Time Management - Marc Mancini
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100<br />
<strong>Time</strong> <strong>Management</strong><br />
Know Your Audience<br />
One fundamental mistake many people make in writing is<br />
failing to take into account the reader. People respond differently<br />
to written communications and, these days, most people don’t<br />
have the time or patience to read carefully.<br />
People now want information in a quick and easy format.They want<br />
to learn right away how the communication may affect them.They<br />
want to be able to skim, looking for the details that are important to<br />
them, without having to read too carefully the information that they<br />
don’t need.<br />
Keeping your reader in mind as you write will help ensure that others<br />
get what you need them to know.<br />
Recast into an active (and more intelligible) form, this sentence<br />
would read more easily as follows: “The advisory committee<br />
outlined procedures that everyone found acceptable.”<br />
Another problem with using passive constructions is that<br />
they allow you to omit the agent, whoever is doing the action.<br />
For example: “Any errors should be reported to the HR staff<br />
immediately.”<br />
So, who’s responsible for reporting the errors? We all know<br />
the axiom—when everyone is responsible, no one is responsible.<br />
2. Replace negatives with positives. No, not, none, and other<br />
words with negative connotations set off confused and counterproductive<br />
feelings in the reader. For example: “To not prioritize<br />
will not help us and will, unfortunately, lead to failure.”<br />
This would be better phrased: “To prioritize will help us succeed.”<br />
3. Edit long sentences into shorter units. As one expert puts it:<br />
“If you can’t say it in one breath, it’s too long.” Consider this<br />
statement: “This personal organizer is not only compact, but it’s<br />
also very complete and it has numerous features that will help<br />
you streamline your business-related activities, as well as your<br />
personal life, with the added advantage of being affordable.”<br />
This version would be more effective: “This compact and