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  2025 March 24

Smart Brevity and LLMs
======================

 I've adopted Smart Brevity and LLMs into my writing in the past year.

  [*Smart Brevity*](https://bookshop.org/p/books/smart-brevity-the-power-of-saying-more-with-less-roy-schwartz/17897762?ean=9781523516971&next=t) was the most impactful book I read last year (or it was at least tied with [*How Big Things Get Done*](https://bookshop.org/p/books/how-big-things-get-done-the-surprising-factors-that-determine-the-fate-of-every-project-from-home-renovations-to-space-exploration-and-everyt-dan-gard/18556366)). I improved my work communication significantly. Great techniques in the book, but my biggest takeaway was this simple question: "What is the one thing I want my reader to takeaway?" Then just... write that one thing!

It's been interesting to add LLMs into my writing toolbox at the same time.

2 thoughts.

- If you use LLMs to write, use them to make your writing *shorter,* not longer
- By the time I put together bullet points of context for an LLM to have it draft something, I've already done the hard work of deciding what is important to say. Most the time I can then just post those bullet-points as-is.

Regarding the second point: maybe I should try dumping all my messy thoughts into an LLM and see if it can identify 1-3 key takeaways for me.

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