Brevity
 

As i get older my patience wears thin.

Seemingly no one in my family, wife, kids, my mom, are capable
of brevity.

A simple yes or no turns into 15 minutes of why the answer is what it is

I don’t care why.

Just answer yes or no

Why is that so hard for people?

No

Yep.

Because many people think that more information is better all of the time, so they provide unneeded context for their answer.

Woman. Everything has to be a long, formal presentation. Why many married guys want to kill themselves after a few years.

rjp

This gets me in hot water with the War Department nearly every day.

Of course, if I wouldn't complain about it, it wouldn't

_

My wife complains that I don't give yes or no answers to questions.

Often that's because the answer is depends.

And at the same time, if I give her a yes or no answer, I get twenty more questions or the complaint that I should provide more info.

I testify at depositions and hearings regularly. When a one-word answer can suffice, this is what I give. The "rest of the story" can always come out in subsequent testimony.

I sometimes work on a document....a letter or report draft....and the longer I work on it the shorter it gets. I love this quote, supposedly by Mr. Twain:

"I wanted to write you a short note but I didn't have time, so I wrote you a long one."

In all aspects of my professional and personal communications, the older I get the fewer words I speak.

^That^

I have a friend who says “to make a long story longer” when something isn’t quick. Pretty funny- I’ve adopted it.

That is hilarious ^^^

to the OP's point........
 

BREVITY is the soul of underware.

jeese....

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1650764878.jpg

My wife is somewhat prone to answers that are a bit longer than necessary when I'd prefer a yes or no.

Try this...

Q: "Yes or no question; blah blah blah?"
A: "Yes"

I started this sometime in the last year. It has worked the vast majority of times.

Strangely enough, she has never used it on me. :D

Mrs. Rocket likes to go on a tangent when answering a question. I never do get the answer to the question I asked.

My kids used to say that I went into too much detail when they were asking about something, how it worked, etc.

Back when I was married I too suffered that particular aspect. My Mom handled one episode perfectly on my behalf.

The Mrs. was yap yap yapping at me while we were having dinner with the folks. I was front sight focused on my steak. She finally turned to my Mom and said "he doesn't even hear me!". Mama Flatbutt responded with "he hears you dear he's just not listening".

About 40 years ago I saw a one man standup comedian do a show called “defending the cave man”. Sold out every night in DC for like 12 years…about the differences between men and women. Hilarious and one of his contentions was that women get 25,000 words to use each day and men only 10,000. By the time the man gets home from work he’s used up all his words and his wife still has 5,000 left. (Or something to that affect).

The same thing applies to organizing a day- ever wonder why trips to places like Target take 5 hours?

You will be wasting long time during the day wondering why it takes 500 words when 10 will do, then waiting while the other one goes off and gets attracted to everything in the store- for hours.

I honestly can say I can't deal with that. Just gets old having to try to plan a day with someone who gets lost on tangents so easily.

rjp