🤔Should you write less & read less? (simple test shows you)

In partnership with

Top of the morning on this fine Monday. Quick reminder related to an old starfish story from Zig Ziglar. This hoarder house cleaner guy is wasting his time on 80% of the homes he cleans. He marches right past that discouraging reality, doing good for the ones it matters to (even if it’s for only a month).

Alright. Today’s Main Thing might be the worst thing you can test for yourself. Depends on the result. It’s a simple test to see if you really should trim your writing down, and if you should scan instead of carefully read content you consume.

After that, I’ve got some fresh-baked Monday Marketing News.

Appetizer: Meet the YouTuber who solved shorts (Jenny Hoyos interview)

Get Matched With the Best HRIS/ATS Software, for Free!

Researching HR systems shouldn’t feel like a second job.

The old way meant hours of demos, irrelevant product suggestions, getting bombarded with cold emails and sales calls.

But there’s a better way.

With SelectSoftware Reviews, spend 15 minutes with an HR software expert and get 2–3 vendor recommendations tailored to your unique needs—no sales pitches, no demos.

SSR’s free HR software matching service helps you cut through the noise and focus only on solutions that truly fit your team’s needs. No guesswork. No fluff. Just insights from real HR experts.

Why HR teams trust SSR:

✅ 100% free service with no sales pressure
✅ 2–3 tailored recommendations from 1,000+ vetted options
✅ Rated 4.9/5 by HR teams and trusted by 15,000+ companies

Skip the old way—find your right HRIS/ATS in a new way, for free!

Get Your Free HR Software Matches

The Main Thing

Concise Writing Tips (are they right?)

Keep it short.

That’s what every guru tells today’s writers (of ads, newsletters, scripts, etc.)

No doubt Maria Popova of The Marginilian would like to kick them in the crotch.

And as the Marginilian newsletter proves, more people are willing to read long-form stuff than the gurus tell us.

However, we don’t have to rely on alleged experts or what could be an outlier in Ms. Popova.

We can run a test ourselves. To answer two questions.

#1 Is scanning as good as reading?

#2 Am I writing too much?

You’ll need a buddy for this simple test. 

You might can use an AI buddy, but I doubt you can trust them to “scan an article” vs “read it word-for-word” since bots can do both in 2 seconds.

Testing Concise Writing

This same type of test will work for audio and video content too. Infographics too, I reckon. 

Choose three articles. Something in the WSJ, NYT, or a long how-to article.

Your buddy is tasked with just scanning the articles. You will read every word.

Ideally, you two have similar intelligence. Low or high is irrelevant🫠. Being similar is the goal for helpful test results. 

After you and your friend consume the articles, it’s time to ask each other questions about the information.

No looking back at the articles. Just answer what you recall. 

It should be clear which of you got the most out of the articles. You, the reader. Or your scanner buddy.

Yeah, it could end up a tie or too close to call. Still, that gives you insights as good as if you the reader are way more knowledgeable than the person who only scanned the words. 

If the scanner knows as much as you who read every “painful” word, then it tells you scanning is good enough. That gives you the greenlight to read less and scan more in your daily work (if you want to save time). 

You’ll also have the green light to trim down your word counts on your articles (or video scripts / outlines).

The flip side? 

If the scanner seems clueless compared to you the reader, then you probably want to keep reading content thoroughly. 

And you’ll want to stop caring if your word count is higher than most gurus tell you it should be. 

Oh, if you want more precise testing, you could use Perplexity or Claude to create a quiz for you and your testing buddy. That’ll give you exact scores to compare. 

Me? I play it by ear. A smart writing client of mine, a psychologist with two PhDs, always told me… “We can make it as long or as short as we want.”

That was for anything we wrote together. 

That stuck with me. There is no right or wrong number of words to use. It depends on your goals for the article or series of articles. Also depends on how much you have to say. How complex the topic. What the audience loves.❌ Strike that last one!

Yes, the audience is plainly vital to a content creator’s success. However, “preaching to the choir” - letting the audience determine the words you produce - is just another “best practice” gurus shout about. 

Most writers / creators will be better off to just preach. Put your message out there. Let the people who want it, pick it up. 

Sorta like the old cliche, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” It ain’t the other way around. The student shouldn’t dictate the teaching. 

Alrighty then. Monday Marketing News is just below.

Please share Inbox Hacking with a fellow marketing go-getter or business owner. I appreciate you reading & sharing.

Shane McLendon - Copy Kingpin

“The last thing we want is for the audience to stifle, control, or capture the creator.” ~Matt Klein