Just found out about this cool experiment and I wonder about my own ability to participate. The odd thing is that I like having options. This is why, when I pack to go away for even just two days (as I’m about to later this afternoon), do I bring only what I need for those two days?

Oh, no!

I bring the yellow tank, the red tank, the blue tank, plus the red t-shirt and the blue t-shirt with the paisley giraffe on it because, heck, I don’t know what kind of mood I’m going to be in tomorrow or the next day, so I must bring the options incase I feel like wearing red but I didn’t bring the red tank OR the red tee.

But then the options turn around and bite me, because when I am at home with every single option I own, do you know how long it takes me to choose what to wear in the morning? Some times as many as 30 minutes. That is too many minutes for choosing clothes.

So maybe I should do the Six Items or Less experiment. Except, how will I ever choose which 6 items?

Last week, I was working on the bio section of web copy for a client. I wanted to describe the artist’s creative abandon without sounding so dramatic, so I used “creative inhibition.”

Here’s the sentence: Her creative inhibition combines her keen awareness of social groups and cultures with hand-drawn images and rich color palettes.

Problem? Inhibition does not mean the same thing as uninhibited, which is the word I was thinking.

Inhibition (noun): a feeling that makes one self-conscious and unable to act in a relaxed and natural way

Uninhibited (adjective): expressing one’s feelings or thoughts unselfconsciously and without restraint

Not to mention that the words are antonyms, one is a noun, the other an adjective. So I couldn’t just swap the words. And writing “uninhibited creativity” sounds cumbersome.

Here’s the revision: Her artistry combines a keen awareness of social groups and cultures with hand-drawn images and rich color palettes.

When editing and revising, I try to stick to the motto “less is more,” thanks to a lesson learned more than 10 years ago from my old friends, Strunk & White: “Omit needless words.”

See how swapping two words for one makes all the difference?