The ability to communicate effectively – saying what you want to say in a way that another person understands it – is a superpower.

It does not come naturally to most of us.

We learn it through our family, school, and society.

How effectively we do it also depends on our surroundings and our personalities.

We know that this skill is important and we should work to hone it.

Effort it takes to hone it, varies from person to person.

Good communicators can start talking about whatever they want to at will. 

But if speaking does not come easy to you, words don’t flow easily. Either they are out of order or jumbled up.

To improve the ability to convey your ideas, clarity of thought is a must.

Start by writing what you want to say.

Do not stop there. Edit what you write.

Editing your own writing is one of the most underrated career skills. It takes time to learn this skill. Commit to it because it will give you a tremendous ROI.

Once you commit to improve your writing, use the following process to write your first draft.

Start with 1 or 2 lines about what you want to say. That’s your main point. Then add 3-5 points to explain and support your main point. Write about those points. That’s your first draft.

Now time for an edit. Rewrite what you wrote. Fix typos. Simplify sentences. Check to make sure that transition from sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph is smooth. Rewrite again until you reach a point where there is no fluff, just pure flow.

Do this often and you’ll see your ability to organize information and your thoughts has improved. After you write about a topic clearly it will make what you want to say super easy. 

Many of us are able to practice till this point. But we don’t try the next step which is taking then key points of what you wrote. Then getting up and explaining to someone, the topic you wrote using the points you picked. Make a family member, a friend or colleague sit and talk to them about it.

The difference between the level of improvement will be at 10x if you add speaking and explaining to your writing routine, as compared to only writing and leaving it at that.

If you do this once a year, it may not take you far. Do it 100 times a year then you’ll be in for the kind of results I wrote about.

I hope you’ll try this.