The secret to concise communication

A lot of advice about being concise, I think misses an important point. You know, we've all heard, don't bury the lead, cut to the chase. And all of these pithy aphorisms assume that you actually know what your core point is. So you can't cut to the chase unless you know what the chase is. You know, you can't unbury the lead unless you know what the lead is. And so that I found is the bottleneck to being concise. It's actually not really being clear of what you are thinking. That's what Leading to being long winded. And so the only solution I found consistently to being concise is preparation. It's not a very glamorous solution by any means, but the clearer I am going into a meeting, going into a conversation, going into a pitch, the better I am at being concise and being able to bring the conversation back to the most important points at being able to stay flexible, but also firm. So if you even take 30 seconds to one minute, to ground yourself on why am I in this meeting? What do I want to share and make sure I get across in the time that we have? You're going to go in there so much more focused and so much more able to be concise.