What are some common reasons why people don’t try things as often as they should? If you could answer that question and then suggest strategies for overcoming those failure modes, I’d want to see this as a top-level post.
Right now, I think most of your article is spent on convincing us that people should try things more often. Me personally, I don’t take much convincing on that claim—it sounds plausible. I’d be interested if you had hard data or even particularly compelling anecdotes to present that could raise my estimate from “plausible” to “very likely,” but your arguments are all pretty general/zoomed-out. So basically you are making a claim I already agree with and then supporting it with a weak sort of evidence. That probably wouldn’t interest me as a top-level post.
I don’t think that my personal experience includes all the common reasons for inaction. My main ones are perfectionism, fear of failure, the “I’m too busy” excuse, and unduly priveleging the null action. I could try to cover other ones, but I’d have far less experience effectively dealing with those.
What are some guidelines on how long I should spend on each of those?
I could try to cover other ones, but I’d have far less experience effectively dealing with those.
Well, that’s fine; it’s a community blog. You write about what you know, and then invite readers to fill in the gaps! :-) If you can name the other problems but not solve them, great; do so. If you don’t trust yourself to even name the other most important problems, let the readers do that.
What are some guidelines on how long I should spend on each of those?
Well, it’s sort of a labor of love, right? Nobody’s paying you or anything like that. All that you’re ‘asking’ for by posting to the top-level page is the attention of potentially busy people. To merit that attention, write enough that you have something substantive to say, and polish it enough in terms of word choice, formatting, etc. so that your article will be easy to read, but don’t feel obliged to be comprehensive or witty.
If you’re trying to decide how to allocate time among the various failure modes, I would suggest just going with the flow—when you run out of things that are relatively easy for you to say about one failure mode, move on to the next. All four of your failure modes sound potentially interesting. Depending on what you mean, you might find that “perfectionism” and “fear of failure” overlap, so you might consider either spending less time on each of those or merging them into one topic about which you say slightly more.
Thanks a lot for the in-depth response, definitely going to try to cover all of this.
What I meant more by the question though, was about how long, in length of article, I should spend on each. Like, are there guidelines on when you should just split a post?
My current gameplan is to just write a giant article that covers the initial point of why you should get personal experience more in-depthly, as well as my 4 failure modes, then see if any decisions with regards to formatting, style, posting, etc. are made more obvious after that.
What are some common reasons why people don’t try things as often as they should? If you could answer that question and then suggest strategies for overcoming those failure modes, I’d want to see this as a top-level post.
Right now, I think most of your article is spent on convincing us that people should try things more often. Me personally, I don’t take much convincing on that claim—it sounds plausible. I’d be interested if you had hard data or even particularly compelling anecdotes to present that could raise my estimate from “plausible” to “very likely,” but your arguments are all pretty general/zoomed-out. So basically you are making a claim I already agree with and then supporting it with a weak sort of evidence. That probably wouldn’t interest me as a top-level post.
I don’t think that my personal experience includes all the common reasons for inaction. My main ones are perfectionism, fear of failure, the “I’m too busy” excuse, and unduly priveleging the null action. I could try to cover other ones, but I’d have far less experience effectively dealing with those.
What are some guidelines on how long I should spend on each of those?
Well, that’s fine; it’s a community blog. You write about what you know, and then invite readers to fill in the gaps! :-) If you can name the other problems but not solve them, great; do so. If you don’t trust yourself to even name the other most important problems, let the readers do that.
Well, it’s sort of a labor of love, right? Nobody’s paying you or anything like that. All that you’re ‘asking’ for by posting to the top-level page is the attention of potentially busy people. To merit that attention, write enough that you have something substantive to say, and polish it enough in terms of word choice, formatting, etc. so that your article will be easy to read, but don’t feel obliged to be comprehensive or witty.
If you’re trying to decide how to allocate time among the various failure modes, I would suggest just going with the flow—when you run out of things that are relatively easy for you to say about one failure mode, move on to the next. All four of your failure modes sound potentially interesting. Depending on what you mean, you might find that “perfectionism” and “fear of failure” overlap, so you might consider either spending less time on each of those or merging them into one topic about which you say slightly more.
Thanks a lot for the in-depth response, definitely going to try to cover all of this.
What I meant more by the question though, was about how long, in length of article, I should spend on each. Like, are there guidelines on when you should just split a post?
My current gameplan is to just write a giant article that covers the initial point of why you should get personal experience more in-depthly, as well as my 4 failure modes, then see if any decisions with regards to formatting, style, posting, etc. are made more obvious after that.
You’re welcome!