I’ve been thinking about human attention recently. I was on the phone recently with a marketing professional. He had been reading 33 charts in preparation for an interview. So I took advantage of the moment and asked him if he had any advice.

“Write longer posts,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Long-form writing lends authority. You know, gravitas.”

As it turns out, I didn’t know.

We should write only as much as we need to make our point. The world is noisy enough.

Look at Twitter: Everybody communicated fine with 140 characters. Now everyone is using 240 characters to say the same thing. The difference is they’re wasting twice as much of our time.

Write as much as you want but understand that when it comes to information our limit is human attention not space.

If you dig this post you might be interested in the 33 charts Constrained Media Archive. It’s everything written here dealing with short-form content and stuff written for small places. It’s how we communicate and it deserves attention. Check it out.