How overthinking is killing your content
Stop thinking and get stuff done and out there!
Gary Bloomer | SHAKING THE TREE # 264
I see it often.
I’ll come across a talented writer, someone with solid ideas, a great voice, and an impressive conviction. And then one day, their narrative slides off the road into a grammatical ditch.
Sometimes it’s because they start layering in jargon. Or they’ll write over complicated sentences that obscure their point.
They disappear down a rabbit hole and emerge hours later with a piece that reads like a car wreck. Or worse, they’ll cobble together a fresh, green word salad, just to make themselves sound clever.
I used to work in museums and I saw this sort of thing on a regular basis. Badly-written opinion pieces about ceramics. Poorly through through gallery labels about community history. The authors of artist’s statements were the worst offenders.
They’d pump out nonsense like this:
This challenging work operates as a palimpsest, where the spectral traces of lived experience are excavated and re-contextualized with abandon. Here, the artist employs a lyrical methodology of deliberate yet concrete erosion—a subtractive process that mirrors the erotic entropy of collective consciousness.
Did you notice how the author underscored the surrealism of the underlying narrative? No? Neither did I.
Writing like this is as exhausting and as it is unnecessary. It’s an addiction and an affectation. Writing like this wastes time, drains creative energy, and worst of all, it loses the reader in senseless, needless complexity. Yet, few people question it.
Let’s be honest: most writers aren’t being paid to be complicated.
They’re being paid (if they’re being paid at all, which most aren’t) to be clear.
Your audience isn’t impressed by your vocabulary; they’re looking for your clarity.
They don’t have time to decode your prose and your intent.
They have problems, and they need you to solve them. It’s as simple as that.
The desire to sound ‘smart’ is the enemy of being understood. It’s ego, and it’s sabotaging your work.
Your goal though shouldn’t be to dumb things down, it’s to smarten things up by making them accessible. Clarity in writing is the difference between a cluttered, dusty antique shop and a clean, well-lit gallery. One hides its treasures; the other displays them for maximum impact.
So, how do you break the addiction and start cutting through the clutter? Keep this handful of principles nearby.
1. The one-sentence mission
Before you write anything, answer to the following statement:
The single most important thing I want my reader to understand is: ________________________________________________________________________.
If you can’t distill your core message into one clear, declarative sentence, it’s likely that you don’t understand what your core message is yet. And if that’s true, how do you expect your reader to understand it?
Treat that sentence Italicized as your North Star.
Every paragraph you write should serve it.
2. Talk it out first
Staring at the blank screen induces paralysis. So, instead of writing, talk. Open a voice memo on your phone and explain your idea as if you were talking to a friend, or even talking to yourself, as if you were having a coffee.
Then, transcribe that recording (most memo recordings automatically give you the text of what you’re saying, so you’re halfway there).
Using this technique, you’ll find the core of your argument is already there, expressed in a natural-sounding, human tone.
This then becomes your first draft.
It doesn’t matter how rough it is because no one other than you is ever going to read it. Your next job is to clean that draft up.
This way, you’re not building from scratch. You’ve already got a decent foundation in the bag.
3. Hunt and kill “weasel words”
Next, go through your first draft with a machete, rather than with a scalpel.
This is the time to be merciless. This is your chance to hunt down and eliminate the weak, fluffy language that adds nothing but syllables.
Instead of: “Utilize a methodology to facilitate improvement ...”
You write: “Use a method to improve ...”
Instead of: “In order to achieve optimal results ...”
You write: “To get the best results ...”
Cut the jargon, the corporate-speak, and the three-word phrases where one word will do. Your writing will instantly gain muscle and confidence.
4. Read it aloud.
This is the single greatest editing tool known to humankind. Your ear will catch what your eye misses: the clunky sentence, the repetitive word, the rhythm that just feels off.
If you stumble over a sentence while reading it aloud, your reader will stumble over it in their head. Smooth it out. Make it flow. If it doesn’t sound like something you would say, it’s not finished.
5. Serve the reader, not your ego
At the top of your document, write this: “What’s in it for them?”
Every time you feel yourself drifting into a complex tangent or using a ten-dollar word where a five cent word will do, look at that question.
Are you showing off, or are you serving up?
Your content is a tool for your audience. A tool should be simple to use and effective in its job.
Complexity is often a mask for uncertainty. True expertise has the confidence to be simple. It respects the reader’s time and intelligence. It doesn’t seek to impress; it seeks to impart.
Stop overcomplicating it.
Your best ideas are waiting, clear and powerful, just on the other side of the clutter.
Your only job is to get out of their way.
As always, thanks for reading.
—Gary
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P.S. If you found this useful, share it with another creator who needs an ego check (in a nice way). Want more unfiltered takes on content creation? Join my newsletter. No fluff, just the stuff that works.
Next time on Shaking the Tree: Building the voice of a leader
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Originally from the U.K., Gary Bloomer is a writer, branding advocate, marketing specialist, and an award-winning graphic designer.
His design work has been included in Creative Review (one of the UK’s largest design magazines). Since 2009, he has answered over 5,000 marketing and business questions in the Know-How Exchange of MarketingProfs.com, placing him among the top 3% of contributors. He lives in Wilmington, Delaware, USA.