I’ve been wrestling with how much information is just enough when presenting, and how much is too much. Over-communicating, like over-sharing, is a present-day malady, influenced by our penchant to provide too much details even to our close networks.

In business presentations and training sessions, some speakers have this tendency to add so many sidebars to the main thing that you often catch them saying “now where was I before I went off on that tangent..?”

Bullet points are one solution when one is prone to over-communicate. Short sentences. Rich metaphors. But even bullet points could be overdone. I have caught myself veering off the ledge hitting the bullet point icon too hard, when I should have hit the delete key instead.

So instead of saying this

• I end up saying
• things like this
• hoping the idea
• will stand out!
• Wrong!

So here’s a revolutionary idea. When you have five  things to say, don’t, let four drop to the cutting floor. No one will miss them, I promise.

As in this simple video for Jet Blue, you could communicate one idea well.