwood floor. And voila! They work! Curled corners are straight and stay adhered to floor. Easy to remove rug from floor for cleaning.Be sure to clean floors before applying rug grippers.

This works pretty well with my rugs. I've only had one that didn't stick to the rug side very well and had to redo. I got these so my dogs wouldn't move the rugs around when they walk or run across them and it works great for that. The stickies are easy to remove from the floor and "might" be re-usable if you need to move the rug as long as you pull it from the floor and not from the rug itself. the adhesion won't restick the rug once removed, but it will stick back to the floor.

These are so much better than non-skid rug pads! They’re easy to apply, easy to remove if necessary, and keep area rugs totally locked in place. I mean, they’re rug grippers, nothing to get excited about, except I never have to re-adjust my rugs, or hold down the edges of the rugs with a foot when I vacuum, and rugs held down by these grippers do not move when pets run on or off of them. They work, they don’t damage the floors or the rugs, and they’re not expensive. So yeah, there’s a little to get excited about! Another tiny first-world problem solved.

This didn't stick to the rugs at all. It had no problem with the floor, but they're a waste of money. I'm not sure where the positive reviews are coming from, but I would not recommend this at all.

I use these on the corners of all the rugs I have in my kitchen, bathrooms, and hallways because they keep the rugs in place without adding another pad to the amount of things I need to clean. They're super easy to apply, and they're great for machine washable rugs because they can stay on the rug when it goes in the washing machine, and they're sticky again after washing. It's really easy to get them to be sticky again—washing with just water or wiping with rubbing alcohol does the trick. One thing I don't love about this pack is that it doesn't come with a little scraper to use to peel them up from the floor when you need to move the rug, and I have a little plastic scraper that I use all the time from a different rug sticker pack that I bought a while ago.

I bought these for my daughter in law. She loves it. The dogs no longer move it!!!

First, they have some good advice. For example, don't use words such as ubiquitous (everywhere) that no human will say. It just confuse the hack out of a lot of people.I agreed on a lot of the suggestions in the chapter "Smart Brevity Your Email". Bullets can make it easier for the readers to understand and get the points. However, I don't think it is necessary to bulletized every email. Short and concise email can still do the job.Chapters 15 to 18 are useful for working professionals as it covers email, meetings, speeches, and presentations. Some of the recommendations might or might not be applicable for everyone. It's best to use our own judgement.Overall, it is a good book and it'll help save the world from information overload. Will have more feedback after I finish reading the whole book.

You write too much for the way your readers consume information. No one has the time or patience to read everything they are sent, so it is likely that most of what you write goes unread.This matters to you personally because, as a knowledge worker, your contribution, influence and credibility depend on being heard, or in this case, being read. It matters to the organization when important information slips through the cracks and things happen—or don’t—as a result.Smart Brevity will teach you how to grab attention and keep it, and so ensure that your message gets across crisply and clearly. The authors share a formula which they have developed over their work in print and electronic media. As you see in this review: tease them with a good subject line, craft a short opening sentence that tells the one big thing, explain why it matters, and then go deeper as necessary. Simple and effective.As the author of Lean Communication, I am pulling for this book to take off, because it carries such an important message. But I do have to point out one caveat. The book could have been shorter by about 20%. There is too much backstory about Axios, the company the authors founded and run today, and after a while you get the feel that you are reading a corporate brochure.

A book has finally been written to improve how we speak and write.Why it matters: you will not be a bore, more people will listen, and read your words.

"Brevity is confidence. Length is fear."So begins "Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More With Less".I've shamelessly (and poorly) stolen the writing style of the authors' @Axios newsletters over the years.It's crisp, smart, skimmable and custom made for our impatient digital age.This is the playbook I've been longing for. How they do it. The secret sauce.If you write at all (and you do, all day long, I'm guessing) this book is for you.It's a clear, concise guide on how to communicate more effectively and make your voice heard through the digital din.Highly recommended.

Finished this book in one sitting and declared myself “guilty” at least 50 times. My downfall probably began in high school when we required to write 300 word essays which led to an overload of adjectives and adverbs. I have mostly valued my communication skills based on the volume of words not necessarily getting my message across. I am going to make a concerted effort to streamline both my written and verbal communication in the hope that people will not zone out on me.Good job to the three authors.

you will want to implement the strategies read in Smart Brevity. - this is not a dry text book. - real life insights provide you the 'why should I do this?'. - you will learn New ways to be efficient with your time. - this is a fast read. Keeps your attention.Do you want to be a better communicator and be seen as someone who won't waste others time? Then read this book.

Like others, I am giving this book a rating of 5. Establishes a new and long over due standard in writing. It definitely extremely useful for work related communication. However, if you like to engage in writing fiction, then Smart Brevity is not appropriate. I would hate to read Salinger, F Scott Fitzgerald or any other great literary writer's works if they had adopted Smart Brevity best practices. Imagine War and Peace being written in 100 pages. 😊

This book is must read for anyone in the workforce! We all know the struggles of not reading or missing something because it was too long and poorly written. Smart Brevity gives actionable tips and insights to be a better communicator. I will be buying this for my entire team!

149,513That is the number of emails being sent globally as you read this message.So how do you make yours (or any other type of message you are trying to share) cut through and make an impact?This is the premise of the new book by the Editors of the newsletter Axios in their new book Smart Brevity. And this may be the MOST helpful book I have read in 5 years.The authors take the research in brain and social science and combine it with their own success in communicating with millions of people each day to create an action plan for you to become a more impactful writer, speaker, presenter, or Tweeter.The key starting premise is that your message should be about the needs of the receiver and NOT your needs. By focusing on the key message you want to deliver and presenting it in a way that your audience will receive it, comprehend it, and retain it, you will change the impact you have with all of your communication.A bonus impact is by communicating this way, you have the opportunity to become more inclusive in your communication so the members of your audience who may suffer from challenges like Dyslexia or ADHD or who speak English as a second language will find your communication more readable and actionable.We are all bombarded with words all day. Smart Brevity can help you thin out the wasted words and focus on the message you want to deliver.

“Never in the history of humanity have we vomited more words in more places with more velocity,” say the authors of Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less.We’re all super busy. At the same time, smartphones deliver a flood of content. The key to breaking through is to create bit-sized content that gets noticed. Like TikTok. And like what Smart Brevity teaches.I love this brand-new book! In it, the founders of two hot media startups — Axios and Politico — share their transformative methods for punching through the noise to get people to pay attention to what matters most.Smart Brevity means: Write muscular headlines, six strong words or fewer. Create a memorable opening sentence. Provide context, why does this matter? Eliminate fluff and gobbledygook. Point people to where they can learn more.I need this help. Readers of this blog know that I often write too long. My headlines contain too many words. Sometimes it is tough for me to get to the point.I pre-ordered Smart Brevity because I am an Axios fan.Over the years, I’ve subscribed to dozens of email newsletters from media companies. No doubt, you have too. Most of them aren’t worth my time, so I unsubscribe. However, Axios email newsletters are super valuable, so much so that I now subscribe to several. Why? Because they are brief and to the point. At the top, each has a Smart Brevity™ count of the word count and the time require to read.Smart Brevity helped me. Perhaps it will help you too.