In a world drowning in words — many of them inflammatory, hateful or misleading — I can’t help thinking less is more.

But writing shorter requires you to find the most accurate, precise and powerful words, and then hit “control X” on the rest. As any reporter given a stingy word count for a story about a four-hour town meeting will tell you, it’s more difficult to write shorter than it is to just open the spigot.

That got me thinking about six-word memoirs. I was introduced to them as a light-hearted newsroom activity years ago. After I moved on from newspapers, I chose six-word memoirs for the ice breaker in a work meeting. It was my turn to lead this dreadful corporate culture exercise.

Let’s just say it was no one’s finest moment.

Each person read their micro-autobiography out loud. One person summed up their life as: Grocery shopping, work, blah, blah blah. And my eyes nearly rolled out of their sockets when another pronounced: Childhood pianist, making world better place.

Still, I find the six-word challenges fun. They force you to get to the essence of what you want to say like few other things can.

Nearly 20 years ago, Larry Smith of SMITH Magazine launched Six-Word Memoirs® after being inspired by an apocryphal story about Ernest Hemingway. The legend claims that Hemingway boasted he could write a short story in just six words, then penned this gut punch: For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Since then, more than 1.5 million people around the world have shared their six-word life stories. Compilations fill best-selling books, and people can’t seem to resist the challenge or the inspiring and often funny results.

Several years ago, I entered a six-word memoir contest that asked for stories of family immigration. I was surprised and delighted that my entry — From steerage to college, two generations — was the winner. The prize was a copy of the memoir In the Country We Love: My Family Divided by actress Diane Guerrero of the then-hit TV show Orange Is the New Black. (How many thousands more could tell that story now?)

Anyway, if your productivity app is nagging you that it’s time to sit down and write, try a six-word memoir. And then delete the app.