File a flight plan
THE RUB
“I start most of my sentences not knowing how they will end.” I've been confessing this recent observation with friends for the last week, and the reaction I get is fairly consistent. They pause, look away for a second, and say, "Yeah, doesn't everybody?" I mean, I guess that's what talking is all about.
My obvious insight came while attending a communication workshop facilitated by Stacy Hanke. She reminded us how important brevity is and demonstrated how to talk in concisely crafted sentences. We recorded ourselves practicing speaking in tight, deliberate phrases, and I was gobsmacked to watch how much rambling I was doing. I take off and have no idea where or even how to land the plane.
In writing, that's not a problem, because I have a chance to draft a my points first and revise them before I hit send. Writing naturally provides a drafting loop. In conversation, my listening partner has to endure my long, wandering journey to find the point. Speaking makes your rough draft public.
I was disappointed in how rough my rough drafts were.
THE FRAMEWORK
Looking for an example of someone who spoke in strong, crisp sentences, the first person I thought of was Winston Churchill. He was, by all accounts, a dictator. He dictated memos, letters, speeches, entire books. His secretaries worked in shifts to keep up with him.
While he often revised his dictations, his first draft rarely needed much rescue. His longtime secretary, Grace Hamblin, said: “He had a tremendous command of the English language, but he didn’t use it loosely. He considered very carefully what he was going to say.”
I suspect that Churchill had trained his talking brain to operate with writing-brain discipline. Dictation forces you to commit to a sentence before you finish it. You can't leave a fragment hanging on the page and come back to it the way you might trail off in a conversation. Writing demands closure, and Churchill knew where he was headed and consistently landed his points.
THE PRACTICE
I can’t afford a team of secretaries, but I don’t need one. The technology is available for me to dictate anytime, anywhere. My friend Eric turned me on to Wispr Flow, and I've been using it to dictate on walks, driving in the car, and simply sitting at my desk. I dictated the first two paragraphs of this newsletter sitting in a noisy coffee shop, whispering into my phone.
To develop my inner speech, I pause and identify the point before I open my mouth. Dictating builds the muscle. Recording myself holds me accountable.
Let’s not take this too far. Part of the joy of having a conversation is to be in the moment and react spontaneously. But filing a flight plan before I take off leads to a more direct journey.