One of my favorite authors, Zig Ziglar, often used two terms to describe different kinds of humans.

A wandering generality and a meaningful specific.

Meaningful specific is someone who has an organized goals program. It is not the same as having goals. See the video clip below to understand.

Being specific in communication also helps.

Start with how you communicate with yourself.

Can you clearly tell yourself: This is what I want and this is how, where, and when I’ll achieve it?

Then audit how you communicate with others.

We often ask others for their time, without telling them what we want their time for. This is unfair to another person because it puts pressure on them to guess what you want to talk about.

Tell them what you want the time for.

“Hey, can I call you at 6 pm today or 2 pm tomorrow, to talk about project x?”

With this information, you make it easy for them to reply. You want this conversation to happen so by helping them by being specific you are helping yourself.

This also gives the other person time to prepare and also keep the conversation focused when that happens.

In times of remote work, this is super helpful as it avoids a lot of back and forth in finalizing the details if the person didn’t share them the first time.

This also helps in personal life. But there are exceptions. So if you have a pleasant surprise for someone then it is ok to not share the specifics.