Being Succinct

Post Reply New Topic

Does anyone have trouble being concise in their words and, if so, are there any ways you have found to mitigate this/compensate for it?

I am in the last year of grad school, doing a practicum, and several people have commented on this as something they see as a problem/weakness. I have struggled with it all my life. Even when writing assignments, I often spend hours writing in too much detail and cutting out lots of it after due to it being redundant. As a result, it takes me significantly longer to do written assignments than it takes others.

This is also the reason I have had to script my seminars as a TA; anything open-ended just sends me into a rut of trying to pick out the relevant bits (it can take LOTS of thinking to pick out the right relevant bits). It always feels like everything crashes down on me initially and if I don't get the time to piece things together in my head and work through aggregating the details (which I really don't anymore), I often just end up retaining everything as this huge mess.

When I try to make things short and concise from the get-go, though, I miss the point and people need to ask more questions to get the right info out of me. So I've learned to stay on the safe side and just give more details than needed.

I have that problem too. My solution was to find a friend who is an excellent editor and who does not charge me.

I either write way too many words or manage to write just enough. Neither of which is exactly great. I go by the word count if I've written too much I cut stuff out, if it's within word count I just leave it alone.

My verbal utterances, I just have to deal with them and people just have to tolerate them. But for my important writing, I have to use an editor.

-snip- Yes, sometimes I have -snip--snip- trouble being succinct when writing -snip--snip--snip--snip-.

Yes. When I am really doing well and I can speak clearly, I will let people in my life know the different ways that my speech can become affected when I am overwhelmed or stressed. I also let them know how my levels of comprehension and ability to understand and process things can change drastically as well. If I find it hard to verbalize this stuff to them, I will usually email them about it in pretty extensive detail. And I ask them to please understand and be patient with me because these are not things that I can help. I don't do them on purpose, it's just how my brain responds to certain situations. I will even explain to them in advance that there are times that I can become completely mute as well. I have a friend who is really good at helping me explain things to others when I can't do it myself. I have his permission to have people call him and ask him questions that can help them understand what is happening to me if they need to. But that would be in extreme cases.

Usually if I just let people know in advance either in written form or when I can actually speak well, I find that they are very understanding and helpful. I also carry a little card I made in my wallet to explain this to people. But I think that for you in an academic setting where people should be more educated, having a card that you can show them to explain what you have trouble expressing verbally might be a really good idea. Sometimes I also ask people if I can just text them as well rather than being verbal and people seem to be very good about that.

Even if you don't want to disclose that you are Autistic, I do but I understand those who don't, people will still understand if you tell them you have a condition that affects your speech, either on a card or when you are able to speak well. You don't have to tell them what the condition is. They tend to be very understanding once you let them know.

I usually have the opposite problem. I've heard "brevity is the soul of wit", though, so at least there's that.

Just pause before you open your mouth, and think: "what is the nub of the case?", or "what is the main point?", and then build out from that main point. Start with what you want and build up, rather than saying everything, and then trying to cut down.