Less is More

During the course of last week I was involved in finalising the construction of an Assignment paper for one class of students who I teach at the Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT). It’s a comprehensive document covering a big chunk of learning that has been covered in the semester to date. 

I deliver the lectures in relation to this particular class in conjunction with a terrific fellow – over and above being highly qualified and experienced where teaching commercial subjects is concerned – who is based in Gisborne. As a prudent step in finalising newly-produced test and assignment papers, an important protocol calls for a colleague to review/ moderate the work of the producer of the given document.

My Gisborne based colleague applied his wise mind to the assignment paper that I had put together – to moderate it…to feedback where he felt alteration was justified. I smiled to myself reading through the feedback which simply said “Less is More” – which appeared next to particular text that was judged to be “surplus to requirement”. This little snippet of feedback appeared in a few places throughout the document I had supplied for moderation…and each time I came across it, it made me smile.

Why ? It made me reflect back on the era when I was performing the CEO role for a national retail franchise – a role that necessitated me communicating a lot in writing with many different people around New Zealand, simply to “keep the ship on the chosen course”. At times I would receive feedback from franchisees/ directors suggesting that they were feeling overwhelmed with the amount of correspondence coming out of the national/ central office, and could I please trim the length of written comms back a little.

Also, just today I was marking a sizeable chunk of student assignment work when I came across one assignment which had been written in anything but a succinct way…and consequently it took me quiet some time to decipher the meaning of a fair number of sentences. It was then that the words of my Gisborne colleague once again entered my mind – “Less is More” – and that is exactly what I entered-up writing into the assignment as a part of my constructive feedback to this student.

We live in such a busy world, where all manner of written communications are under our noses at any given time for us to apply meaning to/ make sense of. I’m certainly making more of a concerted effort to keep my written comms to a minimum now – as a courtesy to those who have the task of interpreting these comms. And on that note, I think it’s time I stopped writing this blog. 🙂