A Steve Jobs quote that resonates
I suppose this could be applied to many things but for me, it applies to my writing !
There’s such a trend at the moment to simplify cooking. Long gone are the days where we have to tackle chef’s cookbook recipes with weird ingredients you can’t easily buy, or where the secret step is missing. We know too many chef’s who do things so instinctively, so when they have to write things down something is bound to be missing !
Now the trend is to simplify with 6 ingredients or less, and to simplify with better ingredients… you could say it’s simplifying from complex to simple foods.
Simple writing is the hardest !
THE COMPLEX VERSION
Connection vs Communication
As far back as I can remember, I wanted to connect with people, and I love to help them out.
But I never wanted to be a writer for goodness sake ! and I don’t think I’m a good communicator.
Words !
I’ve always thought I would end up living as a hermit in the mountains, because I had a problem getting my point acorss. My main issue was with words – never thought I knew enough, didn’t like to use them… yet I actually use too many !!!
Growing up, I could hear myself boring people to death having to give the back story first, before I said what I set out to say ! I couldn’t stop myself doing that for years – I think the aim there was to make sure the people listening got the best chance at receiving my message. Really though, I must have bored the pants off them so they probably didn’t hear me at all anyway.
I think I’m all grown up now so I hope I do that less – just pull me up short if you catch me doing it when it’s not necessary!
I also go off on random tangents so when it comes to writing, I do it like I speak. Now that I’m writing a lot, I’m having to slowly train myself to simplify.
Our current life adventure… blogging
This blogging adventure we’re living has been challenging that. I research things to death, then can run out of energy to get it all down on a review page. There’s always soooo much I want to tell you, to help you with !
Add to that, the challenges of fitting it all in the technical boundaries of a blog page, and quite frankly, I sometimes look at my walls of text and see how hard they can be to read ( yes I know it. )
Google seems to love the detail and genuine research I do, so we do pretty well with reaching our audience organically. But the ‘user experience’ has been on our minds a lot. How can we make it easier ?
THE SIMPLE VERSION
a.k.a. Paul’s version
K.I.S.S ( keep it simple silly !) My man of few words and fast action !
We’re a team !
Well, thank goodness we’re a team, in marriage and work – not always easy to combine the both, but also gives the most amazing results.
Paul is really good at design and simplifying so… long story short, he’s helped me out with design templates I can use to get the information across more simply.
I haven’t changed ( I hope) – I love my quirky self and my deep and complex thinking – it’s what makes me who I am.
But…when it comes to serious reviewing pages, I’ve got my thinking cleaner by the time it goes on paper. So it should be simpler to read.
THE SIMPLE RESULT
I’ve updated the a review to make it much easier to read and get the digest the information.
CLICK HERE to SEE
Pretty please click though and let me know what you think !
Did you get to the bottom of the page ? Hope so.
Paul and Aoibheann
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