Short on space or time for your message? Do this.

“We must learn to be equally good at what is short and sharp and what is long and tough.”

—Winston Churchill

When creating content around messages, we usually focus on the “long” forms of it: the presentation, the book, the white paper, etc. And yes, in the words of Churchill, those long forms are tough.

But almost always, before you have the opportunity to present or publish that long-form content, you have to succeed in the short form first. You have to encapsulate a big, beautiful idea in a space so small it couldn’t possibly do it justice:

• A hallway (or these, days, a Slack) conversation with your boss who asks, “What will you be presenting?”
• A treatment or proposal for your book (which a lot of publishers will judge on the title and/or first few sentences alone)
• An investor who wants to know what your startup does — usually in 90 seconds or less — before deciding to take a meeting with you or have a longer call.

I would argue that these short-form formats are just as hard, if not harder, than the long ones. Ask anyone who suddenly had their speaking time cut, or who has given a TED-style talk!

If you’ve ever had to make your big idea small like that, then you know: it isn’t just about having fewer words, or saying them faster. So often, fewer words mean more confusion, as does just saying the same amount of words faster (or in smaller font).

No matter the space your idea has to fit in, people still need to understand it.

So what’s the key to success when time is short? Specificity. Your idea doesn’t change size, even if your space and time does. So, when time is short your only option is to choose which angle of your idea are most critical for you to address. The basics are, of course, making sure that you know:

• The audience question you solve
• Your answer to that question (your idea!)

That way, you aren’t trying to squish your big beautiful idea into a teeny tiny space. Instead, you’re simply showing a smaller part of it. The good news? When that audience sees and hears their question, they’re much more likely to pay attention —because it’s relevant to them.

As I’ll talk about next week, there’s another layer that can help with specificity: focusing in on what makes your idea remarkable, as well. What makes it different from the answers people have seen before.

In the meantime, take a look at this week’s “What’s Missing From This Message?” video, where I go through a short-form format where remarkableness is required: an application to speak at a TEDx event. We TEDx organizers see so many ideas that it takes a lot for one to stand out.

The challenge for potential TEDs speakers is the same for you as a message-maker: the near-fatal instinct to talk about your idea in broad terms in hopes that you capture all the nuance of your idea. Unfortunately, that usually means none of the nuance gets through, and you even get the chance to present your long-form version.

So, as I suggest in the video with Kathy Klotz-Guest’s TEDx application, the key is to focus on a nuance of your idea a specific aspect or angle that you can actually cover in your 3- to 18-minute time slot. To quote head of TED Chris Anderson: great talks “only cover as much ground as you can dive into in sufficient depth to be compelling.”

The same advice is equally true of the short forms of content that come first: cover only as much ground as you can with the specificity you need to be relevant… and remarkable.