Most of the words I utter in the course of a day just aren’t that necessary. Sure, I have to communicate with co-workers and friends, but that requires far fewer words than I was using. A lot of my recent reading has tugged me in this direction, most recently a collection of conversations titled, I Am That. An excerpt:

“The moment you start talking you create a verbal universe, a universe of words, ideas, concepts and abstractions, interwoven and interdependent, most wonderfully generating, supporting and explaining each other and yet all without essence or substance, mere creations of the mind. Words create words, reality is silent.”

If that’s too woo woo for you, here’s George Carlin:

“More than half of what comes out of your mouth in that client presentation is mindless, pointless, idiotic sounding, space-filling blather. Don’t you want meetings to be shorter? Aren’t you sick of fake words that mean nothing? Wouldn’t you rather be actually creating something rather than killing it with the boatload of words you throw at it before you ever show it to the client? Of course you would. So stop talking like an idiot.”

I’d love to have a transcript of every conversation I had for 24 hours. I’d highlight just the stuff that needed to be said. What percent do you think that might be?