Everyone’s talking shite. I’m just breathing it in.

There are words in the world that should come with a warning label.

Impactful is one of them.

I first encountered it in an email from a client, one of those polished corporate types who smiles too much and says nothing meaningful. “We need an impactful solution,” they wrote.

I paused. My stomach did a small somersault. My brain screamed: What does that even mean?

Impactful. It’s everywhere. Presentations, reports, LinkedIn posts, CVs. People love it because it sounds serious, important, decisive. It’s a little too clever, a little too shiny, and utterly devoid of actual content.

Then my boss latched onto it. Suddenly, every meeting was filled with talk of “impactful strategies,” “impactful outcomes,” and “impactful synergies.” I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw my coffee mug at the whiteboard. Instead, I nodded, smiled, and silently died a little inside.

I’ve spent hours in meetings nodding politely while someone waxed lyrical about being impactful. I’ve had to sit through workshops titled “Maximizing Impactful Strategies Across Vertical Synergies”. I want to weep. I want to scream. Mostly, I just make a face like I’m thinking hard, while counting the seconds until I can quietly leave.

Because what else is a “strategy” in these workshops gonna be? Maximizing mediocre strategies… polishing obvious nonsense until it sparkles enough to justify someone’s bonus. It’s like taking a pile of shit, wrapping it in gold foil, and calling it a diamond.

The thing about impactful is this: it pretends to matter. It’s not actionable. It doesn’t describe anything real. It exists purely to make people sound like they’re doing something important when they’re really just… existing.

So here’s my takeaway: next time someone drops “impactful” into a sentence, breathe slowly, locate your nearest exit, and remind yourself that life — real life — is messy, complicated, and rarely describable by a single meaningless adjective.

Because real impact? You feel it. You see it. You don’t need a word to dress it up.

— Tom Kite.

Note: “Impactful” is a recognised word in the Oxford English Dictionary, but that doesn’t make it any less stomach-turning.