How to Write Less but Say More | Jim VandeHei | TED
Вставка
- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- As the saying goes, less is more. The same goes for words. Listen as Politico and Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei shares what he's learned leading two media companies -- and how to radically rethink the way you write to keep people's attention in a distracted digital world.
If you love watching TED Talks like this one, become a TED Member to support our mission of spreading ideas: ted.com/membership
Follow TED!
Twitter: / tedtalks
Instagram: / ted
Facebook: / ted
LinkedIn: / ted-conferences
TikTok: / tedtoks
The TED Talks channel features talks, performances and original series from the world's leading thinkers and doers. Subscribe to our channel for videos on Technology, Entertainment and Design - plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. Visit TED.com to get our entire library of TED Talks, transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and more.
Watch more: go.ted.com/jim...
TED's videos may be used for non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons License, Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (or the CC BY - NC - ND 4.0 International) and in accordance with our TED Talks Usage Policy (www.ted.com/ab.... For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), please submit a Media Request at media-requests...
#TED #TEDTalks
1) "Stop being selfish" - Audience first
It is not about you, but about your audience.
Cut length, people won't pay attention for a long time
2) "Grab me!" - What is the one thing you want me to remember?
No matter what you communicate, make sure you bring across your most important point.
3) "Keep it simple"
One sentence/paragraph is better than two.
Use simple sentence structure.
Use simple words.
4) "Be human, write like a human"
Don't try to be a Harvard professor; bring your point across like you are talking to someone at the bar.
5) "Just stop" - Use as few words and sentences as possible
There you go, this would not have needed 15 minutes.
Thank you for the highlight!
My thoughts exactly 😂
In writing it doesn't need 15 min. I am patient with it as the medium is in person [at the time] and video. Context matters and I'm sure he condensed as much as he could. I appreciated the length as I also feel he got to the point. For our generation tho we do see through the "I'm going to tell you at the end." Just start should be point 6. lol Get to it as soon as you can. But it does also go back to the balance of being human point 4. There's a balance between who is being selfish. Let the audience be selfish but also don't dehumanize the delivery.
Thank you
@@ZymaPro While I agree to a certain point I really don't have 15 min every time someone proposes a new lifehack. I need the core information as fast as possible so I can decide whether I think it is useful or not and either spend more time with it or get on with my life.
Nicholas Carr described this "scanning vs deep reading" phenomenon in great detail in his 2010 book "The Shallows, What the internet is doing to our brains" and is worth a read for anyone with further interest (and he provides provocative evidence it changes the mechanism our brain uses to process and store information)
Thanks for mentioning “The Shallows” an excellent book which describes the effects of our modern technologies on how we communicate, or don’t. Cellular phones and computers and social
media have changed our brains. It’s changed our language, and what we consider important. That’s why conspiracy theories and fake science and manipulation of facts has so impacted politics. It’s a dangerous world. Pay attention to how you use it. Take breaks from technology. Nature and friends are good for your mind in ways you don’t realize until you are restored by a walk in the woods without your phone.
LOVE this. I need this so badly. The professor asks for a 100 word discussion post, and I give him 500+ masterfully written words. The professors don't have time for that crap! I'm secretly trying to impress myself and others. On the other hand, when I wan to be precise with the idea I'm trying to express, that seems to either require bigger words or more words.
I always say get to the point but there’s something hidden in the details. If it’s important enough, you can get to the details quickly enough.
The concept of Plain English rebranded. Groovy.
I wish more people in academia thought like this. A client of mine who is working toward his master's has two tutors: a subject matter expert and me. His expert tutor helps with first drafts, I help with proofing and editing (and submitting, among other techy tasks). The drafts are often walls of text with run-on sentences galore and Shakespearean verbiage that practically requires a thesaurus alongside the textbook.* I'm then tasked with translating that into one-breath sentences, bite-sized (i.e. focused) paragraphs, and plain English. At least he doesn't right entirely in citations.**
.
*This is not exclusive to him, _many_ published papers are written like this.
**I really wish the APA would switch to from in-line citations to footnotes to help with flow.
My God this is so right. I have a blog about positivity thru adversity in life... and it's just short to the point articles that I hope will help others.
Can we have the link? I’d like to read it :)
Yes. A link, plz. Ty in advance.
Most beneficial TED speech ever. Hats off!
Always good to hear your thoughtful and logical analysis. I don't care about bullish or bearish market. Trade a small percentage of your portfolio rather than going in and out every couple weeks trying to time the market trading went smooth for me as I was able to raise over 8.4 BTC when I started at 3 BTC in just few weeks implementing Richard and tips..
fx1Richard
Hey - I've been hearing about Richard for a long time now. Started during the pandemic and I've heard of how accurate his signals is.. I really do appreciate hearing your advice and feel that it is genuine
I started from the bottom... now I'm here!
smashing it all 💥 €2000 to €21k 🤟🤘
I wish I had those 15 minutes back.
If you are on UA-cam, you do comment, or any social media in this case, and therefore you have to read to be able to respond to some credible and acknowledgeable sense of things described by other users.
The only or most common case scenario .. is that they write perceptually subjectively instead of objectively..possibly lack of focus, experience, or because of emotional information bias causing stress and/or due devaluing their personal interests. Like trying to taunt of preferred hobby or pastimes useless or unpopular!!
but then, who cares when they all blind and not what needs to be seen. Ooh! and about the video ...it relates more to Hemingway journalistic theory which conflicts nowadays with the media being grammatically lethargic.
Thanks for sharing.
It’s like when you ask someone the time and they tell you how to build a clock. 🤦🏽♀️
Tell that to college professors. They give us a word count on our papers/essays which only encourages fluff and filler material to reach that criteria
In college I wrote a 25 page term paper and in error turned in the draft with a bunch of typos, grammer errors, run on sentences, spelling errors, etc. The first couple paragraphs were fine so when it got retuned it was graded 'A+' with a 'Good work' handwritten by the professor. Obviously ( and luckily for me ) he didn't bother reading past the first sentence.
Mercifully, not always true. One of my university lecturers said "Verbal diarrhoea is a sign of mental constipation". And he graded our essays by insight, not weight!
@@grenadagreengroupg3776 That’s subjective, if he’s a lemon, you could be blasted out of the water for nothing else than incompetence from his side.
True. Every little thing about this talk is true.
Im not sure how i can keep it short and get an interesting point out early while using common vocabulary if i want to say anything of substance.
Laconic
I don't agree fully, sometimes you need to use the right word to convey what you truly mean, and sometimes you are writing for that audience that can be bothered to read it - not just producing bite-sized simplified text.
The word is apply sometimes. It sure is not a holy grail. Simplified text could be disturbing as well, especially when people are not short sighted. In the end this isn’t a commercial.
I think this guy needs to make a presentation on "How to Speak Less but Say More" instead 🤣🤣🤣
His ambition less is more, his findings less is more, his conclusion less is more.
2022(G) “Respect and dignity.” Furthermore:
I once lived a life with very limited technology if any existed a time when the world was a different place than now. Technology has changed how we live our everyday lives now. Limiting how much time you spend on your smart devices social media is something we all need to be more aware of. Going to whole weekend with your smartphone spending a week hiking the Andes just you and nature.
I’ve been going to Catholic masses since I was a child 45 years ago and about 80% of the sermons have been less than 10 minutes at about 20 churches I’ve been to. About another 19% of sermons have been less than 15 minutes . The final one percent have been less than 20 minutes. I have never heard one longer than that. On weekends, most masses at most churches last for 55 minutes or an hour. The non-sermon parts of the mass take about 45 or 50 minutes between the entrance and exit, the prayers, the readings, several songs and communion and announcements. That doesn’t leave much time for the sermon.
On weekdays, masses usually skip all of the songs and announcements, and communion is very quick because the number of people at a weekday mass is small. Sermons are usually two or three minutes long and the whole mass usually takes only about a half hour.
So I think this speaker might be twisting the words of Pope Francis in order to make a point, but at the expense of the Catholic Church. Pope Francis on three different occasions has told priests to keep sermons to 10 minutes or less. I seriously don’t think he’s ever said that he thinks a significant percentage of priests regularly give sermons that are 30 to 40 minutes long, which is the negative impression that this TEDTalk leaves with viewers.
It paints a negative picture that is inaccurate about a religion that 1.5 billion people are part of. And doing that was not needed in order to make his points. It was fine to talk about the pope recommending that sermons be a maximum of 10 minutes and to allude to that sometimes some priests go well above 10 minutes. But it is wrong to convey that Catholic services are regularly plagued by priests droning on for 30 or 40 minutes.
Also, about a third of priests give sermons that are too short, and when they’re done, I would have liked for them to say more.
13:47
The irony of him constantly giving too many examples in this presentation...😅
the discovery of hot water
TL;DR:
"TL;DR"
They don't read your articles because they already agree with your political viewpoint or they disagree with your political viewpoint and a dismiss it immediately because people are so adamant about one ideology and they never look at other people's viewpoints they don't look at facts they don't follow laws and they never agree with each other because they think they either have to choose one viewpoint or another instead of trying to either meld the two to come to some better conclusion or negate both of those viewpoints and come up with something entirely new people are always in a rush for what reason I'll never know you only need to rush when there's an emergency but still instead of remaining haphazard whether there's an emergency or not and trying to get to some conclusion that should never be a basis for a plan and ideology or methodology never rush into false hopes but at the same time don't if the facts spare out continue to believe the same repetitive way of doing things it will change the outcome people love to put labels on things and they don't know how close they are in their viewpoints
People love to disconnect this is how. One of the reasons why people make bad lifetime decisions. Being less picky, dumb down, have a short attention span. The same cause could be said, who bothered to read the instructions manual. We should be just waiting about the next train wreck that is about to happen. So yea less will be more, but take it with the note “sometimes”.
Why don't you "keep it short stupid" as my professor often say. I want the gist, not the list.
6th
Unfortunately if journalists get told; "Give me 400 words on..." they will do that even if they have only 50 words to say. We vote in politicians who have learnt to say nothing in a one hour speech. We watch tv that has nothing to say. I've said enough.
He doesn't consider the downside. And there is a downside. There is a downside of political coverage being dumbed down into simple concepts, expressed in simple sentences. Humans are capable of complex thought but this approach feeds our weakness for lazy, distractedness. That's the downside.
Big words bad. Many words bad. Time short. iPhone change world. Stuff everywhere. All the time. Reading words all the time. 1 sentence good. More than 1 paragraph bad. Top vocabulary at 100 words. See, I'm smart. Bye.
To sum up, don't be selfish, beause nobody is interested in you. Be focused on the needs of your audience and ask yourself how tp grab your people which you wanna reach.
People turned you off the minute you tried to prove yourself and insult the audience
Yes, we're going to surrender to machine languages and one of these days we'll need 1000 characters to communicate. There we lose all our linguistic wealth. With the aggravating factor that languages are lost because in English everything is easier. This intervention is an ode to the simplicity of the self in the neo-capitalist, or rather anarcho-capitalist, world
...Nobody finished reading this comment. It was too long and flowery.
@@Mediaright, my comment does not look for clickbait.
This talk could have been done in four minutes.
interesting how someone talking about efficiency can waste 10 minutes on introduction.
Well said
11 minutes lol
Lmao
Thanks for saving my 11 minutes
I cried for him to make a point at minute 6.37
I always tell my wife, It's not about how you feel, it's about how the other person understands what you gonna say. And for God sake, keep it short but clear.
Brevity
@@stevenporter863 exactly !
0:30
True. In college I wrote a 25 page term paper and in error turned in the draft with a bunch of typos, grammer errors, run on sentences, spelling errors, etc. The first couple paragraphs were fine so when it got retuned it was graded 'A+' with a 'Good work' handwritten by the professor. Obviously ( and luckily for me ) he didn't bother reading past the first sentence.
Haha😀
Omg. I'm experiencing the same in my masters class!!!
My 5th grade teacher explained when writing "KISS", keep it simple stupid. 40 years later I still remember her and her instructions.
P
Very well put. I love how ted talks are short but convey meaningful messages
This was a fantastic talk. Its a topic we are all somewhat aware of but we need to dive deeper like this individual. Thank you sir.
Twitter is teaching me to say more with fewer words.
Being succinct is great. Now how long will it take for you to learn that people don't appreciate being mislead or flat out lied to. Do another Ted talk when you figure that part out.
Side note: You've known this information for a long time. This is why the most important information is buried at the bottom. The media uses it to their advantage, which is why in most cases the first half tends to be pointless and boring, or aimed at narrative. People stop paying attention so never get to the actual information.
11:00 where he drops real nuggets, rest is just promoting his company
Appreciated
How embarrasing... a topic on keeping it brief spends 11 minutes getting to "tip number 1". And then the tips are painfully generic (and themselves not followed by the speaker)
1. Stop being self indulgent
2. Be interesting
3. Keep it simple
4. Write like a human
5. Just stop
That hit home! I'm so guilty of spending hours writing/answering emails etc with what I would think makes me sound strong intelligent and a force to be respected and would read them back to myself countless times to see how good l looked....l loved this talk and will TOTALLY change now ..K.i.s.s. keep it simple stupid
Ya did it here, too ;)
Well im a Reddit user. For those that don’t know it’s a giant forum for people to share news articles and then discuss in the comments about how they read the headline.
Even then if they wrote a novel as a post I’m not reading it. Most I will read on a post for Reddit is 2 paragraphs, If it’s longer I skip.
@@Dead_pixelz_ It' will say something about intelligence. In all seriousness how others will be able to connect with people as well.
When information are simplified to such small volume, fragmented truth will be pieced into a horrible disinformation.
.. is simplified …. a small volume ….
Really? I think you missed the meaning and point of this TED
@@k.t.robinson6339 He speaks about attention, not connecting by sharing the right information. It doesn't happen in 5minutes.
@@RN-gx7wt ✅
Just skip to the end, lol jk 😉
True, tips start at 11:00
It goes the same for the speech and/or video. The nutshell of the entire 15 mins of speech could have been delivered in a 3 mins-video!
Less is more.
@@RN-gx7wt even better! 👍
@@guvenguneren6579 Cheers
The guy lost me when he said "or I could do what Jeff Bezos would do".
+
Introduction: 11 minutes
Body (tips): 3 minutes
Conclusion: 1 minute.
Thank you for teaching us how to be brief through your long introduction. For minutes 11 to 15, kudos 👌.
I was going to say the same lol
Gotta shake that money-maker I guess.
Yea, this dude tells us how to be brief and that most readers spend only 26 seconds per page, yet goes on with antidotal experience on how to be brief while wasting 11 mins. Perfect example of the idiom "Do as I say, not as I do". Video should have been 5 mins at max.
I cannot agree more, he could have conveyed the same message in 5-6 mins, instead of his 16mins. We all know we are bombarded with information all the time and we do not read in detail everything, no need to expand on that for 10 long minutes 😂
Thank you. I'm 5 mins in and started scrolling comments wondering if this was going to be a full 15 mins of intro. I'll skip to 11.
Oddly, for a talk telling me to use less words, he talked for 15 minutes - much longer than most of the Ted Talks that I watch.
I feel like this could be satire. I was sitting there waiting for something more than the most cliche ted talks lines and that never came.
Great talk.(two words)
This is such a bad TED Talk.
He wastes 11 on introduction and then lacks solid Information.
Every tip he gave need context! Sometimes you ened to use complicated words! Everything he says boils down to:
Be concise.
Audience first.
What i like to add:
Be as precise as the matter requires.
Be as complicated as is required.
Write as smooth as required.
Audience first, but topic at hand second.
hello
I tuned this guy out before the 10 minute mark. Maybe this talk should be called "How to SPEAK less but say more."
The presenter does not apply his message to himself. The talk is too long, he could have made it in five mins with no loss of information.
Skip to 11.00, ( same rules for vidz) ;-)
I'm not sure what this is about because his intro was so long I lost interest and clicked on another video.
Wow. Get to the point!!! Please.
guys I think he looked at the data
LOL Point 1, "focus on what they want." Yes, what I want is to hear you go on and on and on about your jobs, accomplishments, and the big names that you work with. Oh please make another video about you.
IHAVSPKN (NY license plate, idea from Star Wars)
I look for catchy license plate vanity plates, such as this one.
We might start with one or two words in abbreviated for (TRY WAIT, Saying in Hawaii on license)
================ Again, please help Democrats to save democracy ================
thanks much
K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple Stupid !!!
TL:DR Pro
This video should be retitled "Why We Should Write Less..." because the "how to write less" is barely in here. It might be that people read less because so much info on the internet is mistitled, some deliberately so.
Give them there time back that they deserve, rightfully 😊.❤
TLDR few word do trick
The ABCs of miltary communication, at least what I was taught back in my time, mid-1980s. Accuracy, Brevity, and Clarity. Pretty simple.
He didn't give the main message of his talk until about 12 minutes into the talk. Everything up until that was him bragging about how important he is.
Jim, wonderfully explained. I still remember the times when you read a book from cover to cover, and as you did so you enjoyed the moment, but those were different times. In today's time, everything goes very, very fast. I wish many things were like they used to be, but we have to adapt to today's world, to make the most of technology.
Hey do you know about this?
"After doing a thorough due diligence and retrospection, with all things considered, and a perfect memory recall with shortest latency and high degree of accuracy, as well as a wide repository of extensive knowledge about the domain with accredited testing and reliability, it is safe to come to the conclusion, without any shred of doubt or possibility of any error, past or future, it can be well established that I am mentally unable to respond to an important query, that is deemed important to you ".
OR.
" NO".
Too long to read 😜
This is some BS
@@Scooby-Snacks it’s 15 minutes long. Smart brevity. Total nonsense. Oh, we’re 45 minutes into posting.
@@Scooby-Snacks
I see mathematics isn’t your strong suit.
The video was posted 1hour and 16 mins ago. My comment was posted 57 mins ago. The video is 15 mins long.
This is a terrible Ted talk.
@@Scooby-Snacks
Perhaps he should take his own advice about ‘keeping it simple’. He could have done this talk in 15 seconds.
(He also has the most excessive hand actions of any person speaking that I have ever seen in my life. Ever. And I’ve seen a lot. A whole lot. His hand actions are so painful to watch and suggest she isn’t confident in what he is saying, so he needs embellishments with his hands, so again I say, this Ted talk is some BS)
I just discovered this new thing and I want to tell you all about it. It's called good writing.
I discovered breathing, every day people stop breathing. It's called dying.
I watched the first minute of this. Great video…
It was laughable when he kept saying "words, words, words, words, words...!"
He basically described structure of UA-cam Shorts
I don't understand why people are throwing shoes on him. We pay more attention on video bcoz we just need to hear it(Less work).
He is talking about writing, and that true we skim so fewer words make it easy and convince readers to read(Simple).
Stop wanting to share everything.
Share the most important thing.
Okay.
Interesting : I like to write but I hear ya - also depends on what area or field your in - he is speaking to journalist - so this makes sence - however - as a writer, very interesting - I hear ya - I will keep this in mind - thank you
This is what we need nowadays. The internet, the tv, the social media are full of trash today and we missed short but meaningful topics and news.
I get that distracted people need fewer words to get the message, but the argument that he doesn't understand why we don't talk like we're in a bar when we're trying to explain complex ideas is a bit ridiculous.
The hand gestures are not really working for me. They seem.. _off_ somehow.
Surely this is ironic lmao 11 minutes of waffle
we're getting far too close to Fahrenheit 451 territory here 😬
maybe no one care about politics...
In addition to using fewer words less arm-waving and bouncing about like Tigger would aid communication.
Plz list 5 points, with brief description, comment. I got lost in the in between words.
What kinda of crazy person puts the best part of a news article at the end? Do they not teach inverted pyramid anymore?
5th
Sometimes people talk just to talk.
Is it possible that the quality of what we read has gone down so it is not worth spending the time in deep focus on it?
Warf - "Some speak much but say very little. Some speak very little but say much." (Star Trek TNG)
Very helpful
Watched this video on 2X
Second comment! 😂
This was great! I am a freelance content writer and I've been implementing these strategies from the beginning because it's very true.
Great talk!
me tech writer good
race to the bottom?
nice tips
4th!