I Would Have Written a Shorter Blog Post, But I Didn’t Have the Time: Creating a WriterDeck

On December 2nd, 1938, an issue of The Minneapolis Star first wrote the phrase "keep it simple, stupid." This phrase, in its brilliance, would end up becoming a design principle for the United States Navy in the 1960s. Centuries before that, the over-talker Polonius in Shakespeare's Hamlet ironically exclaims that "brevity is the soul of wit". This is not a new idea, and it is a good idea, isn't it? I thought about this phrase when I stumbled upon Rakhim Davletkaliyev's comic #19: Blogging vs. blog setups. It's a great illustration of how, very often, the more complicated something is—and also the more you discuss something—the less you are actually doing the thing. I love writing, but does every blog post need to be 2,000 words? No, I don't think so. I can think of another quote that is even more relevant. Blaise Pascal, in his work Lettres provinciales (Letter XVI) from 1657 wrote "Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte"…