Brevity

brɛvɪti – noun

1. Concise and exact use of words in writing or speech.

(Concision, succinctness, economy of language, shortness, briefness, pithiness, incisiveness, crispness, compactness, compression.)

2. Shortness of time.

(Transience, transitoriness, ephemerality, impermanence; e.g. “the brevity of human life.”)

As we process through working life, there is ever more we have seen; and a good deal more we have done. It’s easy to forget how much.

Indeed there’s good evidence that’s why older people struggle to remember things – not necessarily cognitive decline; just more to sift through in the back catalogue of the mind.

Still, looking at someone’s CV the other day, I was in sympathy with the wise Roman Emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius’ advice:

“Don’t be a person of too many words and too many deeds….”

The encapsulation of anything – and certainly a Specialist-Generalist’s CV – should be readily achievable in no more than two well-spaced pages.

Any more is much much less.