The Devil Is in the Details
Monday, February 9. 2009
I'm bombarded daily with too many details that I just don't need.
I was listening to NPR (All Things Considered) on the way home from work today. There was a piece about how employees are getting in trouble because of things they've posted online which are unflattering to their employers, and also traceable back to them personally. The interviewee, an apparently random technology columnist from Texas, gave several specific examples of this phenomenon.
Now, this isn't really news, and I'm a little disappointed in NPR for spending so much time on it. I'd certainly heard about the danger—and resolved to avoid it—years ago. Perhaps the proliferation of blogs and Tweets has led to an influx of the uninitiated, and so for some the message was timely. But at the end of the segment, I was struck with the feeling that I'd just thrown away five minutes of listening time on details I didn't need.
It harkens back to a common theme on this blog: there's not enough time in the day as it is, so wasting it in any way is a serious crime. Here, I could have done with a much shorter piece—a gentle reminder to myself, a primer for newbs. But the level of detail the interviewer and her foil provided seemed much greater than truly necessary to make the point.
So I'll add no further detail myself except to say: Everyone, please get to the point as quickly as you can, and let's move on. Of course, this only applies to nonfiction; for entertainment, please keep all the details...Stephen King's unabridged The Stand notwithstanding.
I'm bombarded daily with too many details that I just don't need.
I was listening to NPR (All Things Considered) on the way home from work today. There was a piece about how employees are getting in trouble because of things they've posted online which are unflattering to their employers, and also traceable back to them personally. The interviewee, an apparently random technology columnist from Texas, gave several specific examples of this phenomenon.
Now, this isn't really news, and I'm a little disappointed in NPR for spending so much time on it. I'd certainly heard about the danger—and resolved to avoid it—years ago. Perhaps the proliferation of blogs and Tweets has led to an influx of the uninitiated, and so for some the message was timely. But at the end of the segment, I was struck with the feeling that I'd just thrown away five minutes of listening time on details I didn't need.
It harkens back to a common theme on this blog: there's not enough time in the day as it is, so wasting it in any way is a serious crime. Here, I could have done with a much shorter piece—a gentle reminder to myself, a primer for newbs. But the level of detail the interviewer and her foil provided seemed much greater than truly necessary to make the point.
So I'll add no further detail myself except to say: Everyone, please get to the point as quickly as you can, and let's move on. Of course, this only applies to nonfiction; for entertainment, please keep all the details...Stephen King's unabridged The Stand notwithstanding.
I was listening to NPR (All Things Considered) on the way home from work today. There was a piece about how employees are getting in trouble because of things they've posted online which are unflattering to their employers, and also traceable back to them personally. The interviewee, an apparently random technology columnist from Texas, gave several specific examples of this phenomenon.
Now, this isn't really news, and I'm a little disappointed in NPR for spending so much time on it. I'd certainly heard about the danger—and resolved to avoid it—years ago. Perhaps the proliferation of blogs and Tweets has led to an influx of the uninitiated, and so for some the message was timely. But at the end of the segment, I was struck with the feeling that I'd just thrown away five minutes of listening time on details I didn't need.
It harkens back to a common theme on this blog: there's not enough time in the day as it is, so wasting it in any way is a serious crime. Here, I could have done with a much shorter piece—a gentle reminder to myself, a primer for newbs. But the level of detail the interviewer and her foil provided seemed much greater than truly necessary to make the point.
So I'll add no further detail myself except to say: Everyone, please get to the point as quickly as you can, and let's move on. Of course, this only applies to nonfiction; for entertainment, please keep all the details...Stephen King's unabridged The Stand notwithstanding.
Craig on :