To me, communication is like painting. If you use the same colors over and over again, it gets pretty boring. Boring for you, and boring for your readers or listeners. (Unless you’re Mondrian. He did pretty well with the same colors. If you’re not Mondrian, keep reading!)<\/p>\n
Today, people’s attention span is so decimated.
\nWe think in 140 characters.
\nWe think in 1-minute films.
\nWe think in 3-second Boomerangs.<\/p>\n
You need to grab people’s attention, and you need to do that pretty quickly. Having a boring, flat, no-energy, repetitive vocabulary will not get people interested and communication will not be as awesome as it could be!<\/p>\n
So let’s do a quick exercise right now to bring more color into your vocabulary – I call it a Word Blitz.<\/p>\n
In my opinion, the 3 most overused descriptive words in English are good, nice, and big. Bah. You can do better. They have been so overused that they have lost a lot of their impact. So let’s get rockin.<\/p>\n
Set the timer on your phone for 1 minute. Choose a word – either good, nice, or big. Then put that word at the top of your page (or screen), start the timer, and write down as many words as you can that are synonyms of that word.<\/p>\n
How many can you come up with?
\nThe record so far is 15 in my workshops. Can you beat that? Try!<\/p>\n
Then make sentences with the words you have written down.
\nEasy peasy.
\n90 seconds later, you’ve activated some interesting vocabulary!<\/p>\n
What sounds more interesting?
\n“Beyonce gave a good show. It was held in a big venue. Her outfits were nice.”
\nor
\n“Beyond gave a fantastic show. It was held in an enormous venue, and her outfits were breathtaking!”<\/p>\n
I’d want to buy a ticket for the second show, but not for the first one.<\/p>\n
Try this with other words, like happy, sad, angry, etc.
\nSee how far you can go!<\/p>\n
Isn’t it time you started painting with more colors?
\n(It is.)<\/p>\n
Have a super day and I’ll see you again in your lovely inbox in 2 weeks -I’m coaching and teaching in Berln next week, so unfortunately no time for a newsletter next Monday! See you very zoen though!<\/p>\n
Ciao, and thanks for reading!<\/p>\n
XX buffi<\/p>\n
PS: If you know someone who needs an English boost, share the Word Blitz with them. It works for all languages and can really get you active!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To me, communication is like painting. If you use the same colors over and over again, it gets pretty boring. Boring for you, and boring for your readers or listeners. (Unless you’re Mondrian. He did pretty well with the same colors. If you’re not Mondrian, keep reading!) Today, people’s attention span is so decimated. We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4131,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"yoast_head":"\n