I'm currently doing a little background reading on a topic that I will be presenting to a group of roughly 30 people next Monday. The text I'm reading, in a very helpful and self-accomplished tone, informed me that I would be, in the following pages, receiving "16 effective practices" to follow. 16?!?!? How in the world is that effective or helpful, and how in the world is that later referred to as "tips"! They're not tips - it's the entire frickin' iceberg!!!
These 16 effective practices came from the geniuses at Temple University, who seemingly never studied "efficient" and simply stopped their studies at "effective". Doesn't seem they ever studied the way the human brain remembers things either, as I have never seen a research study to prove that humans can EFFECTIVELY remember more than 3-5 things at a time. So that means I'm going to forget at least 11 of these helpful practices when presenting them, and worse, the people listening to me will likely forget even more of them.
Now, if after reading through all 16 I felt that these were really solid tips, then I may not be so ornery right now. But at least 11 of them are saying similar things and could be combined with other tips. Which means that having 16 is completely unnecessary. And WORST OF ALL, a few of them contradict each other back-to-back. For example, #10 says: "cast a wide net". But #11 turns right around and says "target your efforts". And then helpful #12 pops his head up and suggests that you: "recruit more people than you actually need". So Temple University has now used up 3 practices to tell me look far and wide, but oh wait - you should be strategic and targeted with your search, but still - get more than you need - which likely means you need to search far and wide - as long as your not untargeted when you do search far and wide, but at some point you just may need a whole bunch, so F-It just get anyone you can!!
I'm not going to spend the time and energy doing this myself, but I can guarantee there is a more EFFECTIVE way of articulating that principle that does not take up 3 separate rows and doesn't sound contradictory. And NO principles are ever "effective" no matter how good they are if they are not communicated effectively to those who need to apply them. But that's just my 2 cents.
Now, if after reading through all 16 I felt that these were really solid tips, then I may not be so ornery right now. But at least 11 of them are saying similar things and could be combined with other tips. Which means that having 16 is completely unnecessary. And WORST OF ALL, a few of them contradict each other back-to-back. For example, #10 says: "cast a wide net". But #11 turns right around and says "target your efforts". And then helpful #12 pops his head up and suggests that you: "recruit more people than you actually need". So Temple University has now used up 3 practices to tell me look far and wide, but oh wait - you should be strategic and targeted with your search, but still - get more than you need - which likely means you need to search far and wide - as long as your not untargeted when you do search far and wide, but at some point you just may need a whole bunch, so F-It just get anyone you can!!
I'm not going to spend the time and energy doing this myself, but I can guarantee there is a more EFFECTIVE way of articulating that principle that does not take up 3 separate rows and doesn't sound contradictory. And NO principles are ever "effective" no matter how good they are if they are not communicated effectively to those who need to apply them. But that's just my 2 cents.
