11–15 of 15 posts
While I agree with the article at large, I disagree with this. There is definitely value in writing things between 140 characters and essay-length, if only to jot down complete ideas without grooming them into a lengthy piece of essay quality.
At a practical level, you can write your way into jobs (or investment), and if you do it right writing does not rot, so you can continue to reap benefits from things you've written long before. That lets you store time in a bottle, which has really nice implications for time-strapped entrepreneurs.
(This also implies that you'd probably be better doing public writing than writing which winds up in the email archives of BigCorp or behind a logistical and cultural wall almost nobody will pierce at your institution of higher learning.)
I think oral and written communication is probably the most overlooked skill for engineers. Write. It gets easier with practice. As you get better at it, it will come more naturally and you will be more confident. Quality, fluency, and confidence all make people much more likely to believe what you are saying and act favorably towards your suggestions. At a practical level, you can write your way into jobs (or invest…
I try to make myself briefer -- my writing condensed -- in the hope that the shortness of the message will avoid invoking avoidance based purely on the volume of content. And I try to communicate less often, collecting observations into a few well-composed summaries rather than a rapid fire flurry of messages -- particularly when I know the recipient will not be addressing the topic immediately in any event.
But then I get accused, typically by some less technical manager, of "not communicating enough".
All by way of saying, I guess, that I find skill in writing very important. But there's a certain point where the problem becomes your audience's (or, depending on mood, leave off the apostrophe s ;-).
P.S. I note now your use also of the term "oral". There, too, there is the problem of the other half. Meetings that largely reiterate previous meetings, because the attendees apparently didn't make an effort to retain the information. This... syndrome can become self-perpetuating. People come to expect that anything important will be repeated at them, potentially ad infinitum. The repetition becomes expected and depended upon, making it in turn necessary.
People sometimes wonder why I take so many notes. But a month or two later, I can tell you what happened in that meeting. And if my work depends upon that information, I've executed accordingly.