When you write pro­ce­dures, do you offer your read­ers more than one way to com­plete a task? Some writ­ers go to pains to explain one pro­ce­dure and then offer alter­na­tives. For example:

1. Click the Select button.
OR
From the Options menu, click Select.
OR
From the Actions sec­tion, click Select.

This approach is pret­ty com­mon and is con­sis­tent with the North Amer­i­can belief that choice is empow­er­ing and pro­vides greater satisfaction.

Author Bar­ry Schwartz dis­agrees. In his book the Para­dox of Choice, he con­tends that too much choice can make deci­sion-mak­ing a chal­lenge. In the long-term, he argues that this leads to deci­sion-mak­ing paral­y­sis, anx­i­ety, and stress. He even sug­gests that too many choic­es in one’s life can lead to clin­i­cal depression.

In just one exam­ple in the book, Schwartz doc­u­ments the bewil­der­ing options that he faced when vis­it­ing his local supermarket:

• Eighty vari­eties of pain relievers
• One hun­dred and six­teen types of skin cream
• Three hun­dred and six­ty types of con­di­tion­ers, sham­poos, gels, and mousse.
• Nine­ty types of cold reme­dies and decongestants
• Nine­ty-five snack options
• Six­ty-five box drinks
• And so on…

Schwartz points out that sev­er­al stud­ies have con­clud­ed that peo­ple are less sat­is­fied when faced with a large array of choic­es. Few­er options may actu­al­ly make one’s life easier.

In keep­ing with this research, as tech­ni­cal writ­ers, per­haps we should also stream­line the num­ber of choic­es we offer our users. It makes our lives eas­i­er and our read­ers could very well pre­fer the sim­pler, more stream­lined approach.

I love the idea of sim­plic­i­ty in both my per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al lives.

At this stage in my life, most of the rou­tine mate­r­i­al items I buy offer me lit­tle plea­sure. In our soci­ety, con­sumers are promised by cor­po­ra­tions that mate­ri­al­ism will bring us plea­sure. But too much stuff can become a bur­den (at least, that’s what I’ve been told) because some­one needs to sort, insure, and main­tain all these assets. Too many items also cre­ates visu­al clut­ter in a home.

I think one can apply the same ideas of sim­plic­i­ty to tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion. Occa­sion­al­ly, I’ve worked with writ­ers who tend to write a lot about a sub­ject, some­times unnec­es­sar­i­ly. They write para­graphs about a sub­ject when one will do. In my opin­ion, these writ­ers just love to write and they share every­thing they know about a sub­ject. This to me is just more clutter.

Writ­ing less is even more impor­tant for an online envi­ron­ment. Usabil­i­ty guru Jakob Nielsen argues that online writ­ers should strive to write half of the con­tent they would for a print­ed doc­u­ment. When I am faced with a lot of scrolling on a web site or in an online help sys­tem, I find the con­tent can usu­al­ly be edit­ed or reor­ga­nized so the mate­r­i­al is eas­i­er to digest. Here are a few ben­e­fits of writ­ing less:

• Your users get to the point faster as they won’t have to endure end­less scrolling online.
• Less time required to write and edit reams of content.
• Trans­la­tion costs will be lower.

It’s not eas­i­er to write less con­tent. Writ­ing less is often hard­er because I usu­al­ly have too much con­tent that needs to be stream­lined. But it’s a worth­while goal. Less is more.