There are three trends in copywriting that have been so overused they should now be avoided. The first two:
Headlines with “why” for articles that don’t actually explain why.
Headlines with “how” that don’t really teach you how.
Explaining why is difficult, which is where the value lies. People would like to understand things that confuse them, so they search for ‘why’ or click on it when an apparently reputable source promises the answer. Even major newspapers are discovering that this is a fine way to get attention. Alas, it’s not a promise that’s easily kept.
And ‘how’, which should be a simpler promise to honor, falls into a similar trap.
With the rise of AI and LLMs, these headlines have gone from fake promises to redundant. We can simply ask an AI for the How and the Why and we’re likely to get better insight than a content farm can offer us… so the few trusted brands that are left ought to make these promises more carefully.
The third trend is becoming more pernicious. I got an email yesterday from a founder I respect, and there was an astounding promise or claim in every third line. The YouTube videos that the email pointed to all had headlines that could have come out of a supermarket tabloid or a late night informercial ad. There was no way the reality could match the hype, and it’s a shame, because the reality was actually useful.
The pressure is real. The argument is that if you don’t follow the trend and out-hype everyone else (“you’ll never believe this secret!”) then you won’t get traffic and you’ll fail.
But the evidence clearly points in the other direction. Trust is what’s in short supply, not attention.
You can always create a short-term commotion to get a bit of attention. But you can’t possibly hype your way into being trusted.
July 11, 2024
Rome was built in a day.
It wasn’t finished in a day. In fact, it’s still not finished.
But the day someone said, “this is Rome,” and announced the project, it was there.
Sometimes we get hung up on the beginning, unwilling to start Rome unless we’re sure we can finish it without incident.
Sometimes we get hung up on the finishing, starting things all the time but blinking in the face of Resistance and wandering away.
The long haul is simply your list of completed projects. A career is not a series of tasks. It’s the chance to build things.
July 10, 2024
Sweating through seven shirts…
That was the definition of work when work was the same thing as physical labor.
For many of us, the physical labor is no longer the way we add value.
And it’s tempting to imagine that we simply have to show up for the coffee.
But it’s still called work.
Adding value isn’t easy. As soon as it is, everyone will do it, and our participation becomes less useful.
We need to look for the hard parts, not avoid them.
July 9, 2024
Knowledge and technique used to be closely guarded secrets. Admission to the guild was reserved for a few, and crafts like typesetting, plumbing and medicine were off limits to most folks.
One of the reasons for the explosion in productivity and innovation in the last century is that more tools and leverage are available to more people than ever before.
But, along the way, we began to prize tools that were convenient, easy to engage with and flat. Flat in that more experience didn’t always lead to better results. Five minutes with a kazoo sounds a lot like five hours with one.
We can find more upside when we choose to lean into something worth leaning into.
Just because it feels easy at first doesn’t mean that it’s a worthwhile career path.
July 8, 2024
Blame the clients. And blame the conditions.
But then, you’re on the hook to get better tools, find better clients and work in better conditions.
It’s not convenient, but it’s possible.
If it’s not worth the effort, we can simply accept what we’ve chosen and get back to work.
July 7, 2024
Explain it with quadrants?
Translate it into Spanish?
It’s easy to memorize a few words that purport to explain something, but all they do is relabel it.
If you truly understand something, you can use different modalities to help someone else understand it.
The magic of a good graph is that it makes the concept itself visible.
That’s why most graphs aren’t any good. They’re made by folks who don’t actually understand the concept they’re trying to explain.
July 6, 2024
The people most likely to sign up for coaching or additional learning are the folks who are already good at their craft.
“I’m terrible at this,” can lead to, “and I don’t want to be reminded of it.” Or perhaps, “I don’t want to waste their time,” or, “I’m never going to get better.”
When it’s possible to get better, embracing mediocrity isn’t a useful strategy.
I’d rather have a surgeon who regularly attends trainings, wouldn’t you?
Read a book, find a coach, organize a group. If you’re serious about getting better, you’ll improve.
Learning creates more competence but first, it amplifies our feelings of incompetence.
July 5, 2024
I hope that most of us would agree that driving 50 mph in a school zone where little kids cross the street is a significant safety problem. The speed limit is there for good reason, and if you selfishly and recklessly blow through the crosswalk, you ought to get a summons.
Municipalities can now hire a service that uses an automated speed camera to find the scofflaws and issue summonses directly, without the random luck of getting away with it as a factor.
But of course, cars now have computers in them, and GPS as well, so a car could easily be built so that it cut out the middleman and simply warned the driver and then issued itself a summons.
We’re inconsistent about how we interpret freedom and responsibility. The status quo gets the benefit of the doubt, simply because it’s what we’re used to.
Freedom’s fabulous, but as soon as we interact with others, it comes with responsibility.
As our communities become ever more interwoven and the surveillance of our actions becomes more complete, the cats and mice aren’t going to be nearly as relevant as to what sort of balance we all seek to strike between freedom and responsibility.
It should not be controversial for us to be responsible for the impact of what we say and what we do. Cats and mice have nothing to do with it.
July 4, 2024
There are a few tools I use regularly that make me smile, because the craftspeople who made them decided to build something with extra magic and care.
By using and paying for well crafted software, we often get far more than we pay for…
Ecamm is the tool I use for all my online talks, recordings and meetings. It’s really powerful, so it’ll take some time to get good at it, but the responsiveness and support of the company is terrific.
Superhuman is powerful and needs some ramp up time, but it’s a worthwhile investment.
This little app that allows people to bypass the horrible UX of Resy for meals in NY or SF is brilliant.
Nisus is still the most powerful, easiest and kindest word processor I know.
Ocen is my favorite audio editor.
Roon sounds great and will help you discover music you love.
Riverside is far better than Zoom for recording interviews.
Kittl is a fine place to mockup a logo.
Shippo make sending packages cheaper and easier.
Lightburn remains the best way I know to control a laser cutter.
Overcast is the podcast listening app with the best UX.
Opal is a dynamic combination of a webcam and great software to go with it.
July 3, 2024
A trick question is designed to fool us into proposing the wrong answer (example below).
A trap question, on the other hand, stops the train completely.
A trap question demands an answer, and the answer will paralyze us and keep us from the work at hand.
“Yes, but how many followers does your brand have on Insta?” is a trap question. So is, “Are you sure you’re prepared enough for the talk you have booked next week?”
Trap questions bring out demands for perfectionism, or amplify feelings of shame. Trap questions ought to be ignored, avoided, or, if we must respond, simply say, “it’s not a priority.”
Time spent on trap questions is time you’ll never get back.
[Here’s the trick question, much easier now that you know that’s what it is. It was in the first batch of questions I created for Guts, the online game launched on Prodigy in 1989…]
Which of the following was a world boxing champion?
- Lyndon Johnson
- Ronald Reagan
- Jimmy Carter
- Franklin Delano
- Abraham Lincoln
- Pat Paulsen
- None of the above
˙ɹǝʇɹɐƆ ʇɐɥʇ ʇou ʇsnſ ˙(Ɛ) sᴉ ɹǝʍsuɐ ǝɥ┴ ˙(ㄥ) pǝʞɔᴉd ǝldoǝd ʇsoW
