It’s a bit of a geeky analogy, I admit, but I like the idea of social media switching our daily lives from very closed reporting / no continuous written output, to verbose mode.
Ver-bose
Adjective: Using or expressed in more words than are needed.
Of course, there are lots of cases where being verbose is a bad idea – the title of book, a road sign, or a product name for example. In many cases, short and concise copy is obviously a big win.
In a technical sense, running a command in verbose means you’ll get a step by step report of exactly everything that is going on. It’s a great tool for debugging, solving network problems, or unpicking how something operates.
Of course, it’s nearly useless when you’re verbose about banal events, but when you’re working on something that someone else might find interesting or genuinely useful, being verbose about it can build a really powerful connection.
If nothing else, someone out there might just learn something from your reports. Don’t be afraid to set that -v flag occasionally.
Photo courtesy of Romana Klee.
