Why Books Have To Be So Long?
Have you ever felt this way? “This is a great book but I only wish it could be shorter”.
I’ve never finished Getting Things Done, the famous personal productivity and task management book. Even though I love the idea and concept, there’re way more words seemingly unrelated or off topic. Don’t feel motivated enough to continue, that’s why I dropped out.
Another one is the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, part of me still feel ashamed not finishing this book but same reason above, too redundant.
Not All of Us Want Quick-fix But…
It’s not like all of us want a bullet points or checklists to quick fix whatever problems in our life. We pick up the book instead of just googling “how to blah blah blah” right?
So I really hope there is a good balance point once the story is well told, conclusion is laid out, then that’s it, no more off topic contents to make an already great work less great.
Books That Are Short Yet Great
Among all the books I’ve read, REMOTE is outstanding because of its contents and its length. Precise, concise and convincing. I remember the author mentioned that after they wrote the whole book, they cut it to half size to save readers’ time.
The free ebook “SHAVE 10 HOURS OFF YOUR WORKWEEK” by Michael Hyatt is another great example, only 50 pages but it perfectly covers all the points.
And one timely tweet I saw recently is this: “21 minutes edited down to 14 minutes (- 33%) because I respect your time.”
21 minutes edited down to 14 minutes (- 33%) because I respect your time. pic.twitter.com/jVY76NKLXW
— NSScreencast (@NSScreencast) April 25, 2016
Isn’t this another great aspect of delivering your contents that most book authors are either ignoring or being kept in blindspot? You don’t need to pack tons of words to make it a book, while you can write a blog post.
