Simply Said: Communicating Better at Work and Beyond by Jay Sullivan

This book might have had the largest impact on my life of any I’ve read before. I’m not sure why it hit me so hard, but I still think about it every day. It’s easy to read, incredibly impactful, and encourages you to communicate in a way that’s easy and impactful as well.

I’ll be coming back to this one again and again as time goes on, I have no doubt.

Some quotes, because it’s worth it:

“If we want to improve our ability to connect with others, to understand them and to be understood more clearly, the easiest and most effective way to do so is to focus less on ourselves and more on the other person."

"News flash: Your audiences don’t care about you. Nothing personal, but they don’t. In fact, they don’t really care about your content. They care about how your content impacts them, which is different from your content itself."

"Get to your point. Your goal when communicating is not to be cute or clever. Your goal is to be clear."

"Limit your key message to one sentence, preferably fewer than 10 words long."

"When we communicate, instead of thinking, ‘What am I trying to convey?’ we should ask ourselves, ‘Why is he reading my email or attending this meeting? What does she hope to get out of this presentation?‘"

"Most of the time, we only have impact if the person to whom we are speaking can convey our message to someone else.”