Thinking Through a Very Mundane Dilemma
/** I’ve tried to include a quick sentence at the bottom of every post summarizing the highest-level idea in that post (or key takeaway) or a tl;dr (too long didn’t read).
Then I thought that at the end of the month, let me compile all of them into one list. The full context/meaning behind those blips would be found in their respective posts, but to some extent a) some of the blips could stand on their own, and b) they may inspire a reader to go to that specific post to get the whole picture.
But then I thought that typically, I’m under the impression that any list of suggestions/advice/takeaways that are non-technical (or even technical for that matter) is often too overwhelming and not easily digestible, making it harder to internalize and implement them into one’s life, which is where the true value is generated.
Just reading advice for the sake of reading it is essentially pointless, and sure, if you read a list of 10 tips, you may naturally resonate/identify with ~1-3 and those will “stick out” in your mind more vividly, and maybe you go and implement 1-2 of those tips, but it is still disorganized and all of the other tips, even if they are equally helpful, are left by the wayside.
Logically one would think that of 10-15 tips, consolidate that to the best 3 tips. 3 tips is easy enough to think about on a monthly basis and wouldn’t really require a re-read or re-visit: you could read the 3 tips, never read them again, and derive some value since it is rather digestible.
Now how would I go about selecting those 3 tips? Would I pick the ones that were more helpful/relevant to me? Sure, I could do that, but what about anyone who is not me (aka everyone)? They may be less helpful or relevant. Ok, then I think about the most general ones that would apply to the most people. But wait, there is no value in general advice, and so even if it is a) easily digestible, b) general enough to potentially be understood and internalized by more people, it is unfortunately c) probably too general to make any legitimate impact or be practically helpful, and if no value is seen in that advice, there is no reason to implement it. 😟
It’s the flaw with advice. General advice is rare because no situation is general: we all live in our own edge cases. Of course, some advice is good for basically 99-99.9% of humans (like drink more water), but these are obvious and/or uncommon.
(I like this image because it illustrates that while we love talking about averages/medians and what is the experience for “most” people, all of us are our own edge case and our individual paths very often deviate from the “average” and so “average” advice need not apply)
Image from Tim Urban
So what do I do then? Do I just pick the most interesting blip that can apply to the most people but is specific enough to still matter?
One idea is to pick the blip that is most obvious and simply emphasizing/re-writing it to reiterate its importance.
Another idea is to pick the blip that is most non-obvious and aims to peak interest/curiosity of the reader to either a) read more about it or b) chew on it in their own time and come to their own conclusion on the value of it AND if/how it can be implemented in their own life.
Still working on it!
tl;dr how do I select the best tl;dr from past posts to share at the end of the month? do I select 1..2…5…10? which ones do I select to compile and share?
Cheers,
Vish
Published on January 23, 2023.