When Jack Dorsey created Twitter in March of 2006 he was introducing a new social media platform that was groundbreaking. You could post thoughts but you were limited to 140 characters. Have you ever wrote a note to someone and counted the number of characters, not words but letters or punctuation in the message; well Twitter did just that. If you look above at where I wrote the number 140, the zero is the 140th character in this paragraph. My point is we all have a finite number of words we get to say in this life. Are you choosing your words carefully?

Imagine a world in which two numbers appeared above everyone’s head. The first number would indicate the total number of words you get to say, the second number would be the running total of words you have spoken. Would our words, our conversations be different if we could see this number? Words carry such power. The point of my blog post is the limited number of words we will say. Like a financial budget that is kept in tact by tracking our spending, I believe a word count budget should be a priority in our lives. You might filter your speech through Socrates quote : “Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?” Your word count is increasing today while your total count is decreasing. What do you say?