Over the last 20 years I’ve been part of too many discussions where someone goes “I’m having a hard time explaining this or that…” Then they say “I just really want to say this…” And then they say it and it’s clear, concise, and obvious! They nailed it, but…
…it’s as if they aren’t even listening to themselves because they’re right back to thinking about how to say what they just said. Only now they’re back to trying to make it more complicated than it needs to be. They should just say it like they said it a minute ago.
This happens to me often as well. It just happened this morning! I was working on some copy for a new home page design and I just wasn’t locking into my point in writing… So I said a few things out loud. They were better than anything I’d written, but then when I wrote them down I tried doctoring them up a bit because “marketing” and, once again, they fell flat.
We’re all told to be good listeners when someone else is talking, but we should work on being better listeners when we’re talking. We might find that we’ve already got the answers.
