Is he long? Or is he short? And is his length a measure of quality? He is your text, and I observed two misunderstandings about him and a false belief of keeping him short. I also came to a surprising conclusion that is a much better measure of quality than length could ever be. I want to share it with you so your next published text makes you sound smarter and is more fun to read. The first misunderstanding is about the time it takes to produce a text. The second misunderstanding is about a person’s willingness to read a text and their reading time. There is a misunderstanding that writing a shorter text takes less time than writing a longer text. When I dictate to my phone via speech to text (like right now), I can articulate myself fairly well, but very soon I find out that I start to ramble, loose track of my thought… and eventually there’s a long sentence that doesn’t really communicate what I want to say, but it’s long. This last sentence is an example of it. Ironically, writing a long text takes less time and writing a short text takes more time. That’s because editing a text is what you do the majority of the time. And what editing is actually trying to achieve, I will tell you at the end of this text because right now I want to point out the second misunderstanding. The second misunderstanding is about what it means to be living in the age of 8-second attention span: Short text doesn’t mean good, and long text doesn’t mean bad. It only means, you have a T-minus 8 seconds until you need to get the reader’s attention again, also called a “re-hook.” This is similar to the unofficial standup comedy 'rule' where your goal is to make the audience laugh every 10-15 seconds. And this 'rule' only exists because some people compute and process information slower or faster than others. It’s fast thinkers vs. slow thinkers. They are both part of your audience, and they both appreciate this one conclusion that I want to share with you now. This following conclusion, that applies to both the writer and reader of a text, reveals why length is always only a by-product of a text but not the goal… just like money is only a by-product of being relentlessly helpful to people and building long-lasting relationships with people. Here is the conclusion, and I want you remember this: When you write a text, your goal is to write a Big Sentence, and then another one, and another one. A Big Sentence is defined by its density of thought. It’s always dense because you could easily expand it two, three, or four normal sentences without losing quality. A Big Sentence is a quality sentence because when you write them consistently you end up with a paragraph that could equal a quality page, a page of Big Sentences could equal a quality chapter, and a chapter of Big Sentences could equal a quality book. This is the practical beauty of a Big Sentence.

He just got out of prison. Now he’s selling suitcases for travelers and doing a damn job. Yesterday we bought three light-blue suitcases from him for our time at the sea: small, medium, big. When the police officer passed by while he was getting our suitcases from the storage, he said, “If you sell drugs again, you’ll be back.” High agency people come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes it’s a former felon.