When presenting information, it's important to stay on topic. This is especially true for when you are creating documentation that is supposed to be short, about a specific thing, or when someone expects you to keep focused. Too many times have I fallen victim to what I thought was 'on topic,' only to have it fall against me. Then nobody knows what I'm talking about. Tangents and digressions that stray from the topic at hand are dangerous, and when someone else does it, it's frustrating. A pragmatic approach to this is as follows:
Keep things simple
I like to keep simple. What works, works. A chair is a chair. Sometimes I go off into tangents about the philosophical implications of why we call chairs chairs, but I try not to delve too deeply for fear of losing my mind. Don't make things complicated if the person who is going to be subjected to it won't understand.
Try to understand what is going on
Too many times communication falls out because what the first person communicates to another is not universally understood or too vague. More often than not, it's too vague. When you ask a generic, all-encompassing, broad question, you invite freedom on behalf of the respondent, so please, limit what you ask to produce results, not nonsense. Also, writing about something and then expecting everyone to understand is the height of hubris.
Be logical
I like logic. It means the world has a soundness to it. Doing things that are illogical make no sense. Illogical actions have created many wonderful things, but doing illogical things where logic must prevail is rather foolish.
Like all things, make sure what you're doing actually relates to what you want to do. Don't be deceptive.
Happy Valentine's Day
I found this blog because, being tired of reading tapes that people play, I wanted to see how often correlation does equal causation.
ReplyDeleteWell I didn't get that answer, but one example I can site is whenever a blogger appoliges for not blogging and says they will, they are history!
Come on, you can do it :-)