I did that. I didn’t want to fill in the worksheet, but I read through it. Now I’m reading through this post and noting anything that I understood differently when I read the worksheet or that is worth mentioning:
The post has links and a story at the start that could draw some people away, but I didn’t have an issue (except for noticing that other people could, yuck)
The link might cause people to be drawn away. I almost added it to my tabs and then decided to ignore it
The story about Yudkowsky might cause people to get distracted.
There’s a lot in this one that details how you got here, which isn’t really about why someone should read on. The worksheet didn’t noticeably have this, which meant I got into your ideas faster.
The example about UI I like. It is helpful to see an example early on instead of a framework that I have to imagine an example for.
It is quite detailed though.
Overall, I think both had their ups and downs. The 30-seconds-of-thought synthesis, I think, is to try to make a worksheet, slap a small example problem and solution above it, then work through the example below. Your other sections can fall yet lower. This would give you a strong “So What?” hook like your example gave, while getting readers into the meat of your technique quickly. Working the example below makes the technique less impersonal, and would make the total feeling of reading your post be
I did that. I didn’t want to fill in the worksheet, but I read through it. Now I’m reading through this post and noting anything that I understood differently when I read the worksheet or that is worth mentioning:
The post has links and a story at the start that could draw some people away, but I didn’t have an issue (except for noticing that other people could, yuck)
The link might cause people to be drawn away. I almost added it to my tabs and then decided to ignore it
The story about Yudkowsky might cause people to get distracted.
There’s a lot in this one that details how you got here, which isn’t really about why someone should read on. The worksheet didn’t noticeably have this, which meant I got into your ideas faster.
The example about UI I like. It is helpful to see an example early on instead of a framework that I have to imagine an example for.
It is quite detailed though.
Overall, I think both had their ups and downs. The 30-seconds-of-thought synthesis, I think, is to try to make a worksheet, slap a small example problem and solution above it, then work through the example below. Your other sections can fall yet lower. This would give you a strong “So What?” hook like your example gave, while getting readers into the meat of your technique quickly. Working the example below makes the technique less impersonal, and would make the total feeling of reading your post be
So what? Oh, that would be nice to be able to do
Hrm. I need a bit more explanation
Oh, I see! That’s not so bad
[reading your further sections]
Thanks! I’ll keep this in mind both for potential rewrites here, and for future posts.