Distillation of content — how to win in business communications.

Give them the gems, not the fluff.

In the world today the amount of “information” is overwhelming, we often think more is better. Sometimes more is better, like with exercise or walks to free your mind, however these are often things we do not do enough of.

Information on the other hand is not in short supply. It has become too easy to look up a thousand ways to do something and most are over-complicated.

How to make things simple again — delete, delete and delete. Distil it until there are just the main points, rework it until the shape is sculpted and refined in a way it is clear as to what you want to say.

Let me give you an example. Recently, I started a new podcast and wanted to share with others how to do it.

So I looked at the key components and reduced them to the simplest things — Message, Equipment and outflow that it could be used for.

Now, if I had not done this I could have created a 2-hour video with a lot of information that was not needed and confused my audience. This is not to say in depth is not good, but again it would need to be distilled. A good way of doing this is by giving segments. I will be doing this for my Podcast advice videos — a segment on equipment, a segment on message content and a segment on where you can use it.

Another way of looking at it, is like a table of contents. You separate the key messages and let your audience see the ones they need the most.

I would love to go on and talk more, but I think you would agree that would defeat the purpose :)