People spend average of 26 seconds reading a piece of content.
That means you’ve got about 120 words to get your message across and/or make someone decide to read more.
- This applies to emails, memos, reports, slack messages, everything you write at work.
It’s demoralising that despite the effort you put into a major report the reader will skim it. Most of your words won’t be read.
Embrace that. Write and format your reports (and everything else) to reward the skimming reader.
- Put your main message at the top. The very top.
- Use short words and sentences.
- Make the key words stand out.