Don't Be Long
A Ghanaian phrase for the most useful business principle I know.
I posted a story last night. Five words: "Life hack: don't be long."
The replies split into two groups. One sent fire emojis. The other asked what it meant.
This is for the second group. And especially for Omar.
"Don't be long" is a Ghanaian phrase. You say it when someone is making a simple thing complicated. When a five-minute decision becomes a forty-five-minute meeting. When a yes-or-no question spawns a committee.
It doesn't mean be careless. It doesn't mean skip the thinking. It means: find the minimum viable action, take it, and move on. Iterate from there.
Why does this matter?
The people with the best opportunities are almost never the people with the most time.
Investors, decision-makers, connectors — they are time-crunched by definition. A busy calendar is just evidence that people want what they have.
So when you get access to one of these people, what happens next matters. If you hedge, over-explain, or want to set up a meeting to discuss the meeting, you more than lose the moment. You kill the momentum.
They don't get angry. They get uninterested. They go somewhere else. Not out of spite. The energy just died.
Most business advice assumes ideal conditions: enough time, full information, everyone aligned. That's not how things actually happen.
Most things happen fast and sideways. A WhatsApp message at 10pm. A referral from a friend of a friend. A meeting that becomes about something else entirely. In those moments, the person who wins isn't the most prepared. It's the person who keeps the energy alive.
This applies everywhere too...
In proposals: clients don't need to understand every decision you made. They need to feel confident you can do the job. Say less. Show more. Move.
In conversations: the person who listens and responds with clarity is more compelling than the one who covers every angle before landing on a point.
In relationships: people feel respected when you don't waste their time. That's it.
Don't be long is not a hack. It's a mindset. A foundational principle of operation.
Ironically, being brief is harder than being long.
Being long is easy. You add more words because you're unsure. More steps because you want to look thorough. More meetings because a decision feels risky and process feels safe.
Being concise requires you to actually know what you think. To have done the thinking before you open your mouth. To take a position and own it.
That's the discipline. Clarity before you speak. Then stop when you're done.
And that clarity is often a sign of preparedness. If you stay ready, you don't have to get ready. Being long says you're not ready – for the conversation, for the opportunity, for the moment.
The people who sent fire emojis already live this way. They recognised the phrase because they've felt its opposite — the slow leak of energy when someone is long, and the helplessness of watching momentum die.
If you've felt that, you know.
If you've been the one doing it, now you have a name for it.
Don't be long.