Hey radical readers—
You’ve probably seen it happen: a report is sent, beautifully designed, meticulously written — and promptly ignored. Slides are skimmed, memos glanced at, emails flagged but never reopened.
And somewhere in the corner office, a decision is made based on a gut feeling or a quick chat — not your 38-page strategy deck.
Let me tell you about Klaus— don’t google it; It’s not his real name 🙂 — a German director at a logistics company I once consulted for.
Klaus ran operations like a chessboard, thinking ten moves ahead. But when it came to internal communication, he had one rule: Keep it short. Nobody reads anything longer than a WhatsApp message.
At first, I thought he was being cynical. Then I watched him in action. He’d skim executive summaries with the speed of a TikTok scroll, ask for bottom-line implications in Slack, and make million-euro calls based on bullet points.
Klaus wasn’t lazy. He was busy.
And, as I soon realized, he was far from alone.
We’re drowning in content, not starving for it
According to McKinsey, the average manager spends nearly 28% of their time reading and responding to emails— that’s over 11 hours a week.
Add Slack, Teams, dashboards, newsletters, KPI summaries, and you’re talking about a cognitive flood.
Reading has become a form of luxury. Deep attention is now a scarce resource — and we’ve trained ourselves to survive without it.
Research from @Gloria Mark, professor of informatics at UC Irvine and author of Attention Span (2023), shows that office workers switch windows or applications every 47 seconds.
Her research, grounded in years of observation and digital behavior tracking, reveals just how fragmented our attention has become. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, HBR, and beyond — because it strikes a nerve:
we’re operating in perpetual interruption.
That means your lovingly crafted report is competing with calendar invites, push notifications, and someone asking “Got a sec?” from across the open space.
And in this context, long-form anything starts to feel like an act of aggression.
The fetish of brevity is not the same as clarity
Here’s the twist: while people want short content, they also want to understand complex ideas quickly. This is where things get tricky.
You cut. You condense. You simplify.
But in doing so, you might also lose the nuance, the friction, the insight that made the thing valuable in the first place.
The result? Executive summaries full of buzzwords, stripped of soul. LinkedIn carousels masquerading as strategy. Infographics that look good but say nothing.
Simplicity is powerful — but only when it reveals. Not when it hides.
As French philosopher Pascal once said (ironically, in a letter): “I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time.”
Reading is not dead. But deep reading is rare.
A Nielsen Norman Group eye-tracking study — NN/g is a UX research firm founded by Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman, both legends in human-centered design — found that users typically read only about 20% of the words on a web page during an average visit. They use visual scanning patterns, jumping between bolded terms, subheadings, and bullets.
This behavior doesn’t mean people are stupid — it means they’re overwhelmed.
Which is why the real skill isn’t just writing shorter. It’s writing structurally.
Like this:
- Start with a hook.
- Deliver one insight per paragraph.
- Use white space like it matters (because it does).
- Layer depth without demanding attention.
You’re not writing for people who are disinterested. You’re writing for people who are overstimulated.
But here’s the real problem: your boss might not want to read.
Here’s a spicy stat: IBM once found that 90% of all data created by businesses is never analyzed or used.
Now, some of that is noise. But a lot of it is reports, feedback, documentation, research — in short, the stuff that should have made decisions smarter.
Why is it ignored?
Because reading slows things down. Because text invites debate. Because nuance complicates decisions.
Reading means having to consider alternatives, acknowledge uncertainty, and admit that maybe — just maybe — we don’t have it all figured out.
But fast decisions need simplicity. Which is why decks get skimmed and dashboards win.
So what can you do if you still believe in thinking?
You learn to speak insight in the language of urgency.
Here’s how:
- Package big ideas in small containers. Think tweets, not essays.
- Build layered content: TL;DR up top, insight in the middle, nuance at the bottom.
- Use visuals — but only when they carry meaning, not just decoration.
- Write for one reader, not a committee.
And most importantly: measure clarity, not just impact.
Because sometimes, your job is not to be read. It’s to be understood.
And if that means putting your ideas on a napkin or a WhatsApp message, so be it.
What’s your trick to get your message across in a world that doesn’t read?
Drop it below. Or better: send it in emoji.
Until next time, stay readable.
Alex
If you’re still writing 30-page reports in a world that wants 3-second decisions, you’re not failing — you’re speaking the wrong language.
At Kredo, we help you turn complex thinking into clear action.
👉 Let’s simplify things: https://kredo-marketing.com
