Recently, someone commented on an email I had sent that was a poor bit of communication. Not wrong, not inaccurate, but simply inappropriate – overly wordy, not addressing the point, too much detail, etc. They were frustrated.
As this person put it, to paraphrase, “You write, how did you get this wrong?”
Of course I write. I’ve written fiction and science papers, technical documents and chatty career columns, books and guides. I mean I can write all sorts of things . . .
And then, in that conversation, I realized that was the problem. My mouth literally hung open as it came to me – I had chosen the wrong mode of writing as I had so many modes at my disposal.
That experience stuck with me, and it’s something I wanted to explore for the sake of our careers – and as sometimes we geeks can be very talented and people wonder how we screw stuff up.
It’s not about being bad. Many of us can be so good at something we screw it up.
