The Art of Manliness - The 6 Principles for Writing Messages People Won't Swipe Away

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.380 Think of all the texts, emails, and social media posts you're inundated with each day.

00:00:16.180 Sometimes you read them and sometimes you swipe them away, telling yourself, perhaps

00:00:20.120 not so honestly, that you'll revisit them later.

00:00:23.040 If you're the center of such missives and memos or the creator of content, you hope

00:00:26.540 the recipient has the first response, that, instead of deep-sixing your message, they

00:00:30.360 take the time to engage and take action on it.

00:00:32.680 How do you increase the odds of that happening?

00:00:34.620 Rather than just guessing at the answer, Todd Rogers has done empirical experiments to discover

00:00:38.540 it.

00:00:39.300 Todd is a behavioral scientist, professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School,

00:00:43.360 and the author of Writing for Busy Readers, Communicate More Effectively in the Real World.

00:00:48.400 Today on the show, Todd explains the four-stage process people use in deciding whether to engage

00:00:52.440 with your writing, whether in a personal or business context, and how influencing these

00:00:56.160 factors not only comes down to the style of your writing, but its overall design.

00:01:00.100 Todd offers tips to improve both areas so that you can effectively capture people's attention.

00:01:04.680 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash busyreaders.

00:01:20.640 All right, Todd Rogers, welcome to the show.

00:01:23.740 Thanks for having me.

00:01:24.320 So you are a professor of public policy, and you recently co-authored a book about how to

00:01:30.180 write for busy readers.

00:01:33.040 What's the connection between researching and writing about public policy and writing for

00:01:38.740 harried people living in the TikTok age?

00:01:44.260 I've never been asked to actually defend why this is public policy.

00:01:48.060 I guess it starts with, I spent a decade working on how do we communicate to busy voters, trying

00:01:53.840 to mobilize voters to participate in elections, and then a decade working on how do we communicate

00:01:59.060 with busy families from schools to get kids to go to school and kids do better.

00:02:04.020 And then five or six years before Jessica and I wrote this book, working with leaders across

00:02:08.920 industries on how do we communicate to our employees, stakeholders, customers, constituents.

00:02:14.020 And yeah, so I guess the common thread is across all these categories, across every domain of

00:02:21.360 life, we are communicating to busy people.

00:02:23.820 And if we want to be effective at doing it, we have to understand that our readers are busy

00:02:28.600 and we should write in a way that makes it easy for them.

00:02:30.880 Yeah.

00:02:31.060 So with public policy, you're trying to get people to do things, but in order for them to

00:02:35.520 do the thing that you want them to do, you have to communicate that to them.

00:02:40.780 Yeah.

00:02:41.300 I describe it as stage zero of every intervention we deliver is do we capture people's attention

00:02:48.740 long enough to deliver whatever we're trying to communicate?

00:02:50.760 So yeah.

00:02:51.580 So if we are trying to have people sign up for a program or comply with the law or show up

00:03:00.180 to court on a specific court date, we need to make sure we are communicating to them effectively.

00:03:05.520 So you start off the book defining what effective communication is, what effective writing is,

00:03:11.480 and you've developed this definition based on research as well as your own experience as a

00:03:16.860 reader and writer.

00:03:17.780 So what makes writing effective?

00:03:20.480 I think we probably start with the reader.

00:03:22.540 So it's funny, we talk about writing as if we are teaching writers, but the entire question

00:03:28.380 of effectiveness is do we succeed in communicating some thought from our head into the head of

00:03:33.280 a reader?

00:03:34.160 And so when we talk about this work, we're like, okay, imagine you own a radical different

00:03:38.840 take on writing.

00:03:39.860 It's not enough to have everything in there and then shift the responsibility of the reader.

00:03:44.380 Imagine if it was always your fault if the reader did not read what you gave them.

00:03:48.620 If it was always your fault, and so it's your responsibility to make sure they read it and

00:03:54.260 you don't control their lives.

00:03:55.300 All you control is what you put in front of them.

00:03:56.880 Then it takes a whole new orientation.

00:03:59.700 Effective writing is writing that we succeed in delivering the key content into someone

00:04:05.320 else's head at their leisure.

00:04:08.440 And then at the beginning, I loved how you applied the things you write about in this

00:04:11.640 book in your book.

00:04:13.220 And you lay out these sort of bullet points of what you found to be effective writing.

00:04:16.880 Things like effective writing has a well-defined purpose.

00:04:19.640 There's a reason why you're doing it.

00:04:21.340 And the reader can pick that up right away.

00:04:24.020 It says, effective writing helps the writer as well as the reader.

00:04:27.500 How does effective writing help the writer as well as the reader?

00:04:30.920 Writing often helps us clarify our own thinking.

00:04:34.620 And I think we conflate that with the other use of writing, which is getting an idea from

00:04:39.840 me to you.

00:04:40.620 And they are two totally different functions.

00:04:42.920 And often we write our first draft, and then at the end, it was clear what we think that

00:04:46.860 the highest order goal is.

00:04:48.740 But that's actually stage one.

00:04:49.900 Stage two is then we need to actually make it as easy for the reader as possible.

00:04:54.020 To get it.

00:04:54.980 The way it makes it easier for the writer, writing effectively helps writers because,

00:04:59.200 one, it helps us achieve our goals, which is Jessica and my objective with this book.

00:05:03.280 Helping writers be more effective in achieving their goals.

00:05:06.520 But it also, and we've all experienced this, the haranguing or harassment of people who haven't

00:05:10.840 read or responded to what we sent them.

00:05:13.760 Ineffective writing becomes a huge burden on the writer because people aren't showing up.

00:05:18.580 People aren't responding.

00:05:19.500 People are asking you questions.

00:05:20.960 So writing effectively helps writers because it saves us all the follow-up and all the hassle

00:05:27.180 that we are experiencing as a part of hassling other people to respond to us.

00:05:31.300 It saves you from that irritation.

00:05:33.060 Yeah.

00:05:33.420 Another point you make, effective writing is not the same as beautiful writing.

00:05:37.240 Flesh that out for us.

00:05:38.460 We are all taught how to write well.

00:05:41.720 K through 12, K through college, we are taught these ideals of what good writing looks like,

00:05:47.380 what beautiful sentences are, and using advanced vocabulary to be more precise.

00:05:52.340 And I think that's a critical stage on the road to becoming an effective person.

00:05:56.640 But there's a totally different project, which is not meeting some ideal, but actually

00:06:01.540 communicating in the world to people who are not paid to read your writing.

00:06:06.460 And people who are, most of the time, trying to move on as quickly as possible.

00:06:10.600 Like their goal is to hit delete or hit next as quickly as possible, often without even

00:06:16.420 knowing what your point was.

00:06:17.820 And so it's like effective writing is writing for those people, not for people who are paid

00:06:21.660 to give you feedback on your writing.

00:06:23.120 Or it's not for a novel, for example.

00:06:26.660 Like you might use some flowery language in a novel because that's what you're trying to,

00:06:30.220 you're trying to do something.

00:06:31.340 It's basically beautiful writing and effective writing have two different goals.

00:06:36.260 Totally.

00:06:36.580 Yeah, a novel is just a different function.

00:06:40.360 We think of effective writing as being about professional, practical writing, where you're

00:06:44.700 texting a friend, or you're writing a web content, or you're writing an email to a coworker.

00:06:51.960 All of it is like, it is not, you know, we're not trying to layer in a third level of meaning

00:06:57.160 with close reading about what adjective we used.

00:06:59.620 We're actually just trying to practically communicate something.

00:07:01.840 Right.

00:07:02.000 So effective writing is about getting stuff done.

00:07:03.880 And you guys aren't arguing in this book that we need to, you know, do sort of like

00:07:06.740 an Orwellian newspeak where all of our writing becomes effective writing.

00:07:11.220 There's still a place for New Yorker articles.

00:07:13.740 There's still a place for Tolstoy in writing like that.

00:07:17.380 It's just that you're focused on how can we write so people get stuff done?

00:07:22.900 That's what we're, that's the focus.

00:07:24.520 Yeah, I like that.

00:07:25.160 I mean, we probably could have incorporated that into the title.

00:07:27.280 Yeah, I, there is a place for all that stuff.

00:07:29.220 Although that is a totally different function.

00:07:31.180 It is leisure.

00:07:32.320 You read the New Yorker or Tolstoy because you are reading it recreationally to entertain

00:07:37.000 yourself.

00:07:37.980 And that is different than working your way through your text messages or your inbox.

00:07:41.740 As a guy who's on public policy, what have the consequences been of ineffective writing,

00:07:46.840 like real world consequences?

00:07:49.860 You go across any domain for, it could be ineffective.

00:07:53.200 Let's say you're a government and you're communicating to people who are delinquent

00:07:59.260 in taxes.

00:08:00.220 You're mailing them and they're not reading it.

00:08:02.260 There's all these studies on people are released from arrest and they are given court summons.

00:08:08.240 And if it is written in a way that is easy to read, they're way more likely to actually

00:08:11.760 show up to court and not have bench warrants issued for their arrest or signage in your public

00:08:16.620 park asking you to pick up your dog's poop written in pretty incomprehensible ways.

00:08:21.080 Personally, like I have started two organizations.

00:08:24.460 One is the hub in Washington, D.C. of using behavioral science and behavior change on public

00:08:30.860 political communications and effective political communications, whether it's get out the vote

00:08:35.580 or fundraising or volunteer recruitment or persuasion.

00:08:38.460 Another is a company that works with K-12 school districts and communicating to families effectively

00:08:44.060 gets kids to go to school or not.

00:08:45.940 And so writing in a way that makes it hard to understand or just writing the way we sometimes

00:08:51.180 do can undermine these important goals that organizations, campaigns, schools, companies

00:08:57.720 have, which is trying to achieve some goal that is good for both the person who's reading

00:09:03.500 and the goal of the writer.

00:09:05.220 Yeah.

00:09:05.360 And I'm sure everyone's seen examples of the bad consequences of ineffective writing at their

00:09:10.120 own work.

00:09:10.660 You know, the company sends out a memo trying to get you to do something, but it's written

00:09:16.940 in this convoluted way or there's just too much going on in the memo that there's hardly

00:09:21.900 any compliance at all.

00:09:24.400 Yeah, there's I mean, there's some great examples.

00:09:26.140 So there's like a sign.

00:09:27.380 There is a Center for Plain Language.

00:09:29.480 It is a an organization that gives an award every year called the WTF Award for just the

00:09:36.080 worst signage that has been created that year.

00:09:39.280 WTF means words that failed, obviously.

00:09:42.140 And the sign, a real sign, getting people to pick up their dog's poop was persons shall 0.87

00:09:47.840 remove all excrement from pets.

00:09:50.740 I am certain that that was an ineffective sign and that 90 percent of people didn't read it

00:09:55.800 and understand that the goal was to scoop your pet's poop. 0.63

00:09:58.200 So, yeah, it's comically bad, but it's clear.

00:10:03.660 I mean, I'm sure the lawyers understood it.

00:10:05.260 Yeah.

00:10:05.700 So before you start writing, the thing you say we need to do first is get inside your

00:10:10.180 reader's head.

00:10:11.320 What do people need to understand about readers today so they understand like how a reader

00:10:17.420 decides whether or not they're going to read something, whether they're going to read

00:10:21.680 it all the way through, etc.

00:10:23.760 I think the TLDR of the whole thing, the too long didn't read of the whole book or of this

00:10:29.960 entire project that we're doing is everyone is skimming everything, right?

00:10:36.680 No one is spending as much time reading as we are writing and thinking about it.

00:10:40.900 And so we need to write in a way that accommodates the reality that everyone's skimming.

00:10:45.940 So you get inside their head and know that they are super busy and they have a long list

00:10:50.460 of things to do and a lot of things they'd rather do than read whatever you're sending

00:10:54.200 them.

00:10:54.840 And that includes text messages.

00:10:56.260 We've run these experiments where even text messages, writing them so they're easier to

00:11:00.080 read makes people more likely to understand and respond to them.

00:11:03.220 So if you're going to get in the reader's head, it all starts with everyone's busy and

00:11:07.560 everyone's skimming.

00:11:08.600 And rarely do people care as much about what we're writing as we do.

00:11:12.260 And I love this too, you lay out a four-stage process that readers go through and when

00:11:18.120 they're deciding whether they're going to engage with a piece of text.

00:11:21.160 And this is whether it's an email, a text, a Slack message, a social media post.

00:11:26.340 The first part is you have to decide whether you're going to engage with it at all.

00:11:30.860 So you just look at the thing and you kind of skim it and you're like, well, I'm not even

00:11:33.640 going to dig deeper into this.

00:11:35.640 Second is if you decide to engage, you must decide when to engage.

00:11:39.680 What does that mean?

00:11:40.460 Like sometimes you don't read it right away.

00:11:43.860 Yeah.

00:11:44.180 It's a combination of the first and second, of the second and third, which is the first

00:11:47.720 most is the, I think the most important and kind of the most subtle, but everyone will

00:11:51.360 relate to, which is if you have a long thing in front of you and a short thing in front

00:11:55.660 of you, which you're going to do first, almost everyone is going to do the short, easy thing

00:11:59.300 first.

00:12:00.240 And so you look at it, it's a wall of words and we call that deterrence.

00:12:03.760 You are just deterred from reading it at all.

00:12:06.440 And that's like, I think that everyone should relate to you.

00:12:09.840 Open something, even a text message, I can't deal with that right now.

00:12:13.100 Or you go to a webpage and it's a long wall of words.

00:12:16.460 The second and third are basically like, okay, so do I engage with it now or later?

00:12:20.580 And whenever I engage with it, how deeply do I read it?

00:12:24.640 And I assume we actually have lots of evidence.

00:12:27.440 What happens is the more difficult it is to read, the more you just sort of dart around,

00:12:31.360 bounce around, see if you get the gist and eventually give up and move on.

00:12:35.000 So those are the one through three.

00:12:38.220 And the fourth one is deciding whether to respond or not if you're asking for some kind

00:12:43.460 of response.

00:12:44.440 And the easier the response, the more likely people are to do it.

00:12:47.520 Just like the shorter the message, someone's more likely to read that than a long one.

00:12:51.020 If it looks like it's going to require a lot of research or it's unclear what the question

00:12:55.260 is, all these things make it just less likely people deal with it at all, but definitely less

00:12:59.440 likely they'll deal with it now.

00:13:00.460 Okay, so let's talk about what we can do as writers to increase the odds that someone

00:13:07.840 will want to engage with whatever we're throwing at them.

00:13:11.180 They'll want to maybe act on it faster, sooner rather than later, and engage with all of it

00:13:17.880 and as well as respond, get more response so we can get stuff done.

00:13:21.280 And you and your co-author lay out six principles that writers can use to make sure that their

00:13:27.720 writing is effective.

00:13:29.240 The first principle, and you kind of referred to it just a minute ago, less is more.

00:13:34.300 So how does more often get in the way of your readers engaging with your text?

00:13:40.380 This is my favorite.

00:13:41.660 I don't want to speak for Jessica on this.

00:13:43.180 I love this.

00:13:43.880 Less is more.

00:13:45.180 You could probably go back to, there's a quote that every clever person who's ever been alive

00:13:49.840 has been credited with this quote, which is, I would have written you a shorter letter

00:13:53.440 if I'd had more time.

00:13:55.580 And what I love about that is it is worthy of apology.

00:13:59.800 I have wronged you by giving you this longer than it needed to be text.

00:14:05.720 And second, it takes more time to write less.

00:14:08.680 Both of those are sort of central to this less is more idea.

00:14:11.880 And the idea is, and we've run randomized experiments, lots of them, where the more sentences you

00:14:17.260 add, the more ideas you add, just the longer it is, the less likely people are to read and

00:14:22.880 understand and respond.

00:14:24.160 Whether it's soliciting a response, getting people to fill out a survey, getting people

00:14:28.160 to, we worked with the, I don't know if we named the party, but one of the big political

00:14:32.160 parties, Democrat or Republican, on a big fundraising email with 700,000 donors and arbitrarily deleted

00:14:39.960 every other sentence.

00:14:41.340 So it didn't even make sense anymore.

00:14:43.240 So we cut it in half by making it incoherent and still increase donations.

00:14:49.360 We've done lots of versions of this, but the idea is just, you need to know there's a trade

00:14:53.540 off.

00:14:54.260 The more you add, the less likely someone is to read, understand and respond.

00:14:57.600 And the optimal length and content is not nothing or one sentence.

00:15:02.820 It's just a trade off.

00:15:03.820 You just need to know the more you add, the less effective it'll be, but you got to make

00:15:08.480 those trade offs.

00:15:09.640 Yeah.

00:15:09.800 So you lay out some rules to apply this less is more.

00:15:12.340 First one, use fewer words.

00:15:15.140 And I mean, if you went to college or even high school, they taught, you know, this whole

00:15:18.900 elements of style, just eliminate, and that was one of the rules, eliminate needless words.

00:15:24.000 You know, I've everyone seen these wordy phrases for the reason that instead of saying that

00:15:28.600 to say, because, you know, in order to say to just to whether or not, well, just whether

00:15:34.860 personal opinion.

00:15:37.360 Well, there's only one type of opinion.

00:15:39.060 I mean, so just things like that can go a long way.

00:15:41.960 But I love this idea.

00:15:43.280 Rule number two, to include fewer ideas.

00:15:46.440 So we're talking about maybe it's a memo or an email you're trying to write.

00:15:51.120 Oftentimes you want to try to cram as many things as you can in that piece of text.

00:15:54.800 But what your research shows is like the fewer, the better.

00:15:57.420 The fewer ideas you have in your email or memo, the more likely people are going to read

00:16:03.840 what you wrote.

00:16:04.520 Yeah, and that's hard.

00:16:07.200 I mean, it's hard for people because it requires judgment and prioritizing.

00:16:11.500 Like, what's the most important thing I'm saying here?

00:16:13.680 And it would be good for you to know this, but it's not necessary.

00:16:18.560 And so there's trade-offs all the way.

00:16:19.920 Like, there are workarounds.

00:16:21.040 Like, if it's a web page, you could have a link to the more content.

00:16:25.240 Or if it's an email, you could have it below the sign-off or as an attachment.

00:16:28.460 Or if it's a report, it could be an appendix.

00:16:31.420 You can keep the detail, but you just need the core thing to be the core thing.

00:16:35.720 And what we have is all this experimental evidence showing that when you dilute it with

00:16:40.280 more content, you just are less likely to achieve your goal.

00:16:44.060 And it just requires judgments and trade-offs the whole way.

00:16:47.340 Yeah, you gave this a great example.

00:16:48.460 This was like a text.

00:16:50.280 Could be a text to get together with some friends for dinner.

00:16:53.100 The original one is, I'm looking forward to our 6.30 dinner tonight.

00:16:57.220 Let's eat at Tina's Italian restaurant at 651 Ocean Drive.

00:17:00.360 Their breadsticks are awesome.

00:17:01.820 I haven't had their lasagna, but I'm ready.

00:17:04.020 It's supposed to be tasty.

00:17:05.460 Let's meet at my place 15 minutes early, and we'll walk from there.

00:17:08.100 Sam and Joey are going to join us for dinner, too.

00:17:10.360 Man, if I got that text, I'd be like, oh, geez, I'm going to just have to look at this later.

00:17:14.200 But, you know, you could have just said, hey, we're having dinner.

00:17:16.700 It's at 6.15.

00:17:17.480 Meet at my place.

00:17:18.480 That's all you needed.

00:17:19.980 Right.

00:17:20.380 And there is information in the rest of it.

00:17:22.620 It's just, and if you're aware that there's a tradeoff, then you have to treat it differently.

00:17:28.140 Since writing the book, I've worked with a guy who's in the CIA who writes intelligence

00:17:32.520 assessments in this group, this intelligence group.

00:17:36.060 And they're 70 pages, and that's the norm.

00:17:39.420 And he was like, well, how do I write less?

00:17:41.600 Because if I write 35 pages, they're going to think I didn't do my job because the norm

00:17:45.200 is the norm.

00:17:46.040 The norm is 70 pages.

00:17:47.480 And so I actually love that because the answer is you can't.

00:17:51.020 Like, you have to write for your audience.

00:17:52.820 And what your audience expects, it has to look like what your audience expects.

00:17:56.600 I mean, Jessica and I wrote a 207-page book where one of the principles is write less.

00:18:02.300 If you have a book, expect the book to look like a book.

00:18:04.620 And so you have an audience that has norms and expectations.

00:18:07.180 It has to look like what they expect.

00:18:09.100 But then within those constraints, the easier you make it for them, the better.

00:18:12.420 And so with a text message, I don't think anyone cares whether you are interested in

00:18:17.160 the breadsticks or not.

00:18:18.120 They're just like, when do I show up and who's going to be there?

00:18:20.160 Right.

00:18:20.720 Okay, let's move on to the second principle.

00:18:23.280 Make reading easy.

00:18:25.220 How do we typically make reading more difficult for our audience?

00:18:31.740 We write in grammatically correct, complicated ways.

00:18:36.540 And so whether it is a long sentence or using unfamiliar, uncommon words or writing in a grammatically

00:18:46.560 complicated way, it just makes it more cognitively taxing.

00:18:50.560 So a different way of thinking about all this in length and also writing style is just how

00:18:56.300 do you make it less cognitively effortful?

00:18:59.480 The easier it is, the more likely people will be to do it.

00:19:01.780 So even if they're going to work their way through it, it's just unkind to write in a

00:19:07.640 way that taxes them and burdens them.

00:19:10.220 We ran one experiment with Vice President Harris when she was the Attorney General of California

00:19:16.260 where, and I mean, I don't know, the listeners are not, I hope no one is writing like this,

00:19:21.940 but the California state legislature required that schools send families letters when their

00:19:28.820 kids are late or absent.

00:19:30.060 And it starts with California education code section 48 to 60 provides that a pupil child

00:19:38.320 subject to compulsory.

00:19:40.500 I mean, it's not even written for humans and it's like being sent to hundreds of thousands

00:19:44.360 of families.

00:19:44.940 So the idea is we just add a round of editing where we just ask, how do I make it just easier

00:19:49.360 to pull the key info out?

00:19:50.760 Even if we are correct, complete and grammatically accurate, we just make it easier.

00:19:56.500 Yeah.

00:19:56.900 So you apply some rules, use short and common words.

00:19:59.860 So there's that whole quote.

00:20:01.880 I think it was, it was Mark Twain.

00:20:03.440 Don't use a $5 word when a 50 cent word will do.

00:20:07.000 So instead of saying acquiesce, you can just say agree.

00:20:10.200 You know, you don't have to get fancy.

00:20:11.480 You can save the $50 words for your New Yorker article you're writing for yourself.

00:20:17.660 Yeah.

00:20:18.060 Yeah.

00:20:18.240 Rule two, just use straightforward sentences.

00:20:22.820 So this is, you're not going to do, you know, clauses and using semicolons and et cetera.

00:20:29.180 Like you just really straightforward.

00:20:31.940 Like you can just glance at it.

00:20:33.080 You know exactly what it says.

00:20:34.700 Yeah.

00:20:35.060 And then rule three, write shorter sentences.

00:20:36.960 So, you know, just got to edit, edit, edit, edit until you can get it down.

00:20:40.440 You start writing like Hemingway basically.

00:20:42.660 Yeah, that's the, that's the idea, but no simpler than it needs to be, right?

00:20:48.860 Like as simple as it can be, but no simpler.

00:20:51.020 Yeah.

00:20:51.400 So you give an example of a hard to read complex sentence and then editing it.

00:20:56.380 So it's easier to read.

00:20:57.360 Here's the hard to read version.

00:20:59.680 Often crafted from insidiously complicated language designed to abstract contentious details.

00:21:05.740 Ballot measures are propagated as a tool of direct democracy in 24 states and Washington,

00:21:10.340 DC.

00:21:10.600 So yeah, grammatically correct, but that was hard to read.

00:21:13.840 Here's the edited version.

00:21:15.560 Ballot measures are used as a tool of direct democracy in 24 states and Washington, DC.

00:21:20.240 They're often written with deceptively complex language designed to hide controversial details.

00:21:25.700 So yeah, that was a lot easier to read.

00:21:27.920 We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:21:32.520 And now back to the show.

00:21:34.260 Okay.

00:21:34.540 Second principle again, make reading easy.

00:21:36.400 So we're just going to use fewer words, write shorter sentences, and make sure your sentences

00:21:42.120 aren't hard to read with those parentheticals and semicolons and references back to things

00:21:48.520 you said in a previous clause.

00:21:50.200 Third principle is designed for easy navigation.

00:21:53.320 Now, I'm sure a lot of people are listening to this.

00:21:54.640 They probably learned in high school or in college, you know, some ideas or some rules about being

00:22:00.380 concise with your writing.

00:22:01.420 We've all probably read elements of style and that's one of the rules, but I don't remember

00:22:05.160 being taught this.

00:22:05.900 Well, actually I was taught this in law school, but I wasn't taught this in undergrad or high

00:22:10.520 school is thinking about the design of your writing so that it's easy to read.

00:22:17.040 So what does that look like?

00:22:19.460 How can we lay out our writing so that it's easier to navigate?

00:22:23.820 Yeah, I like this one.

00:22:25.080 This is, I like all of them equally, but I like this and less is more the most.

00:22:30.800 But the idea is it's not even about writing, but realizing that people are going to look

00:22:36.420 at it and decide, do I read or not?

00:22:38.740 Remember that stage of deterrence or once they're reading, they're just going to dart around and

00:22:43.360 see if they can get something out of it before they give up.

00:22:46.160 And one metaphor, or at least a framework we use for thinking about it is that people

00:22:50.680 may allocate like a fixed budget of time to reading your thing.

00:22:55.040 And so then the question is just how, how do you make it easier for them to get what

00:22:58.420 you want them to get out of it in that budget?

00:23:01.040 And so that could be like adding headings.

00:23:02.900 So it's easy to know the structure.

00:23:04.500 And when we actually do eye tracking, you see people jump around and read the headings

00:23:09.020 first when they're moving fast.

00:23:11.060 Sometimes they just go first line, second line, but that's when they're anticipating reading

00:23:14.620 the whole thing.

00:23:15.180 But often they'll just dart around and figure out what's in here.

00:23:18.780 And we've actually run experiments where when you add headings in newsletters, you double

00:23:24.100 the likelihood that people will read past the second paragraph and use anything in it past

00:23:29.280 the second paragraph.

00:23:30.400 The other one that people really like and I really like, and I don't know if you're a

00:23:33.580 veteran or how many of your listeners are veterans, but I work with a lot of active

00:23:37.200 duty people in different branches of the military.

00:23:39.140 One thing that they have in the US, started in the US Army and it's spread across the

00:23:43.460 militaries around the world is a thing called bluff, bottom line up front, B-L-U-F, bluff,

00:23:49.240 bottom line up front.

00:23:50.240 And it is a rule in the US Army, a rule that anything written to anybody, the first line

00:23:56.100 has to be the bottom line.

00:23:57.300 So there's no long introduction, an enlisted person writing to a general.

00:24:01.780 Bottom line is the first line.

00:24:03.400 And it makes it so much easier for readers and writers to know where's the key info,

00:24:08.260 where do I put the key info, where do I find the key info.

00:24:10.660 But it especially helps people who are lower status, like an enlisted person writing to

00:24:14.580 a general might have to say, in the absence of that rule, like, we ran into each other

00:24:19.580 in Kandahar.

00:24:20.740 You may not remember me.

00:24:21.780 We chatted in the mess.

00:24:22.960 I went to rival high school.

00:24:24.480 We laughed about how the Philadelphia Eagles are going to win the Super Bowl this year.

00:24:28.680 But I want to ask you for a meeting.

00:24:30.380 And so instead of the whole throat clearing, which would decrease the likelihood we get

00:24:34.340 read at all, now they have this rule that doesn't work everywhere.

00:24:38.560 But having this rule in that environment and with that organization makes it just easier

00:24:42.380 for everybody.

00:24:43.140 And so another way to design for navigation is to have this kind of structure so it's

00:24:47.580 easy to pull the key info out and jump around, but also, when possible, make the bottom line

00:24:52.860 super easy to pull out.

00:24:54.740 Okay.

00:24:54.840 So yeah, when you write an email, for example, just right at the very top, you don't have

00:24:58.020 to do the throat clearing stuff.

00:24:59.340 Just like, here's what this email is about.

00:25:01.800 Maybe, but it doesn't work every, like, it just depends on the expectations and norms

00:25:05.820 because that can come off as too aggressive.

00:25:07.740 I don't do that.

00:25:08.660 I still have a hope you're well or good talking to you the other day.

00:25:12.360 And I usually add that back.

00:25:14.680 Like, I'll write my, like, all business part and then I'll add some humanity to it because

00:25:19.120 I don't want to come off as too aggressive.

00:25:20.420 And so, but, but like within organizations, when we talk, like the next step that Jessica

00:25:25.460 and I are thinking and working on is like, so, okay, so you've become more effective

00:25:29.760 as a communicator.

00:25:30.800 How do we get your team to be more effective?

00:25:33.160 And it starts with just being intentional and explicit.

00:25:36.640 Let's just have a conversation.

00:25:37.760 How do we write?

00:25:39.120 So we can all be on the same page.

00:25:40.380 Instead of just letting these norms evolve without intention or guidance, let's be intentional

00:25:44.700 about it.

00:25:45.100 How do we write?

00:25:45.900 Like the U S army decided bluff so we can all be on the same page.

00:25:49.460 Okay.

00:25:49.900 And the, I really like using headings.

00:25:51.460 Like that's something I learned in law school.

00:25:53.460 When you write a memo, you break things up in headings so that the partner that you wrote

00:25:57.880 the memo for, it can just glance at it and get to the information they might be particularly

00:26:01.640 interested in.

00:26:02.680 Another thing for easy navigation, add bullet points, like using bullet points can help out

00:26:07.740 a lot, especially if you've got more than two ideas or two requests in your communication.

00:26:14.500 Yeah, there's a subtle one on the bullet points too, where, which I think you were pointing

00:26:18.820 to is that if, if the bullet is kind of long, a skimmer still has to read the bullet to figure

00:26:24.800 out what it's about.

00:26:25.940 And so one of the things that we have found is putting a title to the bullet, which may

00:26:30.320 seem counter to fewer words.

00:26:32.200 We're just saying add a three word title, which is extra words, makes it easier for a

00:26:36.660 skimmer to know whether they should bother engaging with this bullet or whether they are

00:26:40.060 free to move on.

00:26:40.920 And so it's a, you know, a subtle thing, but the goal is just making it as easy for your

00:26:46.600 reader to move on and get the key info that you want them to get.

00:26:50.560 And then when we start talking about design, you can see that you want it to be aesthetically

00:26:55.120 good looking and consistent.

00:26:57.100 And so you want the headings and titles to always look the same and things like that.

00:27:00.880 Yeah.

00:27:01.400 Another rule you can apply for easy navigation, order your ideas by priority.

00:27:05.600 That's kind of that bluff thing maybe.

00:27:07.560 But if you have more than one idea, like put the stuff that you care about the most right

00:27:11.200 at the top, because the person's going to read that far and then they're going to start

00:27:14.700 jumping around a lot after that point.

00:27:17.080 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:27:18.120 And I, exactly.

00:27:19.300 And you, and if they are going to jump around, you want to make it easy for them to jump around,

00:27:22.160 which is why, like you said, you like to space it out, put bullets or things just making

00:27:26.380 it visually easier.

00:27:27.680 And then another rule, you know, consider using visuals, like don't be afraid to put pictures

00:27:30.920 in your communication.

00:27:32.180 If that picture or visual can convey the message, what you're trying to convey more efficiently.

00:27:38.160 Yeah.

00:27:38.720 A colleague of mine and friend and mentor, Nancy Gibbs used to be the editor of time magazine.

00:27:43.320 And I was really surprised to hear her say that a common feedback she would give to her

00:27:49.780 reporters was, does this have to be words?

00:27:53.000 And I like, cause she's a word person.

00:27:55.400 And she said that that was a common challenge for writers is like, is there an easier way to

00:28:01.140 show this?

00:28:01.760 Like, can it be a diagram instead of a full paragraph or two?

00:28:05.700 And so the thing about designing for easy navigation that takes time on your part as a writer,

00:28:11.420 because it's easy just to just crank out just a big block of text, maybe put a few paragraphs

00:28:16.720 here and there, but thinking about headings, thinking about what could be bolded, thinking

00:28:21.660 about, you know, the bluff, that's going to take a bit more time than just cranking that

00:28:27.860 thing out in just one fell swoop.

00:28:29.380 You got to, you have to really be thoughtful about this.

00:28:31.460 So, but the payoff is in the end, you invest that time up front.

00:28:35.140 So you save yourself some time and frustration on the backend.

00:28:39.460 Right.

00:28:39.680 And what's, if it's really important for you, you want to make it easy for the reader because

00:28:44.020 you will be more effective.

00:28:45.320 It's also this kindness that I also think it's kind of a subtle implication of all of it

00:28:50.460 is that it's just nicer to your reader to make it easy in that way.

00:28:54.260 All right.

00:28:55.800 So, uh, the fourth principle is use enough formatting, but no more.

00:29:00.420 So I think one thing people do to help ensure that certain ideas stand out, they'll use things

00:29:05.940 like bold or underlines or all caps in a text message.

00:29:10.600 How do people mess up formatting though, when they're trying to get their points across to

00:29:15.360 the reader?

00:29:16.860 This has been the bigger surprise of writing this book for me.

00:29:22.000 The biggest surprise has been people being really excited because they say, this has

00:29:26.920 been a fight my entire career.

00:29:29.800 And I have been saying, we need to write in a way that makes it easier.

00:29:32.780 And people are like, this is just your taste and just your preference.

00:29:35.640 And it has been dismissed.

00:29:37.120 And now we bring to it all these randomized experiments and a lot of evidence from different

00:29:41.400 ways of research.

00:29:42.760 And it's now actually a question of like scientific effectiveness.

00:29:45.600 The other surprise has been when people email me one, there's a lot of anxiety.

00:29:51.780 I think that I'm going to be judgmental and anyone who's going to email me, you do not

00:29:54.840 have to worry.

00:29:55.240 It turns out writing, reading and communicating are all hard.

00:29:59.360 But the second thing is when I started saying use enough highlighting, but no more, it leads

00:30:04.420 to people using, you know, different font colors, underlying bold highlight italics, all

00:30:10.940 in the same thing.

00:30:11.800 It was only eight sentences and there are six different kinds of stylistic formatting

00:30:17.920 variants in the message.

00:30:20.620 And the irony is that that actually is worse than nothing because it makes it harder for

00:30:25.400 the reader to figure out what you think as the writer is the most important thing.

00:30:29.900 Because if you only format, let's say you bold one sentence, it is unambiguous to the

00:30:35.280 reader.

00:30:35.860 The writer thinks this is really important.

00:30:37.820 But if you do lots of different things, the six of the eight sentences, I have no idea

00:30:42.760 as a reader what you think is most important and what any of the formatting even means.

00:30:47.380 So using a formatting in surveys and experiments, we've seen that people jump to bold, underlined

00:30:52.700 and highlighted text.

00:30:53.900 They jump to that and they think the writer is saying to them, this is the most important

00:30:57.880 content, get this.

00:30:59.760 So it's incredibly effective.

00:31:01.320 It also licenses readers to not read anything else because they've gotten the key info and

00:31:05.420 everyone's goal is to move on.

00:31:06.540 So you've got to use it carefully because it gets people to read that and also crowds

00:31:11.680 out reading anything else.

00:31:12.880 But then we use lots of kinds of formatting.

00:31:14.900 It just confuses readers about what any of it means.

00:31:18.020 Okay.

00:31:18.160 So bolding, underlining, highlighting, it's effective in getting the reader to think, here's

00:31:24.140 what the writer thinks is important and to put their focus on that if that's what you

00:31:27.800 want to do.

00:31:28.380 And you see that a lot in online writing.

00:31:31.120 Any formatting things that you see in online writing that aren't effective?

00:31:34.880 I don't like how links all get font color change and underlined because you actually,

00:31:41.480 there is eye tracking research showing that people jump to that.

00:31:44.260 And often the link is not the key info.

00:31:46.620 The link is just the link.

00:31:48.220 And so there's this tension, there's this norm.

00:31:50.780 Everyone knows that's what a link is, but it also kind of undermines the speed of consuming

00:31:56.340 whatever we're writing for people.

00:31:58.180 And so I actually, my, the trade-off for me on that is like, we want to minimize the

00:32:02.180 number of words that are linked if you can, while still accurately describing whatever

00:32:07.000 the link is.

00:32:07.660 That's sort of a small point, but one that aesthetically, I don't think we have a good

00:32:12.460 solution to yet.

00:32:13.680 All right.

00:32:13.840 So use formatting, but don't go crazy with it.

00:32:15.780 You don't have to use all the formatting options.

00:32:18.160 Just pick one or two and then stick with that.

00:32:21.260 And again, it's going to, the formatting use is going to vary by context.

00:32:24.700 Maybe in your organization, you have a rule or a norm that you use in regards to formatting

00:32:30.760 in order to show that this is important.

00:32:32.640 So just follow that.

00:32:34.280 The fifth principle is tell readers why they should care.

00:32:38.280 And this is all about making sure that the reader actually engages with your content.

00:32:42.660 So what can we do to show the reader, like you should care about this and engage with this

00:32:48.040 more than just a cursory glance.

00:32:51.260 Yeah, I, the way we thought about this is the obvious way to get a reader to read something

00:32:56.260 is to write about something they care about, but we take it as given the writer has the

00:33:01.560 thing they want to write about and the thing they're trying to communicate.

00:33:04.240 And it doesn't really matter from the writer's objectives, whether this is the most interesting

00:33:08.400 thing in the world for the reader, right?

00:33:10.140 So we take as a given, you have your goal, your goal as a writer within that set of ideas

00:33:16.480 or content.

00:33:17.220 All we're saying is you may as well emphasize the part of the things you're going to say

00:33:21.940 that they may value the most.

00:33:24.180 So we report this experiment with Rock the Vote, which is a, like a voter registration

00:33:30.020 organization that tries to target young people.

00:33:32.900 And they were sending an email out to potential volunteers saying, will you volunteer to work

00:33:39.000 at concerts to register concert goers to vote?

00:33:42.100 And in one condition, the subject line was volunteer with Rock the Vote.

00:33:46.180 And in the other condition, it was attend concerts for free.

00:33:50.220 Maybe it was like volunteer and attend concerts for free.

00:33:53.240 And so the subject line there is like drawing attention.

00:33:55.280 The content is the same, exactly the same.

00:33:57.200 You're going to volunteer at a concert and you're going to register voters.

00:34:00.120 But we may as well emphasize the thing that people will value out of that set.

00:34:03.280 And so they ended up four X more effective, four times more effective by just making the

00:34:08.960 subject line focus within the set of ideas they're going to say in the message on the

00:34:13.660 thing they think the recipient might care the most about.

00:34:15.380 So that principle is just emphasize what the reader might care about within the bounds

00:34:19.280 of what you're already going to say.

00:34:20.520 We're not saying you need to say something different.

00:34:22.300 We're just saying you may as well focus on the thing they may care about.

00:34:25.140 Yeah.

00:34:25.240 And then put that up front.

00:34:26.540 Like don't, don't bury the lead on that.

00:34:28.400 Don't wait till the very end.

00:34:29.500 They say, Hey, this is why, you know, start off this, like in the subject line, here's

00:34:33.220 why you should care about this and then put all the other information after that.

00:34:37.740 And then another rule that you have for that, for tell the readers why they should care is

00:34:41.920 emphasize which readers should care.

00:34:44.440 This is important because sometimes you send out a message and it's only going to a certain

00:34:49.020 segment of the population.

00:34:50.620 And if you make it too broad, you might end up causing the group of people you're trying

00:34:55.200 to communicate to just to ignore it completely.

00:34:57.380 Yeah, it's, it's at minimum, it's kind to your reader to let them loose.

00:35:03.420 This is not for you.

00:35:04.260 You're free to go.

00:35:05.240 But also in the intermediate term, as you communicate more, if you let people go when it's not relevant

00:35:11.480 to them, they're going to be more likely to attend when it is relevant to them.

00:35:14.700 Yeah.

00:35:15.100 You gave the example, like let's say you have a grocery store and there's been a recall

00:35:18.900 on a product for safety.

00:35:20.920 You know, the grocery store might put up a sign noticed important product safety recall

00:35:24.920 information.

00:35:26.000 Well, you know, if someone sees that, it's like, well, I don't know, maybe I, is it the

00:35:29.880 product that I bought?

00:35:30.660 I don't, who knows?

00:35:31.840 Maybe I'll just ignore this.

00:35:33.300 And then you said, if you want to have a reader's perspective, the top line of that notice

00:35:37.380 should say, if you bought soup X, Y, Z in June, it has been recalled.

00:35:41.860 And so like, oh, immediately the person seen that it's like, well, did I buy that soup in

00:35:45.940 June or not?

00:35:46.720 And then they can make that decision whether they need to engage with it or not.

00:35:50.420 Right.

00:35:50.740 Well, Brett, also, I applaud you for getting, these are deep tracks in the book.

00:35:55.740 You read it closely.

00:35:58.080 I read the book.

00:35:59.380 Nice.

00:35:59.880 Yeah.

00:36:00.080 And you make it easy to read.

00:36:01.380 So it made me want to keep reading it.

00:36:03.440 Yeah.

00:36:03.860 We wrote it so it was skimmable.

00:36:05.260 For anyone listening, it is easy to skim.

00:36:06.920 But if you want the details on any topic, you can dive deep in it.

00:36:09.340 You can dive deep.

00:36:09.920 So the sixth principle is make responding easy, you know, not all communications require

00:36:16.320 response, but a lot of the communications that we put out there to get stuff done, they

00:36:20.180 require responses.

00:36:21.360 So what can we do to make responding easier?

00:36:24.660 I know that there are other that your listeners and you follow other behavioral scientists like

00:36:30.540 behavioral economists or social psychologists who work on behavior change, which is basically

00:36:34.540 what my research has been on for the last 25 years.

00:36:37.240 And all of that is this, which is the takeaway is if you want someone to do something, we

00:36:43.500 should make it easy for them.

00:36:44.880 And so whether that means reducing the number of steps required to take the action or providing

00:36:50.760 checklists or pre-populating forms, or even like here's something completely basic that

00:36:56.280 we've all had, which is let's schedule a meeting.

00:36:58.160 There are four of us on an email thread.

00:36:59.700 These six times work for me, which work for you?

00:37:02.260 And then if you reply in a paragraph, well, I can do the first time, but I'd have to move a

00:37:07.080 couple of meetings.

00:37:08.260 The second time is better for me, but the third doesn't work.

00:37:12.160 And the fourth could work if nothing else works.

00:37:15.880 Like the amount of effort required to decipher which of the times you're proposing actually

00:37:21.400 work is, you know, you're adding 35, 40 seconds to the next person to figure it out.

00:37:27.280 If we actually wanted everyone to respond, you say of those times, these two work for me,

00:37:32.120 period.

00:37:32.600 Nobody cares whether it means you have to move a meeting.

00:37:34.520 So the idea is if it's important to you that someone get back to you, you want to make

00:37:38.940 it as easy as possible.

00:37:40.480 If it's important for us, we want to make it easy for them.

00:37:42.820 I'll often ask students, imagine you have a task that will take five minutes and a task

00:37:48.600 that will take 30 seconds.

00:37:50.240 Both of them are on your to-do list and you plan to do both eventually.

00:37:53.320 Which are you going to do first?

00:37:54.640 Almost everybody's going to do the 30 second task first.

00:37:57.320 And so the idea is you just want to make it easy, as easy as possible.

00:37:59.860 Right.

00:38:00.700 And so that means maybe you have to do some decision structuring for the person.

00:38:06.020 Like here, I need you to make this decision, just this one decision.

00:38:09.820 And then after that, you can maybe follow up if you need to make other decisions.

00:38:12.800 But like, just pick like one thing you want them to respond to.

00:38:16.900 Yeah.

00:38:17.340 Like one in the less is more, there's fewer requests.

00:38:20.780 If you ask someone to do two things, you are less likely to get them to do any one of them

00:38:24.400 than if you ask them to do just one.

00:38:25.920 The idea is we've got to prioritize, we have our goals, and we need to write in a way that

00:38:30.560 makes it easy for the reader to help us achieve our goals.

00:38:33.400 And that means simplifying the request.

00:38:36.120 Like you're saying, if I asked you, what do you think versus I'm going to submit this,

00:38:41.880 agree or disagree, yes or no, do you sign off?

00:38:44.920 Like they end up being, it's much easier to say, yes, agree, submit, than an open-ended,

00:38:51.160 what do I think?

00:38:51.800 And so it's just my prediction and some of the evidence is, all the evidence is consistent

00:38:56.420 with people are more likely to respond and more likely to respond sooner when it's a

00:39:00.420 yes, no question than open-ended.

00:39:03.000 Yeah.

00:39:03.500 Another rule you have in this make responding easy is organizing key information that's needed

00:39:08.660 to take action.

00:39:09.720 So let's say you make a request for something at your work or something, but then in order

00:39:15.760 for the reader to answer that, they have to start troweling through all this information

00:39:21.140 or kind of doing this scavenger hunt to even start putting together a response.

00:39:26.700 Well, if that's the case, they're going to drag their feet on that or they're going to

00:39:30.220 take a long time.

00:39:31.600 Instead, if there's an answer you need right away, provide the reader with as much information

00:39:37.160 as possible that they need in that communication so they can give you the response you need.

00:39:41.980 Okay.

00:39:42.120 So those are the six principles.

00:39:43.060 And I think if people had those in mind as they wrote, they'd get a lot more done with

00:39:47.420 their writing.

00:39:47.920 At the end of the book, beyond these six principles, you talk about some other ideas that you've

00:39:52.780 seen in your research and your own personal experience when it comes to communicating and

00:39:56.700 getting people to respond to your writing and getting stuff done with writing.

00:40:01.080 And one topic you talk about is frequency of communicating.

00:40:05.340 This is something I struggle with when it comes to communication in my business or in organizations

00:40:11.960 that I belong to because I worry about communicating too much because I don't want to bug people.

00:40:18.380 But something I've noticed is that when I do communicate more, I get more responses.

00:40:22.940 I get more people showing up for things or doing things.

00:40:25.980 So what's the research say?

00:40:27.480 How often should I hit people with the same information so that it's effective?

00:40:32.480 There is not a single answer for this.

00:40:35.800 Just like there's not a single stable answer for when should you communicate because the

00:40:40.320 equilibrium changes.

00:40:41.540 If the answer is Thursday at 3 p.m., everyone is going to communicate Thursday at 3 p.m.,

00:40:45.580 making yours less effective.

00:40:47.120 And then the equilibrium moves around.

00:40:49.260 It's an unstable equilibrium.

00:40:50.940 Similarly, for frequency of communication, I think there isn't a good answer.

00:40:54.960 But my first pass at it is if you think that your reader wants your communication and values

00:41:02.640 it, like your newsletter, if you think that they really want it, then you want to be consistent

00:41:06.760 so they know when to expect it and have it look the same so they can recognize quickly

00:41:11.340 what it is.

00:41:12.420 In the intermediate term, if we communicate all the time, we will decrease people's likelihood

00:41:18.340 that they associate us with something they should read.

00:41:20.840 And they will start to view us as a pest and they will unsubscribe.

00:41:25.280 And so I know there are a lot of organizations that have big lists.

00:41:28.360 The balance that we're always talking about is you can increase donation, for example, by

00:41:34.520 sending more messages.

00:41:35.400 You also increase unsubscribes.

00:41:37.740 And so what's the two, three-year horizon consequence is you may end up being worse off for having

00:41:42.840 gotten more donations in this week by sending more messages.

00:41:46.280 But in the intermediate horizon, you're worse off.

00:41:48.720 There isn't a great answer.

00:41:50.840 Do you have thoughts on this?

00:41:52.480 It sounds like you wrestle with it.

00:41:53.760 I wrestle with it.

00:41:54.580 No, so it sounds like it's like the killing the goose that lays the golden egg problem.

00:41:58.100 Yeah, exactly.

00:41:58.760 Right.

00:41:58.960 You can extract a lot of value by doing a lot of frequency in the short term, but in the

00:42:03.720 long term, you end up killing the thing that provides you value.

00:42:07.260 So when it comes to, let's say you belong to, I don't know, like a sports league or a church

00:42:14.280 congregation, there's an event coming up.

00:42:16.300 And that's the thing where I've found that more frequent communication helps up to a point.

00:42:21.780 You can't just do one and expect to get a response because people might just miss that

00:42:26.420 first email or they read it and then they forgot about it.

00:42:31.060 And then the event comes up two weeks later and they're like, I didn't know about it.

00:42:35.440 It's like, well, I sent you that email.

00:42:36.660 So I think something like that, I need one email, maybe two weeks out and then, you know,

00:42:43.340 maybe a week out, you send a reminder and then like two days before you send a final

00:42:47.640 reminder that could work.

00:42:49.340 I mean, if you did a reminder every single day, people are just going to tune you out.

00:42:52.880 I think there's consistency in that too, Brett, where it's like, I'm on a board where they

00:42:58.320 send materials out a week in advance and then they send them the night before again.

00:43:01.820 And so I know two weeks in advance, I don't need to deal with this because I know it's

00:43:06.280 coming back in right before.

00:43:08.700 And so if they stopped doing that and they just did it occasionally, I think I and the

00:43:12.880 other members would all be, you know, less prepared because we've come to expect that,

00:43:17.420 oh, this is just the forewarning before the real one.

00:43:20.900 I think consistency is probably key there because people start to associate you with a pattern.

00:43:24.840 Yeah.

00:43:25.040 But I also think, yeah, frequency can be a tool to help a harried reader because people

00:43:31.820 are just getting inundated with stuff and they're going to miss things.

00:43:34.640 This can even happen with your friends with text messages, right?

00:43:36.760 You send a friend a text and you don't hear back from them and you think, oh man, they

00:43:40.580 just, they hate me.

00:43:42.480 They don't like me anymore.

00:43:43.720 And so no, if their text inbox is anything like yours, it's just getting inundated with,

00:43:48.460 you know, two-factor authentications, reminders about their kid's doctor's appointment.

00:43:52.340 So maybe the friendly thing to do would be, hey, follow up two days later if they haven't

00:43:57.260 gotten back to you because they needed that.

00:43:59.840 So I think with frequency, yeah, there's a balance, but I think maybe don't be afraid

00:44:04.740 of nudging more than you think because you're probably not actually nudging because the

00:44:08.780 people probably didn't see your initial message anyways.

00:44:12.500 Yeah, I like that.

00:44:13.840 I also think when you talk about a friend or a coworker with whom you communicate a lot,

00:44:17.840 I do think the answer, this is probably the answer for most questions, is to communicate

00:44:22.960 better and actually have a discussion about it.

00:44:25.880 And this is something that we stumbled into.

00:44:28.400 Well, there isn't a universal rule for this.

00:44:30.760 Some people will view you pinging them again as like, yeah, man, I read it.

00:44:35.340 I got you.

00:44:36.680 Stop harassing me.

00:44:38.500 Others will be like, thank you.

00:44:40.180 And so a different way, if this is someone you communicate with a lot, is to just ask,

00:44:44.660 would it be useful if I send follow-ups or not?

00:44:48.640 I actually have all sorts of people that they have incredibly varied preferences.

00:44:54.000 And for people I communicate with a lot, I actually have started to learn what they are

00:44:57.460 because I ask.

00:44:58.700 I'm curious, are there any AI tools that you're seeing out there that are helping

00:45:02.680 writers write more effectively?

00:45:05.980 Are you setting me up for, did I show you mine?

00:45:08.940 No.

00:45:09.200 Or is that, yeah.

00:45:10.560 So early on, we trained GPT-4 or GPT-3-5 and then now GPT-4-0, the OpenAI's latest LLM.

00:45:19.340 On the, with your listeners in the show notes, I hope you'll share the checklist.

00:45:23.120 There's a one-page checklist for how to write for busy readers.

00:45:27.180 And we trained the LL, large language model on these principles.

00:45:32.240 And then we fed it what's called few-shot learning, just three pre-post examples of emails, an

00:45:39.060 original and an edited, original edit, original edit.

00:45:41.720 It's incredible at editing emails so that they are skimmable.

00:45:47.000 And it now has hundreds of thousands of uses.

00:45:49.020 And like, I get emails all the time from people saying that they, they put any important message

00:45:53.140 through it to just get suggestions.

00:45:54.780 So it's on our website.

00:45:55.920 I'll share it with you.

00:45:56.940 It's writingforbusyreaders.com.

00:45:58.760 But it's, it's very cool.

00:46:00.320 Like the large language models you could think of as they learn inductively, they consume

00:46:04.620 all the way we've ever written.

00:46:06.200 And then they learn, they infer rules and predictions.

00:46:10.340 This is much more deductive, top down.

00:46:12.820 We're like, look, there are these six principles.

00:46:14.380 We should edit through the lens of these principles because this is actually what the science suggests

00:46:19.340 people are more likely to read and respond to.

00:46:21.340 And it learns those.

00:46:23.100 And then it can revise in accordance, like with, and we shouldn't use words like in accordance,

00:46:28.740 we shouldn't use just, it, it, it writes in ways that are consistent with that.

00:46:33.240 So it writingforbusyreaders.com, but I love it.

00:46:36.360 We're trying to get it internalized by the other big, large language model, especially

00:46:39.960 like the ones who work in email clients.

00:46:43.200 Well, Todd, this has been a great conversation.

00:46:44.460 Where can people go to learn more about the book?

00:46:46.280 So I guess that one website.

00:46:48.240 Writingforbusyreaders.com, writingforbusyreaders.com.

00:46:51.060 And the too long didn't read of this whole thing.

00:46:53.580 If you made it to the end and you don't have the big takeaway, the big takeaway is we should

00:46:57.240 add a round of editing to everything we write where we ask ourselves, how do I make it easier

00:47:02.820 for the reader?

00:47:03.720 How do I make it easier for the reader?

00:47:05.640 Because the easier it is for the reader, the more effective we are at achieving our

00:47:08.660 goals.

00:47:09.100 And it's just kinder.

00:47:10.140 I love it.

00:47:10.520 Well, Todd Rogers, thanks for your time.

00:47:11.520 It's been a pleasure.

00:47:12.760 Thanks, Brett.

00:47:14.680 My guest today was Todd Rogers.

00:47:15.700 He's the author of the book, Writing for Busy Readers.

00:47:17.680 It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

00:47:19.920 You can find more information about the book at the website, writingforbusyreaders.com.

00:47:23.280 Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash busyreaders, where we find links to resources

00:47:27.740 and we delve deeper into this topic.

00:47:36.760 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast.

00:47:39.460 Make sure to check out our website at artofmanly.com where you find our podcast archives, as well

00:47:43.320 as thousands of articles that we've written over the years about pretty much anything

00:47:45.940 you'd think of.

00:47:47.020 And if you haven't done this already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to zoom

00:47:49.600 off the podcast or Spotify.

00:47:50.780 It helps out a lot.

00:47:51.440 And if you've done that already, thank you.

00:47:53.420 Please consider sharing the show with a friend or fan member.

00:47:55.440 You'd think you'd get something out of it.

00:47:56.780 As always, thank you for the continued support.

00:47:58.540 Until next time, it's Brett McKay.

00:48:00.020 Remind you how to listen to our podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - December 23, 2024

The 6 Principles for Writing Messages People Won't Swipe Away

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