Day 204: State accomplishments confidently.

Strong, confident writing is good writing. However, many writers weaken their writing when describing their accomplishments, which is self-defeating. They do this by adding adverbs indicating accomplishment. This seems like a contradiction, but it isn’t.

Consider these adverbs: clearly, successfully, enthusiastically, proactively, and effectively. When used to describe your actions, they weaken the writing. Consider this sentence.

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“He successfully transformed the company payroll system.”

In this sample, either he transformed the system or he didn’t. The word “successfully” doesn’t add any meaning here. Instead, it weakens the writing by reducing the focus on “transformed,” which is the point of this sentence. Instead, this sentence can be written,

“He transformed the company payroll system.”

This is a stronger, more confident statement.

Our advice: Remove the adverbs and focus on positive actions.