26 ms·

Write More, but Shorter

239 points by defaulty 5y ago

themodelplumber 5y ago
Nice post, how do you like your Zettelcloud so far? I'm always interested to hear. Looking at Mike's article: > Because the shorter it is, the more people will read it. What. > Because of the Pareto principle: 80% of the value is in 20% of the length (hence “5x shorter”). WHAT. I guess a lot of us write so that other people will read...I guess. But also, a lot of us write to exorcise our informational/emotional demons (to use a metaphor). It's taking care of oneself. And a lot of the time that looks like piles of words. Especially given a nice amount of intuition-stimulant like caffeine. Writing/blogging has headed more this way for me personally, the longer I've been writing & blogging. But I also don't blog for leads or income anymore, and don't care as much about my audience dynamics. Is that where the cutoff is? If somebody really wants the short version I find that they'll email me and probably get a disappointing reply...
- BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
  > But also, a lot of us write to exorcise our informational/emotional demons (to use a metaphor). It's taking care of oneself. And a lot of the time that looks like piles of words. I find in my old age that I have little patience for people who publicly write for themselves and not for others. If you want to masturbate, cool, I love it, do it in private. If you want to enrich others, the less you waste their time the more people you'll be able to reach.
  - marcellus23 5y ago
    It depends where you do your writing. I don't think there should be any expectation that a personal blog is anything other than "writing for yourself."
    - wheelinsupial 5y ago
      One of the requirements of achieving the top levels within the analytics team at my company is to be considered a thought leader and evangelist. This is accomplished by blogging, tweeting, LinkedIn posts, and speaking at conferences. It’s very obvious when it comes up in my feeds that people are doing it to appeal to their managers and review committee. We are in no way a leader in analytics, so I feel bad for those who consume this content, which is put out by people with 3-6 months of professional experience who are trying to pass it off as authoritative and universal.
      - travisjungroth 5y ago
        Do your analysts help with causality? Top companies have some people that talk a lot and others listen to. So if we have our employees talk more and get people to listen to them, we'll be a top company. Brilliant! Could there be a confound? No way!
        wheelinsupial 5y ago
        We pay below market where we are. If we are considered a top analytics company because our people promote themselves, then jokes on me and I need to put myself out there.
  - munificent 5y ago
    I think your comment presumes a well-defined difference between "public" and "private" that doesn't really exist. It's not like web pages spontaneously run into your home and throw themselves in your face. Simply publishing a blog to the web for those who happen to seek it out lets the audience themselves decide what is public what is private. The audience still has complete control over the use of their own time.
    - afarrell 5y ago
      Web pages which are accessible without a login are public. So are advertisements posted on the street outside your house.
      - munificent 5y ago
        > So are advertisements posted on the street outside your house. Those take up physical space and a region of my visual field, which are both finite resources in ways that the web is clearly not.
    - mkr-hn 5y ago
      I have a good middle ground between your positions: conversational writing. Contrasted with public journaling and lecturing. Some people have to start with one or the other to get the writing out, but editing it into a conversation with the reader makes for better reading.
  - 1123581321 5y ago
    How would you know which type you are currently reading?
  - andai 5y ago
    I think that type of writing is more like digestion... the author is enriched by the process, but the product is not fit for consumption. I think most journaling falls under this category -- there is a reason it is called a "brain dump", heh.
  - runald 5y ago
    This is funny because a lot of the classics fit in that category, especially the ones that was dug after the author's death and was published despite the author's will. If what you say is true, then some lovers of classic literature are nothing but voyeuristic consumers.
- janto 5y ago
  When I write "to myself" I try to be clear and concise. It actually helps me more to encapsulate my experience than free association writing does.
- cpeterso 5y ago
  There's a reason "tl;dr" is a saying. As the meme says: "I ain't reading all that. I'm happy for u tho. Or sorry that happened." https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-aint-reading-all-that https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-aint-reading-all-that
kendru 5y ago
I love how the post is a demonstration of the practice it describes.
rckrd 5y ago
This has been working for me. Before, I struggled to finish blog posts between working on other things. Now, for the last 100 days, I've been writing a short blog post every day.
deleted 5y ago
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cyberge99 5y ago
I once heard “when talking to senior leadership, say as much as you can in as few words as possible”. Interestingly, I heard it from some actor being interviewed on the Howard Stern show.
- tombert 5y ago
  That's still a skill I'm trying to get used to. For work emails, I've for some reason trained myself to add a bunch of fluff at the beginning and ending of emails. For last ~year or so, I've been trying to get more into the habit of keeping my emails extremely utilitarian, e.g. bullets of my questions, bullets of what I need, and maybe the best way to get ahold of me.
  - allenu 5y ago
    I used to do the fluff thing more early in my career, thinking I was being polite and comprehensive in my communication, then over time I realized people are more likely to respond if you’re concise and clear in what your request is. Nowadays I try to get to the point about what I want from the other person, while giving just enough context at the start to frame the request. It has definitely helped in getting a response or action.
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    That reminds me of "No Hello": https://www.nohello.com https://www.nohello.com . Politeness is very context sensitive. If I'm writing a letter to my mom, I'll let it meander and squeeze in funny little tidbits because she likes to hear me talk. My coworkers don't necessarily like to hear me talk, and they want me to get to the point so they can get back to work. For Mom, all the fluff is polite. For my coworkers, brevity is appreciated.
smoyer 5y ago
The article cited by this post is at - https://critter.blog/2020/10/02/write-5x-more-but-write-5x-less/ https://critter.blog/2020/10/02/write-5x-more-but-write-5x-l...
tombert 5y ago
I don't remember the original source, but in Leslie Lamport's Specifying Systems book, he quoted someone saying "Writing is nature's way of telling you how sloppy your thinking is." Generally, if you're writing long, rambling posts, there's a good chance that your understanding of the subject that you're writing about is sloppy (not to say you don't understand it, just that your thoughts are all over the place). If you can express what you're writing in a fairly short amount of time, you probably have a relatively good mental model of what it is you're tying to say, and this is a learnable (and useful) skill. I've found that getting into the practice of writing "notes that I will actually read in the future" has helped a lot with this.
- Swizec 5y ago
  To brag a little, my favorite feedback on the newsletters I send is "Thanks! Short and sweet, loved it!" to a 1000 word email. It's okay to write long. But it needs to feel short by being concise. You can always tell when someone squeezes a 1000 page book into 200 pages. It feels short and insightful. But when they expand a 20 page book into 200 pages, it feels like fluff. You can tell when that happens too. A good pattern to observe is an author's first and second best seller. The first is often amazing. A decade of lessons and insights squeezed into a book. The fast followup is usually fluff. 2 years of add-ons expanded into a full book.
  - tombert 5y ago
    Yep yep, I totally agree with that. Obviously there are subjects where it would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to express in a short format, and obviously if it requires it, then take the amount of space that you need. I think the goal should be "aim for brevity, but be clear." One of my favorite examples of this are Ron Pressler's "TLA+ in Practice and Theory" posts. It's four extremely long blog posts, but it contains what feels like multiple textbooks' worth of information in there. By comparison to how long it could be, I think it's incredible how concise it is. [1] https://pron.github.io/tlaplus https://pron.github.io/tlaplus
  - KittenInABox 5y ago
    > You can always tell when someone squeezes a 1000 page book into 200 pages. It feels short and insightful. I disagree with this argument. You can most certainly tell when someone is trying to squeeze too much into a too small of a space. The sentences are dense and the information density prohibits actually gleaning anything.
andai 5y ago
Just this morning my dyslexic friend said he loves to write in bullet points, because reading is very labor-intensive for him. He wished that articles would just give you the meat in bullet points instead of spreading the actual information out over several pages of fluff. That made me realize, keeping dyslexic people in mind when writing is one of those things that improves accessibility for everyone.
- DiggyJohnson 5y ago
  I'll bite: I think your friend has a point, I take handwritten notes purely in nested bullets if the topic isn't an active conversation. That said, this only works up to a point, and I wonder whether most articles could be written in bullets and retain all the "value" of their prose form. Bullets don't cut it if the subject requires the author to address human emotions or impart meaning into their text. This is loosely in opposition to facts, spec sheets, and technical information that does lend itself to hierarchical structures in a way that adds value. I recognize you might not disagree with any of this, by the way.
  - nerpderp82 5y ago
    Many of the pieces of information we attempt to communicate have low semantic complexity and information density. They translate very nicely into an outline or a list of lists. Other things are very difficult to convey, type systems, multiple levels of interpretation, multiple levels of VMs and runtimes, and things that are spread out over time or inter-related in complex ways. One thing your dyslexic friend may have is a lack of context and bullet points are the fastest way to a) build context and b) provide roots to be able to hang more information off of. tl;dr both.
- akvadrako 5y ago
  A few news sites do that, like Business Insider, and I think it's a great idea. They should also give tables of data in a standard format instead of saying 4/13ths of people agreed that is was likely or very likely, but only 20 disagreed.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
Brendinooo 5y ago
Seemed like the blog post was more about note taking, but this ethos is why I like Twitter. I realized that I have always enjoyed blogging. A medium that encourages terseness, has minimal friction to post, and provides a decently-sized audience lets me talk about my life in a way that makes me choose words more carefully.
GordonS 5y ago
A while back I got in trouble at work because I was perceived as being too direct in emails. IMO my mails were fine, and I varied the level of directness depending on the target audience - but others felt differently, so I started padding them out with fluff and niceties, and unfortunately it became a habit that I've found difficult to break. And inevitably, some people have since said that my mails should come with a TL;DR! Sure enough, I feel like I used to be succinct, and now I'm just overly verbose, with redundant sentences, and sometimes seemingly rambling. Hell, if you made it this far through this rambling comment, well done ;)
dgs_sgd 5y ago
The underlying problem is the clarity of one's writing. For inexperienced writers it's highly likely that the longer their writing the more rambling and incoherent it is. Therefore it's a good rule of thumb for an inexperienced writer to write shorter.
deleted 5y ago
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wenc 5y ago
I like terse writing but I’ve also learned two things about it. The first is that minimalist narrative writing linearizes nonlinear thought. The linearity is often—correctly or incorrectly—perceived as clarity but it really is just linearity. In some cases preserving nonlinearity is actually helpful (for instance, a conversation with interjections and meanderings). Second, terseness is not appreciated by all. Fillers and repetitions are sometimes necessary for politeness and to soften language. This is why you should strive to write more rather than less when what you’re about the say is liable to be misunderstood or if you want to emphasize something.
tyingq 5y ago
The linked original source in the article has a more clear phrasing..."Write more often, but make each thing you write shorter." https://critter.blog/2020/10/02/write-5x-more-but-write-5x-less/ https://critter.blog/2020/10/02/write-5x-more-but-write-5x-l...
mcbishop 5y ago
> Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences. Scott Adams https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the_day_you_bec.html https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the...
- posterboy 5y ago
  This is poor advise. It's a good rule of thumb to KISS (keep it short and simple), but it doesn't translate from one short and simplified example to each sentence of a longer text, because sentences aren't wholly individual. Sentences need to work together, in conjunction, because the information content requires a reasonable amount of structural complexity to support the content. Adverbs are very good at that. I am absoluty not familiar with typed syntax theories or anything really, but I dare say the adverb in the previous sentence modifies at that. At least the parameter is bracketed nicely. Were I to say otherwise that Adverbs are good, it would not be any better now would it? Because the adverb introduces an adverbial clause that modifies the whole preceding text, that is referenced by "at that" in a manner of, err, a fix-point y-combinator!? On the other hand I am a foreign speaker without good judgement. Consider that good (or happy) itself may be adverbial, Adverbs well support the support. Good to know: Repition and redundancy can be quite beneficial, and sometimes it's impossible to avoid. Anyway, kitchen philosophy says that early optimization is the source of all evil (Hoare apud Knuth). Edit: Another problem of structural support is punctuation
  - mcbishop 5y ago
    I appreciate your point. I agree that it depends on context. Sometimes I add "very" because I'm trying too hard to "sell" something to my reader. But if I sit back and take a breath... I see that it's unnecessary (and probably counterproductive) to throw so much enthusiasm at them. My writing has generally calmed down (for the better) since I read the blog post that I referenced above.
- bserge 5y ago
  Why not "He happy". Language complicated. Return to simple. Save energy.
OneEyedRobot 5y ago
If for no other reason, I can see the point of righting shorter because people are losing their ability to read anything longer. I've decided to do all business correspondence as haiku from here on. -------- Regarding your code I would replace all the tabs With happy faces
- bserge 5y ago
  Yeah, dumb people buy more, so it's great to pander to them.
redkidster 5y ago
"Like Shakespeare said, "brevity is the soul of wit", which just means: "Don't waste my fucking time"" - Mr. Plinkett
- bserge 5y ago
  The guy who was inventing words for stuff that didn't have one? :D
hirundo 5y ago
The ultimate exaggeration of this would be a grand unified theory of everything. Maybe Stephen Wolfram will write it someday in the form of a cellular automata rule set.
- nextaccountic 5y ago
  Wolfram is working on another idea, based on graph rewriting. Which is perhaps like a cellular automata whose rules can create more cells instead of working on a fixed grid, but, at this point it's not "cellular" anymore. Wolfram has an.. issue in that he focuses on qualitative results (he runs simulations, eyeball it and tell something about it), but, I'm pretty excited by this development. https://www.wolframphysics.org/ https://www.wolframphysics.org/ https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/04/the-wolfram-physics-project-a-one-year-update/ https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/04/the-wolfram-phys... https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/ https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-h...
  - Nevermark 5y ago
    > Wolfram has an.. issue in that he focuses on qualitative results (he runs simulations, eyeball it and tell something about it), but, I'm pretty excited by this development. That's a good way of describing his weakness! His excitement about some experiment is directly proportional to: 1) the interestingness of some unproven result, 2) that he imagines is proven based on his personal inductive overgeneralization, 3) of a perceived qualitative result, 4) from an actual quantitative experiment, 5) that he post-selected for said interestingness, 6) and that he claims to have discovered first. He has good ideas, but it seems to always be wrapped up in huge amounts of meta hyperbole.
mcrittenden 5y ago
Oh hey, I'm the person mentioned in the first sentence of this post. I was wondering why my stats went up today! I've published a blog post every weekday for over a year now (today's was #280). It's been life changing for me. It's now my go-to method for figuring out what I think about something and for crystallizing those thoughts and finding links between them. - I figured out that I wanted a new job while writing a blog post (and I started that new job 9 months ago). - I learned that I'm not an introvert, but rather a shy extrovert, while writing a blog post. - That led into me realizing I have social anxiety while writing a blog post. There are lots more examples of that. I'm often surprised to find that I don't actually believe what I thought I believed when I started writing that blog post. Journaling never stuck for me because it felt like work, but making it public made it exciting and fulfilling enough to become a habit that I look forward to each day. Since the author mentioned Zettelkasten, I'll add this: https://critter.blog/2021/02/10/blogging-as-a-zettelkasten/ https://critter.blog/2021/02/10/blogging-as-a-zettelkasten/
- DenisM 5y ago
  So how do you combine learning by writing and the more conventional learning by reading?
  - giansegato 5y ago
    There's no such thing as learning by reading. It's always learning by acting (as opposed to passive reception, that just doesn't stick). [1] https://giansegato.com/essays/edutainment-is-not-learning/ https://giansegato.com/essays/edutainment-is-not-learning/
    - DenisM 5y ago
      What I meant is that you can't produce all source material from your head, you have to consume some data before you synthesize your own conclusions.
  - mcrittenden 5y ago
    I read a good bit too. I highlight the interesting bits (https://critter.blog/2021/04/01/the-evolution-of-my-ebook-highlights/ https://critter.blog/2021/04/01/the-evolution-of-my-ebook-hi...) and if something really stands out then I base a blog post on that thought. Here's a small example of that: https://critter.blog/2021/06/28/ignoring-the-reactionaries/ https://critter.blog/2021/06/28/ignoring-the-reactionaries/
jyriand 5y ago
Writer shorter, yes. Write like a robot, no.
bserge 5y ago
Imo, write less, but longer. It allows you to better articulate your thoughts and create content that is in-depth, helpful and often timeless. If you can't connect the beginning, middle and end of a single 3000 word article, why do you think you can do it with 5x 600 word ones? Same for video and audio. Plus, "more and shorter" brought us the cancer that is Twitter, Facebook, Imgur and TikTok.
paulpauper 5y ago
This advice is effective only if you are already famous or established. The most successful online writers who built their own brands without outside help began by writing huge, long articles that appealed to readers with high iqs and high attention spans. Short, concise articles are a dime a dozen and forgettable. You need to write looong essays to stand out and get content viral even if the articles are seldom read to thier entirety. An example is waitbutwhy.
GuB-42 5y ago
It works with code too. In fact it looks like the process for writing good articles and writing good code is not so different. Each word should be meaningful and precise. Text has to be short but without resorting to obscure abbreviations and references. Of course spelling, syntax and formatting has to be correct.
andreyk 5y ago
Sounds like this post is recommending you keep a journal, certainly a good practice, as the post says writing is an invaluable tool for reflection. But I don't think the advice is as useful for creating writing that is of value to others.
emodendroket 5y ago
On this theory I'm spending hours on Twitter.
tyroh 5y ago
I used to have a bit of anxiety writing about things in public but I still want to build my writing muscles. So now, I summarize articles into notes which both helps me and others. Also, no one really reads any more, at least in my circle. Most of my long form content has been converted into checklists, slides and diagrams.
Animats 5y ago
Write more. Write shorter. Get more clicks. Profit! I stopped reading as soon as the first pop-up toolbar appeared.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Writing should fit its purpose. Simple ideas can be conveyed clearly and concisely. Complex ideas need space to grow, roam, demonstrate, and explain. But more critically (and something Zettlekasten should help with significantly) they require structure. John McFee's description of his use of index cards is among the best (and most concise) explanations of this that I've found. A classic bit of bad writing advice I see, at least for someone trying to express complex thoughts, is the idea that writing only or simply requires adding some fixed number of words per day. Write a uniform 3,000 words per day, and you'll crank out a 250,000 word epic novel in three months. It ... doesn't work like that. It's not that you can't simply keep stringing words together. But eventually that's going to show. Simple structures are simple. A box, or hut, or short program, or simple essay, can be stream of consciousness or happenstance. A more complex structure with interdependencies, relationships, and constraints requires more thought, a framework off of which to hang the parts, and an overall organisation. Short fragments can give you the parts you're looking for, but you'll still need to fit them together. And apply tape, string, and mortar where needed as well.
- chii 5y ago
  > ... bad writing advice ... why is that bad writing advice? I would expect that consistently developing the writing every day (aka, 3000 words per day) will lead to some results - of course, you'd still have to edit, rearrange, and cut at some point in the future (e.g., after the "full" novel is completed, you'd go back and repeatedly change and cut, until it's a good novel).
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Because it's virtually never given in the context of "structure and edit". The formula is more: - Write X words/day. - After nX days, book of nX length!!! There is advice that that addresses that. The John McFee piece I reference is one. A writing guide book I'd used at uni had a chapter on rewriting. It consisted of something like this: Rewriting Interviewer: I understood you rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms 16 times. What was the hard part? Hemmingway: Getting the words right. The author was Hemmingway. The book and number of rewrites may have differed. I'm near certain the response was as I've given it. That was the entire chapter. It is an effective communication. There's a similar brand of reading advice that's similarly bad --- that you just have to plough through a book, keep reading, and make sure you understand each word. Again: Thats. Not. How. It. Works. There's context, references, allusion, cultural relevance. Mortimer J. Adler's How to Read a Book addresses this complexity, as a contrast. It's not that you don't need to actually write to produce something, but just as a house is not a pile of bricks, and a skyscraper isn't a pile of concrete, glass, and steel, a book isn't simply a pile of words. The advice is very incomplete.
blippage 5y ago
Keep it short for pithy's sake.
davegri 5y ago
The logical conclusion of this maxim is "tweet more often".
tpoacher 5y ago
I would say that "shorter" isn't the key. It just happens that when one writes "shorter" one tries to write in a more consice and structured manner. Not always, but typically. Whereas whenever I see a long article, it's typically because the author decided to ramble about everything, nothing, and their dog, before they even get to anything remotely related to their point, by which point I've already lost the will to live. Not to mention I suspect they do this increase adspace, and then feel cheated I was tricked into clicking in the first space. But a well reasoned argument need not be short to be effective. Orwell's essays do not need cliffnotes in order to be appreciated. CS Lewis does not need it. So I would replace "short" with "intentional", "structured", "respectful" ... I think it just happens that it's easier to be unstructured and disrespectul during longer rants than it is with shorter ones.
j0hns0n 5y ago
Congrats. You discovered "note to self"

239 points by defaulty 5y ago

Nice post, how do you like your Zettelcloud so far? I'm always interested to hear. Looking at Mike's article: > Because the shorter it is, the more people will read it. What. > Because of the Pareto principle: 80% of the value is in 20% of the length (hence “5x shorter”). WHAT. I guess a lot of us write so that other people will read...I guess. But also, a lot of us write to exorcise our informational/emotional demons (to use a metaphor). It's taking care of oneself. And a lot of the time that looks like piles of words. Especially given a nice amount of intuition-stimulant like caffeine. Writing/blogging has headed more this way for me personally, the longer I've been writing & blogging. But I also don't blog for leads or income anymore, and don't care as much about my audience dynamics. Is that where the cutoff is? If somebody really wants the short version I find that they'll email me and probably get a disappointing reply...

BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
> But also, a lot of us write to exorcise our informational/emotional demons (to use a metaphor). It's taking care of oneself. And a lot of the time that looks like piles of words. I find in my old age that I have little patience for people who publicly write for themselves and not for others. If you want to masturbate, cool, I love it, do it in private. If you want to enrich others, the less you waste their time the more people you'll be able to reach.
- marcellus23 5y ago
  It depends where you do your writing. I don't think there should be any expectation that a personal blog is anything other than "writing for yourself."
  - wheelinsupial 5y ago
    One of the requirements of achieving the top levels within the analytics team at my company is to be considered a thought leader and evangelist. This is accomplished by blogging, tweeting, LinkedIn posts, and speaking at conferences. It’s very obvious when it comes up in my feeds that people are doing it to appeal to their managers and review committee. We are in no way a leader in analytics, so I feel bad for those who consume this content, which is put out by people with 3-6 months of professional experience who are trying to pass it off as authoritative and universal.
    - travisjungroth 5y ago
      Do your analysts help with causality? Top companies have some people that talk a lot and others listen to. So if we have our employees talk more and get people to listen to them, we'll be a top company. Brilliant! Could there be a confound? No way!
      - wheelinsupial 5y ago
        We pay below market where we are. If we are considered a top analytics company because our people promote themselves, then jokes on me and I need to put myself out there.
- munificent 5y ago
  I think your comment presumes a well-defined difference between "public" and "private" that doesn't really exist. It's not like web pages spontaneously run into your home and throw themselves in your face. Simply publishing a blog to the web for those who happen to seek it out lets the audience themselves decide what is public what is private. The audience still has complete control over the use of their own time.
  - afarrell 5y ago
    Web pages which are accessible without a login are public. So are advertisements posted on the street outside your house.
    - munificent 5y ago
      > So are advertisements posted on the street outside your house. Those take up physical space and a region of my visual field, which are both finite resources in ways that the web is clearly not.
  - mkr-hn 5y ago
    I have a good middle ground between your positions: conversational writing. Contrasted with public journaling and lecturing. Some people have to start with one or the other to get the writing out, but editing it into a conversation with the reader makes for better reading.
- 1123581321 5y ago
  How would you know which type you are currently reading?
- andai 5y ago
  I think that type of writing is more like digestion... the author is enriched by the process, but the product is not fit for consumption. I think most journaling falls under this category -- there is a reason it is called a "brain dump", heh.
- runald 5y ago
  This is funny because a lot of the classics fit in that category, especially the ones that was dug after the author's death and was published despite the author's will. If what you say is true, then some lovers of classic literature are nothing but voyeuristic consumers.
janto 5y ago
When I write "to myself" I try to be clear and concise. It actually helps me more to encapsulate my experience than free association writing does.
cpeterso 5y ago
There's a reason "tl;dr" is a saying. As the meme says: "I ain't reading all that. I'm happy for u tho. Or sorry that happened." https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-aint-reading-all-that https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-aint-reading-all-that

kendru 5y ago

I love how the post is a demonstration of the practice it describes.

rckrd 5y ago

This has been working for me. Before, I struggled to finish blog posts between working on other things. Now, for the last 100 days, I've been writing a short blog post every day.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cyberge99 5y ago

I once heard “when talking to senior leadership, say as much as you can in as few words as possible”. Interestingly, I heard it from some actor being interviewed on the Howard Stern show.

tombert 5y ago
That's still a skill I'm trying to get used to. For work emails, I've for some reason trained myself to add a bunch of fluff at the beginning and ending of emails. For last ~year or so, I've been trying to get more into the habit of keeping my emails extremely utilitarian, e.g. bullets of my questions, bullets of what I need, and maybe the best way to get ahold of me.
- allenu 5y ago
  I used to do the fluff thing more early in my career, thinking I was being polite and comprehensive in my communication, then over time I realized people are more likely to respond if you’re concise and clear in what your request is. Nowadays I try to get to the point about what I want from the other person, while giving just enough context at the start to frame the request. It has definitely helped in getting a response or action.
- kstrauser 5y ago
  That reminds me of "No Hello": https://www.nohello.com https://www.nohello.com . Politeness is very context sensitive. If I'm writing a letter to my mom, I'll let it meander and squeeze in funny little tidbits because she likes to hear me talk. My coworkers don't necessarily like to hear me talk, and they want me to get to the point so they can get back to work. For Mom, all the fluff is polite. For my coworkers, brevity is appreciated.

smoyer 5y ago

The article cited by this post is at - https://critter.blog/2020/10/02/write-5x-more-but-write-5x-less/ https://critter.blog/2020/10/02/write-5x-more-but-write-5x-l...

tombert 5y ago

I don't remember the original source, but in Leslie Lamport's Specifying Systems book, he quoted someone saying "Writing is nature's way of telling you how sloppy your thinking is." Generally, if you're writing long, rambling posts, there's a good chance that your understanding of the subject that you're writing about is sloppy (not to say you don't understand it, just that your thoughts are all over the place). If you can express what you're writing in a fairly short amount of time, you probably have a relatively good mental model of what it is you're tying to say, and this is a learnable (and useful) skill. I've found that getting into the practice of writing "notes that I will actually read in the future" has helped a lot with this.

Swizec 5y ago
To brag a little, my favorite feedback on the newsletters I send is "Thanks! Short and sweet, loved it!" to a 1000 word email. It's okay to write long. But it needs to feel short by being concise. You can always tell when someone squeezes a 1000 page book into 200 pages. It feels short and insightful. But when they expand a 20 page book into 200 pages, it feels like fluff. You can tell when that happens too. A good pattern to observe is an author's first and second best seller. The first is often amazing. A decade of lessons and insights squeezed into a book. The fast followup is usually fluff. 2 years of add-ons expanded into a full book.
- tombert 5y ago
  Yep yep, I totally agree with that. Obviously there are subjects where it would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to express in a short format, and obviously if it requires it, then take the amount of space that you need. I think the goal should be "aim for brevity, but be clear." One of my favorite examples of this are Ron Pressler's "TLA+ in Practice and Theory" posts. It's four extremely long blog posts, but it contains what feels like multiple textbooks' worth of information in there. By comparison to how long it could be, I think it's incredible how concise it is. [1] https://pron.github.io/tlaplus https://pron.github.io/tlaplus
- KittenInABox 5y ago
  > You can always tell when someone squeezes a 1000 page book into 200 pages. It feels short and insightful. I disagree with this argument. You can most certainly tell when someone is trying to squeeze too much into a too small of a space. The sentences are dense and the information density prohibits actually gleaning anything.

andai 5y ago

Just this morning my dyslexic friend said he loves to write in bullet points, because reading is very labor-intensive for him. He wished that articles would just give you the meat in bullet points instead of spreading the actual information out over several pages of fluff. That made me realize, keeping dyslexic people in mind when writing is one of those things that improves accessibility for everyone.

DiggyJohnson 5y ago
I'll bite: I think your friend has a point, I take handwritten notes purely in nested bullets if the topic isn't an active conversation. That said, this only works up to a point, and I wonder whether most articles could be written in bullets and retain all the "value" of their prose form. Bullets don't cut it if the subject requires the author to address human emotions or impart meaning into their text. This is loosely in opposition to facts, spec sheets, and technical information that does lend itself to hierarchical structures in a way that adds value. I recognize you might not disagree with any of this, by the way.
- nerpderp82 5y ago
  Many of the pieces of information we attempt to communicate have low semantic complexity and information density. They translate very nicely into an outline or a list of lists. Other things are very difficult to convey, type systems, multiple levels of interpretation, multiple levels of VMs and runtimes, and things that are spread out over time or inter-related in complex ways. One thing your dyslexic friend may have is a lack of context and bullet points are the fastest way to a) build context and b) provide roots to be able to hang more information off of. tl;dr both.
akvadrako 5y ago
A few news sites do that, like Business Insider, and I think it's a great idea. They should also give tables of data in a standard format instead of saying 4/13ths of people agreed that is was likely or very likely, but only 20 disagreed.
TeMPOraL 5y ago

Brendinooo 5y ago

Seemed like the blog post was more about note taking, but this ethos is why I like Twitter. I realized that I have always enjoyed blogging. A medium that encourages terseness, has minimal friction to post, and provides a decently-sized audience lets me talk about my life in a way that makes me choose words more carefully.

GordonS 5y ago

A while back I got in trouble at work because I was perceived as being too direct in emails. IMO my mails were fine, and I varied the level of directness depending on the target audience - but others felt differently, so I started padding them out with fluff and niceties, and unfortunately it became a habit that I've found difficult to break. And inevitably, some people have since said that my mails should come with a TL;DR! Sure enough, I feel like I used to be succinct, and now I'm just overly verbose, with redundant sentences, and sometimes seemingly rambling. Hell, if you made it this far through this rambling comment, well done ;)

dgs_sgd 5y ago

The underlying problem is the clarity of one's writing. For inexperienced writers it's highly likely that the longer their writing the more rambling and incoherent it is. Therefore it's a good rule of thumb for an inexperienced writer to write shorter.

deleted 5y ago

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wenc 5y ago

I like terse writing but I’ve also learned two things about it. The first is that minimalist narrative writing linearizes nonlinear thought. The linearity is often—correctly or incorrectly—perceived as clarity but it really is just linearity. In some cases preserving nonlinearity is actually helpful (for instance, a conversation with interjections and meanderings). Second, terseness is not appreciated by all. Fillers and repetitions are sometimes necessary for politeness and to soften language. This is why you should strive to write more rather than less when what you’re about the say is liable to be misunderstood or if you want to emphasize something.

tyingq 5y ago

The linked original source in the article has a more clear phrasing..."Write more often, but make each thing you write shorter." https://critter.blog/2020/10/02/write-5x-more-but-write-5x-less/ https://critter.blog/2020/10/02/write-5x-more-but-write-5x-l...

mcbishop 5y ago

> Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences. Scott Adams https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the_day_you_bec.html https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the...

posterboy 5y ago
This is poor advise. It's a good rule of thumb to KISS (keep it short and simple), but it doesn't translate from one short and simplified example to each sentence of a longer text, because sentences aren't wholly individual. Sentences need to work together, in conjunction, because the information content requires a reasonable amount of structural complexity to support the content. Adverbs are very good at that. I am absoluty not familiar with typed syntax theories or anything really, but I dare say the adverb in the previous sentence modifies at that. At least the parameter is bracketed nicely. Were I to say otherwise that Adverbs are good, it would not be any better now would it? Because the adverb introduces an adverbial clause that modifies the whole preceding text, that is referenced by "at that" in a manner of, err, a fix-point y-combinator!? On the other hand I am a foreign speaker without good judgement. Consider that good (or happy) itself may be adverbial, Adverbs well support the support. Good to know: Repition and redundancy can be quite beneficial, and sometimes it's impossible to avoid. Anyway, kitchen philosophy says that early optimization is the source of all evil (Hoare apud Knuth). Edit: Another problem of structural support is punctuation
- mcbishop 5y ago
  I appreciate your point. I agree that it depends on context. Sometimes I add "very" because I'm trying too hard to "sell" something to my reader. But if I sit back and take a breath... I see that it's unnecessary (and probably counterproductive) to throw so much enthusiasm at them. My writing has generally calmed down (for the better) since I read the blog post that I referenced above.
bserge 5y ago
Why not "He happy". Language complicated. Return to simple. Save energy.

OneEyedRobot 5y ago

If for no other reason, I can see the point of righting shorter because people are losing their ability to read anything longer. I've decided to do all business correspondence as haiku from here on. -------- Regarding your code I would replace all the tabs With happy faces

bserge 5y ago
Yeah, dumb people buy more, so it's great to pander to them.

redkidster 5y ago

"Like Shakespeare said, "brevity is the soul of wit", which just means: "Don't waste my fucking time"" - Mr. Plinkett

bserge 5y ago
The guy who was inventing words for stuff that didn't have one? :D

hirundo 5y ago

The ultimate exaggeration of this would be a grand unified theory of everything. Maybe Stephen Wolfram will write it someday in the form of a cellular automata rule set.

nextaccountic 5y ago
Wolfram is working on another idea, based on graph rewriting. Which is perhaps like a cellular automata whose rules can create more cells instead of working on a fixed grid, but, at this point it's not "cellular" anymore. Wolfram has an.. issue in that he focuses on qualitative results (he runs simulations, eyeball it and tell something about it), but, I'm pretty excited by this development. https://www.wolframphysics.org/ https://www.wolframphysics.org/ https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/04/the-wolfram-physics-project-a-one-year-update/ https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/04/the-wolfram-phys... https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/ https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-h...
- Nevermark 5y ago
  > Wolfram has an.. issue in that he focuses on qualitative results (he runs simulations, eyeball it and tell something about it), but, I'm pretty excited by this development. That's a good way of describing his weakness! His excitement about some experiment is directly proportional to: 1) the interestingness of some unproven result, 2) that he imagines is proven based on his personal inductive overgeneralization, 3) of a perceived qualitative result, 4) from an actual quantitative experiment, 5) that he post-selected for said interestingness, 6) and that he claims to have discovered first. He has good ideas, but it seems to always be wrapped up in huge amounts of meta hyperbole.

mcrittenden 5y ago

Oh hey, I'm the person mentioned in the first sentence of this post. I was wondering why my stats went up today! I've published a blog post every weekday for over a year now (today's was #280). It's been life changing for me. It's now my go-to method for figuring out what I think about something and for crystallizing those thoughts and finding links between them. - I figured out that I wanted a new job while writing a blog post (and I started that new job 9 months ago). - I learned that I'm not an introvert, but rather a shy extrovert, while writing a blog post. - That led into me realizing I have social anxiety while writing a blog post. There are lots more examples of that. I'm often surprised to find that I don't actually believe what I thought I believed when I started writing that blog post. Journaling never stuck for me because it felt like work, but making it public made it exciting and fulfilling enough to become a habit that I look forward to each day. Since the author mentioned Zettelkasten, I'll add this: https://critter.blog/2021/02/10/blogging-as-a-zettelkasten/ https://critter.blog/2021/02/10/blogging-as-a-zettelkasten/

DenisM 5y ago
So how do you combine learning by writing and the more conventional learning by reading?
- giansegato 5y ago
  There's no such thing as learning by reading. It's always learning by acting (as opposed to passive reception, that just doesn't stick). [1] https://giansegato.com/essays/edutainment-is-not-learning/ https://giansegato.com/essays/edutainment-is-not-learning/
  - DenisM 5y ago
    What I meant is that you can't produce all source material from your head, you have to consume some data before you synthesize your own conclusions.
- mcrittenden 5y ago
  I read a good bit too. I highlight the interesting bits (https://critter.blog/2021/04/01/the-evolution-of-my-ebook-highlights/ https://critter.blog/2021/04/01/the-evolution-of-my-ebook-hi...) and if something really stands out then I base a blog post on that thought. Here's a small example of that: https://critter.blog/2021/06/28/ignoring-the-reactionaries/ https://critter.blog/2021/06/28/ignoring-the-reactionaries/

jyriand 5y ago

Writer shorter, yes. Write like a robot, no.

bserge 5y ago

Imo, write less, but longer. It allows you to better articulate your thoughts and create content that is in-depth, helpful and often timeless. If you can't connect the beginning, middle and end of a single 3000 word article, why do you think you can do it with 5x 600 word ones? Same for video and audio. Plus, "more and shorter" brought us the cancer that is Twitter, Facebook, Imgur and TikTok.

paulpauper 5y ago

This advice is effective only if you are already famous or established. The most successful online writers who built their own brands without outside help began by writing huge, long articles that appealed to readers with high iqs and high attention spans. Short, concise articles are a dime a dozen and forgettable. You need to write looong essays to stand out and get content viral even if the articles are seldom read to thier entirety. An example is waitbutwhy.

GuB-42 5y ago

It works with code too. In fact it looks like the process for writing good articles and writing good code is not so different. Each word should be meaningful and precise. Text has to be short but without resorting to obscure abbreviations and references. Of course spelling, syntax and formatting has to be correct.

andreyk 5y ago

Sounds like this post is recommending you keep a journal, certainly a good practice, as the post says writing is an invaluable tool for reflection. But I don't think the advice is as useful for creating writing that is of value to others.

emodendroket 5y ago

On this theory I'm spending hours on Twitter.

tyroh 5y ago

I used to have a bit of anxiety writing about things in public but I still want to build my writing muscles. So now, I summarize articles into notes which both helps me and others. Also, no one really reads any more, at least in my circle. Most of my long form content has been converted into checklists, slides and diagrams.

Animats 5y ago

Write more. Write shorter. Get more clicks. Profit! I stopped reading as soon as the first pop-up toolbar appeared.

dredmorbius 5y ago

Writing should fit its purpose. Simple ideas can be conveyed clearly and concisely. Complex ideas need space to grow, roam, demonstrate, and explain. But more critically (and something Zettlekasten should help with significantly) they require structure. John McFee's description of his use of index cards is among the best (and most concise) explanations of this that I've found. A classic bit of bad writing advice I see, at least for someone trying to express complex thoughts, is the idea that writing only or simply requires adding some fixed number of words per day. Write a uniform 3,000 words per day, and you'll crank out a 250,000 word epic novel in three months. It ... doesn't work like that. It's not that you can't simply keep stringing words together. But eventually that's going to show. Simple structures are simple. A box, or hut, or short program, or simple essay, can be stream of consciousness or happenstance. A more complex structure with interdependencies, relationships, and constraints requires more thought, a framework off of which to hang the parts, and an overall organisation. Short fragments can give you the parts you're looking for, but you'll still need to fit them together. And apply tape, string, and mortar where needed as well.

chii 5y ago
> ... bad writing advice ... why is that bad writing advice? I would expect that consistently developing the writing every day (aka, 3000 words per day) will lead to some results - of course, you'd still have to edit, rearrange, and cut at some point in the future (e.g., after the "full" novel is completed, you'd go back and repeatedly change and cut, until it's a good novel).
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Because it's virtually never given in the context of "structure and edit". The formula is more: - Write X words/day. - After nX days, book of nX length!!! There is advice that that addresses that. The John McFee piece I reference is one. A writing guide book I'd used at uni had a chapter on rewriting. It consisted of something like this: Rewriting Interviewer: I understood you rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms 16 times. What was the hard part? Hemmingway: Getting the words right. The author was Hemmingway. The book and number of rewrites may have differed. I'm near certain the response was as I've given it. That was the entire chapter. It is an effective communication. There's a similar brand of reading advice that's similarly bad --- that you just have to plough through a book, keep reading, and make sure you understand each word. Again: Thats. Not. How. It. Works. There's context, references, allusion, cultural relevance. Mortimer J. Adler's How to Read a Book addresses this complexity, as a contrast. It's not that you don't need to actually write to produce something, but just as a house is not a pile of bricks, and a skyscraper isn't a pile of concrete, glass, and steel, a book isn't simply a pile of words. The advice is very incomplete.

blippage 5y ago

Keep it short for pithy's sake.

davegri 5y ago

The logical conclusion of this maxim is "tweet more often".

tpoacher 5y ago

I would say that "shorter" isn't the key. It just happens that when one writes "shorter" one tries to write in a more consice and structured manner. Not always, but typically. Whereas whenever I see a long article, it's typically because the author decided to ramble about everything, nothing, and their dog, before they even get to anything remotely related to their point, by which point I've already lost the will to live. Not to mention I suspect they do this increase adspace, and then feel cheated I was tricked into clicking in the first space. But a well reasoned argument need not be short to be effective. Orwell's essays do not need cliffnotes in order to be appreciated. CS Lewis does not need it. So I would replace "short" with "intentional", "structured", "respectful" ... I think it just happens that it's easier to be unstructured and disrespectul during longer rants than it is with shorter ones.

j0hns0n 5y ago

Congrats. You discovered "note to self"