????這就像軟件中的“功能蔓延”，我們可以稱之為羅列蔓延。出發點可能是好的，但效果不佳。越是對“羅列蔓延”敏感，我就越擔心我們的討論可能是雞同鴨講，不斷往上堆積，導致初衷迷失，浪費時間。

????我問過《減法法則》（The Laws of Subtraction）的作者馬修·梅，把很多想法硬塞進一個句子的沖動來自哪里？他將此歸咎于缺乏自制。“如果沒有自制，本能就會占據主導，”他說。“我們的固有本能就是添加，掌握的東西越多，我們就越感到安全。”

????競爭性工作環境下，塞入過多溝通內容往往比遺漏更安全。但梅說，這種自我保護的本能可能弊大于利。

????“具有諷刺意味的是，世界的注意廣度正在收窄。我們要想繼續有人聽，就必須得花點功夫。寫微博和短消息或許能讓我們成為更好的編輯。我們想通過這樣的自制，形成中長期模式。”

????如果您擔心自己可能已感染上了“羅列病”，不想進一步陷入毫無邏輯的境地，一種辦法就是檢查你的名詞:動詞比率。（像上述這樣的10:4比例，表明廢話過多，行動不足。）

????梅建議不妨預設一個限值，即便這在一些同行看來可能有些草率。“我通常以3為限。我想這是大多數人能夠做到的。當然，最理想的情況是1。”

????另外，建立一套固定的修改流程也有幫助。梅表示，他會在段落中快速瀏覽每次出現的“和”，而且嘗試把“和”后面的部分刪除。但他也說“不一定每次都能做到”。熱和悶改成熱，后面是句號。

????決定哪些略過不提并不是件容易的事。正如貝佐斯所言，這需要想清楚。它意味著需要孤立和整體地評估各個要素的重要性。

????博主克里斯多夫·萊福寫道，它還意味著感受一下稿件的份量。是的，就是字面意思的份量，他還記得到好萊塢工作時見到的一個奇特傳統。“制片人或審稿人拿到劇本的第一件事就是本能地拿起來‘掂量掂量’。真的就是掂量一下。”

????太重了？萊福寫到：“這樣的劇本很少有人仔細閱讀，可能連看都不會看。”

????當然也會有例外。但如果你可以將一個項目從列表中劃掉，或許你的確應該這么做。

????Like feature creep in software, what we might call?list creep?is insidious. The intentions may be good but the effect underwhelms. The more sensitive I become to list creep, the more I worry we waste time talking past each other, perpetually tacking on one more "thing" and only making our intended meaning blurrier.

????I asked Matthew E. May, author of?The Laws of Subtraction,?where the compulsion to stuff multiple ideas into a single sentence comes from. He faulted a lack of self-control. "Without the discipline, instinct takes over," he says. "Our hardwired instinct is to add, as slack resources make us feel safe."

????In competitive work situations, overstuffing your communications often seems like a safer bet than running the risk of leaving something out. But that instinct for self-preservation may be doing more harm than good, says May.

????"The ironic thing is that the world's attention span is shrinking, so we're going to have to do the work if we want to stay relevant. Twitter and texting may be inadvertently making us better editors. We just need to apply that discipline to our longer formats."

????If you're worried that you've succumbed to list creep, one way to halt your slide into incoherence is to check your memos for noun: verb ratio. (A 10:4 ratio like the one above implies a lot of conversation, not enough action.)

????May recommends setting predetermined limits, even if they strike some colleagues as arbitrary. "I try to follow the rule of three. I think that's the most people can retain. The ideal is one, of course."

????A routine revision process also helps. May says he scans his paragraphs for every instance of the word "and." Then he tries -- "not always successfully," he adds -- to eliminate what follows each "and."?Hot and sticky?becomes?hot, period.

????Deciding what can go unmentioned is hard work. It involves, as Bezos suggested, clear thinking. It means assessing the importance of each element in isolation and as part of the whole.

????It also means getting a sense for how heavy -- literally -- a document should be, writes blogger Christopher Rife, who recalls witnessing a strange ritual upon arriving for work in Hollywood. "The first thing a producer or reader would do with a script, instinctively, was to pick it up and 'weigh' it. Literally weigh it."

????Too heavy? "It ha[d] little chance of being read with care or read at all," Rife writes.

????There will always be exceptions. But it's tempting to recommend that if you can cross it off your list, you probably should.