5 ways to stop your words being wasted at work (audio show)

I've been thinking about ways to cut the waste in our words, and the environmental management theme has spilled over into this week's podcast.  It's on

cutting the clutter: 5 ways to stop your words being wasted at work.

It's based on the idea that writing is a product and that there are things we can do the process to reduce the waste in the end result.  Things like:

• A commitment to produce something of value - and getting clear what that is before you start
• The shelf-life for your product (words) - will it be past its sell-by date before the ink's even dried?
• Cutting the waste - watching for excess words before, during and after the writing process
• Watch your packaging - we all hate surplus packaging on products so why bubble-wrap our words?
• Think about your footprint - like it or not, our (digital) words won't go away so make sure what you're writing has some lasting value

It's 4 mins 34 seconds long - even at that I felt it was on the long side - must have been the subject matter I was talking about!  Although I'd love to know what you think - are we more (or less) forgiving of excess words in an audio format?  Do we need some spare words to get the conversational style to work?  Or does the need for the speaker/author/broadcaster to get to the point apply in equal measure?

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You can tune in the show by following this link, or playing (or downloading) it from my GCast page.  If you want to make sure you don't miss future episodes you can also subscribe to the Confident Writing podcast feed.

For other suggestions on waste reduction for your writing try 20 ways to cut your word count

This show is a contribution to my October focus on writing with clarity.  Sign up for the (free) feed to follow the rest of the series.

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Joanna Young, The Confident Writing Coach
Because our words count