Learn. Share. Evolve…

0:00:03 We write in these complicated ways in part because that’s how we were taught to write.
0:00:07 We will get assignments where it has to be at least a certain length in pages.
0:00:10 But now that you’re a grown-up, you don’t get rewarded for length.
0:00:12 You get rewarded for effectiveness.
0:00:15 And length often works against you.
0:00:19 I think that part of it is just they’re writing because that’s how we’re taught to write.
0:00:22 And they’re not really adding the layer in of,
0:00:25 how would I adjust this for the reader making it easier for readers?
0:00:31 Hello, my name is Guy Kawasaki.
0:00:33 You probably know that by now.
0:00:36 I am the host of the Remarkable People podcast.
0:00:40 And you’ll also probably know that we’re on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:00:48 So we go all over the world trying to find remarkable people to give us their wisdom and their insight and inspiration.
0:00:51 And we found another really remarkable person.
0:00:54 His name is Todd Rogers.
0:01:00 Now, before we started recording, we kind of shot the bull a little bit.
0:01:03 So I’m already in a really good mood.
0:01:09 I’ve been looking forward to this podcast because we’re going to talk about effective writing.
0:01:14 So I’m going to read you this bio of him and all his behavioral science and all that.
0:01:18 But man, he has written a great book about writing.
0:01:20 And let me tell you something.
0:01:26 As the host of this podcast, I need to prepare 52 times a year for a guest.
0:01:31 50 out of the 52 times I’m reading a book to prepare.
0:01:36 And I got to tell you, I have read more nonfiction books than most people in the world.
0:01:37 And oh, my God.
0:01:43 I would like to give everybody a copy of your book, Todd.
0:01:46 But then the problem is, I was thinking about this.
0:01:48 I really considered doing that.
0:01:52 But by the time they’re on my show, the book is already out.
0:01:54 So I cannot influence their book.
0:01:58 But anyway, we like to stay focused on this podcast.
0:02:00 So let me get to his bio.
0:02:07 Todd is a behavioral scientist and a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.
0:02:17 He applies behavioral science to improve education, democracy, voting and communication, and also K-12 attendance.
0:02:22 He has co-founded two things, Everyday Labs and the Analyst Institute.
0:02:29 His research helps people communicate more effectively and make better decisions with fewer words.
0:02:37 But his latest work, he told me as we were shooting the bull, is about maintaining friendships and stuff.
0:02:40 So that’s another topic I’m very interested in.
0:02:48 His latest book published that you can buy right now is called Writing for Busy Readers, subtitle,
0:02:51 Communicate More Effectively in the Real World.
0:02:53 How’s that for an introduction, Todd?
0:02:54 That’s the best.
0:02:59 That beginning part about everyone should read it, et cetera.
0:03:03 I was like, I wonder if it’s too late to add that to the blurb on the paperback.
0:03:05 Oh, you know what?
0:03:11 There are so many things I’m going to ask you about this book because I’ve written 17 books.
0:03:15 Some people say I wrote one book 17 times.
0:03:16 That’s a different discussion.
0:03:19 And so I am well-versed in writing nonfiction.
0:03:22 And there are so many things I’m curious about.
0:03:29 But we’re going to take a little bit of segue because I want to tap your day job before we get to this book.
0:03:30 Okay.
0:03:35 So, well, even before that, I want to get even more unfocused.
0:03:40 And I noticed that you thank Bob Cialdini in your acknowledgement.
0:03:42 So, what did he do for this book?
0:03:44 Because he is my hero.
0:03:46 Oh, my gosh.
0:03:47 I’m so glad you asked about that.
0:03:52 When I was in college, I read Influence, his book, The Science of Persuasion.
0:03:58 And as a sophomore in the spring semester in my intro to social psychology.
0:04:01 And I was like, oh, my God, I want to do that.
0:04:03 That’s what I want to do, that stuff.
0:04:11 And then I became a political pollster and realized there was a science of behavior change not used in politics.
0:04:16 And so I ended up going back to grad school in social psychology and then eventually in organizational behavior.
0:04:22 And all the while admiring this guy and his work.
0:04:28 And over the years, when I’d see him at conferences, he and I ended up doing a bunch of stuff together, like a lackey.
0:04:31 I would just follow him around and be like, hey, Bob, can we do something?
0:04:32 Or I love this project, whatever.
0:04:35 And I’m embarrassed, but it was amazing.
0:04:41 So, we ended up collaborating on what I think will be his last paper and with Jessica, my co-author on this book.
0:04:51 And I just gave a talk at his retirement event last month in Arizona, at Arizona State, about how, why I became a social.
0:04:56 And when he called me to ask to work on this paper with him, I got all choked up.
0:05:02 And I’m big into, which maybe we will talk to or not, how to make friends and especially male friendships.
0:05:07 And I leaned into vulnerability and showing emotion.
0:05:11 And I started crying while giving my talk, talking about it.
0:05:13 And I normally, I would choke it down.
0:05:14 But I was like, you know what?
0:05:15 No, doing a service to everybody else.
0:05:20 And I got all choked up talking about how important he’s been in my life.
0:05:24 And yeah, Bob’s an inspiration, mentor, and friend.
0:05:25 Same with me.
0:05:29 I think the two biggest academic influences, probably there’s three.
0:05:34 There’s Phil Zimbardo, Carol Dweck, and Bob Cialdini.
0:05:36 Anyway, all right.
0:05:37 I’ve co-authored with Carol, too.
0:05:39 I think Zimbardo was before my time.
0:05:40 But yeah, those are amazing.
0:05:41 That’s a great list.
0:05:43 Are you saying I’m old?
0:05:54 I think people now would say Zimbardo would make their list because he was so influential and such an inspiring scholar.
0:05:59 Okay, so now I want to tap your expertise about one thing.
0:06:04 How do we increase voter participation and engagement?
0:06:06 The good news is it’s really easy.
0:06:08 So I can give a succinct answer.
0:06:09 I’m being sarcastic.
0:06:10 It is not.
0:06:24 So I worked for a decade and I co-founded the Analyst Institute, which translates behavioral science and data science into political strategy and ran hundreds of get-out-the-vote experiments, randomizing different messages and different modalities and things like that.
0:06:28 And I think there are two very different answers.
0:06:35 One, the candidates, when you have an inspiring, motivating candidate, they swamp everything.
0:06:41 The most important thing is candidate message timing, which we don’t have much control over.
0:06:56 And then on the edges, we can increase turnout half a percentage point or one percentage point by being more effective with the ways we allocate money and the messages we use, which most presidential elections are decided by less than that and lots of congressional elections.
0:07:00 So that we only can make improvements on the margins.
0:07:03 And I think it’s just worth having like realistic expectations.
0:07:04 That’s the short answer.
0:07:07 Let me ask the opposite question.
0:07:21 So let’s suppose that you are from one particular political party and because you’re a nutcase asshole, you’re trying to discourage people from the other party to vote.
0:07:24 So you say you cannot give people water.
0:07:28 We’re going to reduce the polling stations in your area.
0:07:31 You got to have an ID, whatever.
0:07:35 Do those things also work to do the opposite?
0:07:44 My team ran Obama’s experiments team in this reelection, and we bring randomized experiments in behavioral science to politics, and that’s what they do.
0:07:52 Someone asked me once, did anyone ever ask us how to suppress turnout rather than how to increase it?
0:08:06 And it had never crossed my mind, and I was pretty proud of the people I work with, you know, a decade of working on voter turnout, and no one ever asked me, how would we suppress the opposing side’s turnout?
0:08:09 Which I just think is like, that’s a very nice sign.
0:08:17 Whether it works, I don’t know whether those things, I know that there’s been some research on voter ID laws, and I think it’s mixed.
0:08:19 Because it does two things.
0:08:27 It says it’s going to be a little bit more friction, but it also signals that people are trying to hold you back, and so that induces some kind of reactance.
0:08:31 And so I think that it depends on the study, but the results, I think, are mixed.
0:08:37 So are you saying that I’m the first person in your career to ask how to suppress folks?
0:08:39 If you’re asking that in earnest, then yes.
0:08:42 If you’re asking, has anyone ever asked me, then no.
0:08:44 Like, people have asked, has anyone ever asked me?
0:08:45 And no.
0:08:46 It’s pretty cool, I think.
0:08:54 It’s not so Machiavellian as it’s like, win at all costs, at least the people that I work with and that I have worked with in the past.
0:09:01 So yes, yes, guy, next time anyone asks me, has anyone ever asked me how to suppress turnout, I’ll be like, yeah, there was this guy.
0:09:08 I’m trying to wrap my head around whether that is praise or condemnation.
0:09:20 Okay, so now something that I don’t think anybody can argue against is you did work about how to reduce K-12 absenteeism.
0:09:22 So how do you do that?
0:09:26 And I’m not suggesting I want to know how to suppress attendance.
0:09:34 That I think is probably way more obvious answers to how to make kids not want to go to school.
0:09:35 There’s lots of ways to do that.
0:09:36 We’re incredibly creative at that.
0:09:40 I started doing research on how do we engage families.
0:09:47 After doing the voting stuff, I had a little fallow period and discovered that I really wanted to figure out how to mobilize social support for kids.
0:09:56 Now, that could be mobilizing coaches and ministers and grandparents, but also especially mobilizing parents.
0:10:02 And developed a bunch of interventions that we did these randomized experiments in school districts.
0:10:07 And found that three psychological features.
0:10:13 One is that you want to direct parent attention to something they have agency over.
0:10:18 Which is like if you remind parents that their kids aren’t doing well in school, you may motivate them.
0:10:22 But it’s not clear they know how to produce better academic performance with more motivation.
0:10:25 Attendance is much more straightforward.
0:10:31 And so if your kid is missing a lot of school, when you channel parent attention and motivation at that, they have much more agency over that.
0:10:36 The second is they have a bunch of false beliefs about their own kids’ attendance.
0:10:41 For example, they underestimate their own kids’ attendance by a factor of two.
0:10:43 So my kid has missed 20 days, I think 10.
0:10:50 And then the final is that they don’t realize their kid has missed more than their classmates, which is also just kind of a universal thing.
0:10:52 We assume the Lake Woebegone effect.
0:10:55 Like our kid is better than average.
0:11:01 And so the majority of the highest absence kids, their parents think their kid is normal in absenteeism.
0:11:15 And when you do these interventions in a cost-effective way, like we’ve now replicated in more than a dozen separate randomized experiments in schools, we developed a program of intervention that reduces absenteeism at about $10 per day generated.
0:11:20 The point is just that it’s about 50 times more cost-effective than anything else to reduce absenteeism.
0:11:43 And so after some prodding from school districts, we ended up starting this company, Everyday Labs, that now works in most of the large districts around the country to implement this to reduce absenteeism, using this sort of like communications program that really optimizes the right message at the right time through the right channel to capture as many days of attendance as possible.
0:11:46 And so the psychology is really lots of things, but those are the three.
0:11:47 Okay.
0:11:53 I’m sure you will know what study I’m referring to and who did it.
0:11:56 I’m blanking right now what his name was.
0:11:59 I actually interviewed him for this Remarkable People podcast.
0:12:01 I also interviewed his wife.
0:12:03 He’s from the University of Chicago.
0:12:09 And there was some study about where they paid people to send their kids to school.
0:12:11 And there was like a lot of controversy.
0:12:14 You shouldn’t be paying people to send their kids to school.
0:12:15 You should be motivated.
0:12:15 Friar.
0:12:17 Is that what Roland Friar?
0:12:19 I cannot remember.
0:12:21 John List.
0:12:23 John.
0:12:24 It was John.
0:12:24 Yeah.
0:12:29 As I recall, his take on it was, listen, the ends justify the means.
0:12:31 If you pay them and they have better attendance, God bless you.
0:12:32 Don’t be proud.
0:12:33 Yeah.
0:12:38 The intervention that we developed is telling parents their kid misses more school than their
0:12:38 classmates.
0:12:41 And we tend to conform to the behavior of others.
0:12:43 And so this is the big Cialdini insight.
0:12:49 And so it turns out that that ends up being by far the most motivating way to get parents
0:12:50 to get their kids to school.
0:12:55 But you’re saying if we pay kids, there’s three problems or concerns with it.
0:12:57 One is the ethics.
0:12:59 Do we want to pay kids for something like that?
0:13:00 Some people probably have a hang up on it.
0:13:01 I don’t.
0:13:03 If we get, if it works and it’s cost effective and let’s do it.
0:13:06 The second is it might crowd out intrinsic motivation.
0:13:09 I attend school 160 days a year.
0:13:10 I don’t get paid for those.
0:13:12 You’re only worried about the 20 days I miss.
0:13:15 And then the third is how to do it cost effectively.
0:13:19 So most kids only miss, not only, it’s too much, too much, too much, too much.
0:13:26 When the kids miss too much school, but they’ll miss 15 or 20 days, but they’ll attend 160 days.
0:13:31 And so how do you like cost effectively target the marginal day, right?
0:13:35 The incremental day, as opposed to compensating for all the days they already would have attended.
0:13:53 So now we’re going to leave your checkered past and we’re going to get to the book because I have so many questions about this book and we have already burned 15 minutes.
0:13:57 So I told you I read about 52 nonfiction books a year.
0:14:11 And one of the things that I just do not understand is most of these books, especially the ones written by academics, they go four or five, six pages without a heading.
0:14:18 And it drives me just batshit because I cannot remember on the fourth page.
0:14:21 What the hell is this about?
0:14:31 So is there some rule that says paragraphs have to have minimum 10 sentences and you cannot have a subheading and you cannot use bullets?
0:14:33 Like, why do people do that?
0:14:38 Another question I’ve never, no one has ever asked.
0:14:40 We are only just beginning, Tyler.
0:14:41 I hate to tell you.
0:14:42 No, I love it.
0:14:44 I know that you’re being sarcastic.
0:14:50 There’s not a secret training guide for how to write in a way that no one will be able to comfortably read.
0:14:57 I hope that it’s basically the inverse of our book and that we could probably pull it together by doing the inverse.
0:15:03 You’re basically saying like they’re writing without an eye towards how people are actually going to read it.
0:15:06 That’s the objection, right?
0:15:08 It’s like you’re not, you’re just not helping the reader.
0:15:11 You’re just writing and they may be beautiful prose.
0:15:13 It’s just no one’s going to read them.
0:15:18 So basically your assumption is that most people are skimmers, right?
0:15:20 So talk about skimming.
0:15:25 Yeah, I think boil down the book to everybody is skimming.
0:15:34 And so given that we should write in a way that accommodates the way people skim because it will make us more effective at actually getting through.
0:15:39 And it turns out it’s kinder to our readers because, I mean, you’ll appreciate this.
0:15:43 The idea is starting with the reader experience and then working backwards.
0:15:44 They’re going to skim.
0:15:49 So let’s write in a way that makes it easier for them while also providing all the content we want.
0:15:52 It just means adding another perspective to the way we write.
0:15:59 And do you have a scientific analysis of how people skim?
0:16:03 How do they pick out what to read and what to skim and what to rip past?
0:16:05 Yeah, it’s great.
0:16:09 The eye tracking research where they like lock your face in and then they make you read.
0:16:11 Like there’s basically three ways people read.
0:16:15 They call it scan, skim, and read.
0:16:18 And scanning is where you’re just flipping around.
0:16:19 You’re looking at pictures.
0:16:20 You’re looking at headings.
0:16:21 You’re just orienting.
0:16:23 And sometimes that’s all we do.
0:16:26 Like your nonfiction books that you said you read 50 a year.
0:16:30 I’m sure many of them, you’re like, I already know this section.
0:16:32 I’m going to see a way it keep going fast.
0:16:33 That’s scanning.
0:16:36 And then once you’re like triggered, you’re like, that’s interesting.
0:16:38 Then you jump in and you skim.
0:16:39 And you’re like dart around.
0:16:41 But now you’re not going up, down.
0:16:42 You’re going left, right.
0:16:43 And you’re going backwards.
0:16:44 And you’re skipping.
0:16:46 And then occasionally you’re like, I think I missed the point.
0:16:47 It sounds interesting.
0:16:49 And then you’ll go do the third, which is read.
0:16:54 Which is where you’re like, now I’m making sure I’m going forward and I’m understanding.
0:16:59 And sometimes, which we’ll talk about, but like when we write complicated sentences, long,
0:17:05 convoluted, but grammatically correct, often people will have to stop at the period, wait
0:17:09 for a long time, and then realize they have no idea what it was about, and then go back
0:17:10 and reread it.
0:17:14 And the idea is that’s just not starting with the reader’s experience.
0:17:17 If you’re starting the reader’s experience, you want them to go through it quickly and
0:17:18 fully get the idea.
0:17:20 And your convoluted sentence doesn’t help.
0:17:26 But that seems so logical, but why do people write six pages without a heading or subheading
0:17:27 or bullet list?
0:17:28 Why do they do it?
0:17:32 Because they are reading other people’s books that way.
0:17:34 Why do they write a book like that?
0:17:38 It’s obvious in your head, you have some specific person in mind.
0:17:42 You don’t have to share it, but you’re like, Jimmy, why?
0:17:46 I think we write in these complicated ways in part because that’s how we were taught
0:17:46 to write.
0:17:52 And we will get assignments where it has to be at least a certain length in pages.
0:17:56 But now that you’re a grownup, you don’t get rewarded for length.
0:17:57 You get rewarded for effectiveness.
0:18:00 And length often works against you.
0:18:04 I think that part of it is just they’re writing because that’s how we’re taught to write.
0:18:09 And they’re not really adding the layer in of how would I adjust this for the reader,
0:18:11 making it easier for readers.
0:18:16 So I’m going to tell you a story that I interviewed someone for this podcast and I
0:18:19 became her friend, pretty close friend.
0:18:23 And she sent me the manuscript for her second book.
0:18:30 And it had six pages long before there’s a heading, everything I just talked about, right?
0:18:33 So I said, I’m going to do her a favor.
0:18:37 I’m going to show her how much better it would be if there were headings.
0:18:42 So I stuck the book in ChatGPT and I gave a prompt that says, read this book.
0:18:46 Give me subheadings and headings everywhere possible.
0:18:50 And ChatGPT, in my humble opinion, did a brilliant job.
0:19:03 And I sent it to her and there’s a whole nother side story because she thought that by me putting it into ChatGPT, I had just put all of her IP into the public domain.
0:19:05 And it was like all released.
0:19:06 And that’s not true.
0:19:07 That’s not true at all.
0:19:09 If you’re an author, you can do this.
0:19:20 But anyway, I guess my long-winded question is, do you believe that AI can effectively help people literally put your manuscript in there and say, break this into sections?
0:19:23 Give me headings and subheadings and bullets.
0:19:25 Yes, and I think it can do even better than that.
0:19:39 So with a colleague of mine, soon after ChatGPT was released, we made a little tool where we trained it on the checklist that we have for writing for busy readers.
0:19:47 And then I tuned it for pre-post examples of emails and then made it available in all the trainings that I do with organizations and everywhere.
0:19:51 And we had pretty quickly a few hundred thousand users, like three or four hundred thousand users.
0:19:55 And it still gets used, but it was trained for email.
0:19:58 And people have lots of writing purposes.
0:20:07 And so my wife the other day, about a month ago, showed me like, if you say, write the way Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink would edit this,
0:20:15 the way Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink would edit it for busy readers, it ends up applying all of our principles because it has already metabolized all of our work.
0:20:16 And it’s even better than anything we did.
0:20:17 So great, good.
0:20:19 I’m retiring the little tool.
0:20:21 And it’s not just headings and bullets.
0:20:26 It’s also simplifying sentences, subbing in easier words, using formatting to reinforce the purpose.
0:20:29 And then it coaches you too, which is cool.
0:20:29 It’ll do it.
0:20:30 And then it’ll tell you what it did.
0:20:33 And where do I access this?
0:20:34 Because I’m writing another book.
0:20:37 I’m going to stick my book in this, the moment we hang up.
0:20:39 You can just ask chat GPT with that prompt.
0:20:41 Oh, because it’s all in there.
0:20:44 Like, how would Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink, according to the book, write the busy readers.
0:20:46 That’s proof that it sort of consumed the book.
0:20:50 But good, even better, even better, because it makes it easier for people.
0:20:51 Wow.
0:20:51 Yeah.
0:20:55 I’ll give you a data point about how OCD I am.
0:21:10 So prior to AI, as I was finishing a manuscript, I would search for every word that ended in L-Y, because I wanted to hunt down every adverb in my manuscript.
0:21:18 I look for every instance of the word very, so that if I wrote, it’s a very dark night, that’s a bullshit thing, right?
0:21:24 I look for every instance of the word be, because I wanted to make everything the active voice.
0:21:32 I look for every instance of the word, which to see if it should have been that I call this the witch hunt.
0:21:34 And I love doing this.
0:21:36 I love editing.
0:21:37 Anyway, I’m falling on my sword here.
0:21:39 Okay, I’m going to tell you another story.
0:21:42 See if this really appalls you.
0:21:44 Yeah, please.
0:21:44 All right.
0:21:50 So I get asked once a day for a blurb for a book.
0:21:51 Once a day.
0:22:02 And when I’m in a good mood, and I’m not busy, and I’m not surfing, which is not too often, but often what I do is I tell the author, this is what I’m going to do.
0:22:12 I’m going to take your manuscript, I’m going to stick it in ChatGPT, I’m going to ask ChatGPT to summarize the book and give me an analysis and do all that kind of stuff.
0:22:22 I’m going to read that, and then I’m going to ask ChatGPT, in the voice of Guy Kawasaki, give me five examples of blurbs for the book.
0:22:31 And I have done this many times, and I’m telling you, the blurbs are brilliant, like far better than I could do.
0:22:40 And then I send the blurb to the author, I edit the blurb a little bit, I send it to the author, the authors are always blown away by the quality of my blurbs.
0:22:42 I have figured out how to make blurbs scale.
0:22:54 Now, are you going to tell me that, Guy, that is so insincere, that is so wrong, because people are depending on your reputation and your judgment and your perseverance and your hard work.
0:22:58 And really, it’s ChatGPT generating your blurbs, so you’re ruining the blurb business.
0:23:02 I don’t know that I have anything to add to that.
0:23:11 I would love it if you also said at some points, after reading a summary, regardless of what quality blurb ChatGPT produces for me, I don’t think I want to blurb that.
0:23:13 Then good.
0:23:17 And what they really want is certifying the topic of this book is interesting to Guy.
0:23:23 And then whatever clever thing you and ChatGPT combine to say helps to drive that home.
0:23:23 Okay.
0:23:28 I feel morally relieved is the good word.
0:23:39 I don’t know that you should, I don’t really want to be the moral arbiter of stuff, but you are released of moral, as long as you reject some.
0:23:44 When you come on my podcast, you have to give up all pretense of who’s in control here.
0:23:46 You are my moral arbiter.
0:23:49 And that’s a very, very cherished position.
0:23:50 Okay.
0:23:53 So backing up now, let’s get specific.
0:23:56 How do you define effective writing?
0:24:05 Effective writing starts entirely with what readers actually read and understand and whether they respond when you ask them to respond.
0:24:06 It starts with that.
0:24:16 And so we, using randomized experiments and lots of psychology and other fields, especially cognitive psych, back out six principles.
0:24:22 And then we test them and show that when you apply them, people are more likely to read.
0:24:24 So for example, less is more, is one.
0:24:27 We’ve done experiments where we randomly delete every other sentence.
0:24:28 And people are more likely to donate.
0:24:38 We’ve done experiments where we cut out the middle of something and double the likelihood that someone signs, responds to set up a meeting.
0:24:47 We’ve done things where people send newsletters out and we give them a fixed amount of time to cut it in half and almost triple readership.
0:24:49 So less is more is fewer words.
0:24:50 But there’s also fewer ideas.
0:24:54 The more ideas you add, the less likely someone is to read.
0:24:56 But those who do read will get more information.
0:24:58 And finally, there’s fewer requests.
0:25:03 And when you ask for multiple things, it turns out you decrease the chance anyone will do any one of them.
0:25:11 And so we just recently replicated that with, I have a newsletter and I asked if anyone has a foreign language, a non-English language list.
0:25:15 And we did it in Greece, which I love because when I present it, I’m like, it’s all Greek to me.
0:25:16 I can’t read it.
0:25:18 But she randomly replicated the same.
0:25:22 Like when you add extra requests, you decrease people’s likelihood of doing any of them or any one of them.
0:25:29 Now, is all this science about emails or does the same apply to a book?
0:25:39 So we haven’t randomized books, but we’ve randomized lots of things from like official forms to web content to printed mail to text messages.
0:25:40 We’ve randomized all of them.
0:25:42 Like the principles are that people are skimming.
0:25:43 You want to make it easier.
0:25:47 And the easier you make it for them, the more likely they’ll be to respond and read.
0:25:50 But for a book, I’m giving away all my canned jokes.
0:25:54 But like my joke is that one of the principles is less is more.
0:25:59 Yet Jessica and I wrote a 210-page book about it.
0:26:02 And the idea is that you write for an audience.
0:26:07 Like your audience has expectations and norms and you have to conform to those.
0:26:12 But within those constraints, the easier you make it to read, the more likely it is you’ll be successful.
0:26:14 So we couldn’t do a book as this one-pager I’m waiving.
0:26:18 I’ll give you the PDF if your readers have, if your show notes.
0:26:20 But we have a one-pager.
0:26:22 But if people want to read the science, it can’t be a one-pager.
0:26:24 And so you’ve got to write for an audience.
0:26:27 But within that constraint, the easier you make it, the more effective.
0:26:31 Since you brought up Jessica, I am very curious.
0:26:33 Madison and I co-author books.
0:26:35 We’ve done several already.
0:26:38 So Jessica is your co-author.
0:26:41 How do you effectively write with a co-author?
0:26:47 Do you tell her that you’re going to do chapters 1, 7, and 9, and I’m going to do 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10?
0:26:49 How do you divide up the work?
0:26:50 Oh, my God.
0:26:51 Well, this is my first book.
0:26:54 Jessica and I, next time, will be even more effective.
0:26:56 But I think we learned a lot on the way.
0:26:57 How do you and Madison do it?
0:27:03 The way Madison and I do it is I take the first pass and then she follows me and fixes everything.
0:27:09 And then I use several LLMs as research assistants.
0:27:15 Madison also has to make sure that I don’t put any hallucinations in the book.
0:27:19 My own personal hallucinations are okay.
0:27:22 It’s when the LLM hallucinates.
0:27:26 Madison, you turn on your microphone and explain what you do.
0:27:28 Okay.
0:27:28 So, yeah.
0:27:33 For example, in our book, Think Remarkable, we had to find stories of people who really like
0:27:34 shift gears in their career.
0:27:37 And so Guy asked in LLM, give me these examples.
0:27:44 And then off of that list and those experiences, I would do like more in-depth research and just
0:27:45 see if those were correct.
0:27:49 And there were times when we found people that an LLM gave us and the story wasn’t correct.
0:27:50 So, yeah.
0:27:52 I would just do some stuff like that.
0:27:54 That sounds great.
0:27:57 And if you guys have written multiple books together, congratulations.
0:27:58 It’s hard getting to the finish line.
0:27:59 Yeah.
0:28:07 You know, what I find hard is to have more than one person actually writing because the style
0:28:08 is so different, right?
0:28:14 That I think a book should be written by one person, but it can be authored by more than one
0:28:14 person.
0:28:15 It’s different.
0:28:16 Oh, I like that.
0:28:22 The single thing that Jessica and I would often diverge on was whether we are characters
0:28:23 in the book.
0:28:30 And we decided early on together, I just kept forgetting, that we are not.
0:28:37 The book is an engaging way to learn how to write more effectively using a scientific tour
0:28:38 of how to center readers.
0:28:42 And I would add stories and Jessica would be like, nope.
0:28:45 You mean personal stories?
0:28:46 Yeah.
0:28:48 I’d be like, I was recently doing whatever, whatever.
0:28:49 And she’s like, that’s not the book we’re writing.
0:28:52 And we agreed on it, but I just had forgotten.
0:28:56 If Madison did that to me, there would be no book.
0:28:59 We want your hallucinations, guy.
0:29:02 Okay.
0:29:08 So now, this may be if a tree falls in a forest, did the tree really fall?
0:29:15 But do you believe that effective writing makes for effective thinking or effective thinking
0:29:17 makes for effective writing?
0:29:19 Which is the chicken and which is the egg?
0:29:20 That’s a really good question.
0:29:26 Let’s just think, without even putting effective in there, I think clear thinking, it goes both
0:29:26 ways.
0:29:28 Clear thinking helps clear writing.
0:29:30 Clear writing helps clear thinking.
0:29:35 And then doing it effectively, the thinking clearer in addition to the writing, be clearer.
0:29:40 Because one of the things that I was working with, we’ll say like a Fortune 100 companies
0:29:43 leadership team on internal communication.
0:29:52 And the CEO was just like very frustrated that his team, some of them thought more information
0:29:56 conveyed to him in writing meant they had done more work.
0:30:02 And he really wanted to drive home that more information means you have not done the work
0:30:04 of prioritizing, right?
0:30:06 And it was really useful for level setting as a team.
0:30:12 Like, you writing lots to me means you haven’t actually done the work of using your judgment
0:30:13 to prioritize.
0:30:20 And so being clearer and more concise actually signals more clear thinking and prioritization.
0:30:23 And everything goes all directions in your question.
0:30:29 So have you not just impugned most of K through 12 writing?
0:30:36 Because as I recall, and I went to school a long time ago in the previous century, there were
0:30:39 always minimums for papers.
0:30:43 And so you had to use one and a half space.
0:30:45 You had to use 14 point font.
0:30:48 You did whatever you use footnotes at the bottom to push everything up.
0:30:50 You did whatever it is to get the minimum.
0:30:55 And now you’re telling me that’s exactly the wrong thing to do.
0:30:57 I don’t know.
0:30:57 I don’t know.
0:31:02 Because if you didn’t tell me in sixth grade, the final research paper has to be 10 pages,
0:31:07 then I would have definitely turned in one paragraph and never written a 10 page paper.
0:31:08 So I don’t know.
0:31:09 I’m workshopping something.
0:31:15 An idea that I was talking to a friend, a philosophy professor friend yesterday, where we were like
0:31:20 workshopping that, you know how they say in early education, you learn how to read and then you
0:31:21 read to learn.
0:31:25 So that’s why you need to master reading because all the other content requires you
0:31:25 be able to read.
0:31:29 I wonder if writing is the same, where we learn to write and that’s what’s going on in the early
0:31:30 days.
0:31:36 And then as we get farther along, we write to learn maybe, or to write because of what you
0:31:38 were talking about, clear thinking.
0:31:38 Yeah, I don’t know.
0:31:42 There’s probably some better way to say it, but I think there’s something like that where
0:31:47 learning how to write actually helps us think clearly, exactly as you were saying.
0:31:51 And so early on, we just need to learn how the words work and the paragraphs work.
0:31:55 And then later, those all become tools for helping us clarify our own thinking.
0:32:04 I would say that the phrase you just uttered, you know, that you write to learn is a intellectuals
0:32:05 mic drop moment.
0:32:10 If my mic wasn’t attached to this, boom, I would have dropped the mic right now.
0:32:15 But as I think about it, right to learn, I know that Madison and I wrote a book called
0:32:22 Think Remarkable, writing that book forced us to look at ways to be remarkable.
0:32:27 And right now we are writing a book about Signal, Signal, the messaging app.
0:32:33 And I want it to be kind of a metaphorically speaking signal for dummies.
0:32:35 And I wanted it to explain Signal to everybody.
0:32:41 And I have had to learn so much about Signal to write this book.
0:32:45 Oh my God, I had no idea Signal does so many things.
0:32:47 So it’s forced me to learn.
0:32:48 Yeah.
0:32:53 And I guess to generalize beyond those of us who make the bad life choices of writing books,
0:32:59 when you put together an argument, like the Amazon has the four page briefs, like you write
0:33:04 to clarify your thinking before you present it to everyone else.
0:33:06 And they all read the four or five page memos.
0:33:13 Or when you’re writing an email as a sales situation, like you’re really clarifying your
0:33:16 thinking on what the value proposition is to the consumer.
0:33:22 So it is true that when we write these long research pieces, we have to learn so much in
0:33:22 the process.
0:33:25 And it’s a necessary condition for being effective at writing.
0:33:28 It’s also true, I guess, of even texting.
0:33:29 I was on dating apps.
0:33:31 I am now married, but I was on dating apps.
0:33:38 And there’s a lot of thinking about, I want to write in a way so that I can get a response.
0:33:43 And fortunately, I’m not on now because I would be embarrassed by how much time I would put into
0:33:43 a response.
0:33:48 But every form of writing is about clarifying our thinking, the value proposition.
0:33:55 Well, you mentioned one of your six rules, the rule of less is more, which I swear to
0:33:57 God, Steve Jobs lived by that, right?
0:33:58 Less is more.
0:34:00 What are the other five?
0:34:05 Can you just rip through them so that people can listen and make more effective writing?
0:34:06 Sure.
0:34:08 The second would be design for easy navigation.
0:34:09 That’s your headings.
0:34:13 Or in the US Army, they have bluff, bottom line up front.
0:34:15 But the idea is make it skimmable, design.
0:34:19 It’s not change the writing, it’s change the design of the writing, which is your headings.
0:34:21 Third would be make reading easy.
0:34:24 That means short sentences, shorter common words.
0:34:28 So less is more, design for easy navigation, make reading easy.
0:34:30 And then the fourth would be formatting.
0:34:32 Use enough formatting, but no more.
0:34:38 And what we find is that people interpret bold, underline, and highlight as the writer saying
0:34:40 to the reader, this is the most important content.
0:34:45 And it almost guarantees they’re going to read that, but it prevents them from reading anything
0:34:47 else because everyone’s busy, they just move on.
0:34:49 So you want to use enough formatting, but no more.
0:34:51 So that judiciously.
0:34:56 And then the one that will be familiar to everybody is this, tell readers why they should care.
0:35:00 And so it’s not within the change what you’re writing.
0:35:04 From my perspective, you have your goal, you’re entitled to your goal, but within all the things
0:35:07 you’re talking about, emphasize the things they’re going to value.
0:35:10 And you can de-emphasize things they’re not, but it can also, you get to choose what’s in
0:35:10 there.
0:35:13 And the final one is make responding easy.
0:35:18 And the big like TLDR, the too long didn’t read of that one is, if it’s important for
0:35:21 us, we want to make it as easy as possible for them.
0:35:23 Instead of forwarding something, saying, what do you think?
0:35:25 And then there’s like a long chain.
0:35:29 If you really want the person to respond, you say below they’re debating this or that.
0:35:30 Do you think we should do this?
0:35:31 Or do you think we should do that?
0:35:32 And then the chain.
0:35:35 If it’s important for us, we want to make it as easy as possible for them.
0:35:36 So those are the six.
0:35:39 All of it is from the lens of how do we make it easier for the reader?
0:35:41 How do we make it easier for the reader?
0:35:52 Do you want to be more remarkable?
0:35:57 One way to do it is to spend three days with the boldest builders in business.
0:36:02 I’m Jeff Berman, host of Masters of Scale, inviting you to join us at this year’s Masters
0:36:06 of Scale Summit, October 7th to 9th in San Francisco.
0:36:12 You’ll hear from visionaries like Chobani’s Hamdi Ulukaya, celebrity chef David Chang, Patagonia’s
0:36:16 Ryan Gellert, Promises’ Phaedra Ellis Lampkins, and many, many more.
0:36:21 Apply to attend at mastersofscale.com slash remarkable.
0:36:25 That’s mastersofscale.com slash remarkable.
0:36:27 And Guy Kawasaki will be there too.
0:36:34 So, I bet that you are probably a master of this.
0:36:37 How do you write a good subject line?
0:36:42 Because to me, subject line is the most important part of an email.
0:36:48 If your subject line doesn’t attract me, you know, it’s gone, it’s ignored, or I tell Madison
0:36:49 to take care of it.
0:36:52 So, what are the keys to a great subject line?
0:36:58 I wish I had a better answer, but here’s two tangential answers.
0:37:06 One, in 2008, Barack Obama ran for president and was a very successful online email-based
0:37:07 fundraiser.
0:37:13 What do you think the most effective fundraising subject line he sent at all during that campaign
0:37:17 and has proven to be that subject line in that election, the most effective ever?
0:37:21 It was not, yes, we can, or whatever his slogans were.
0:37:24 What’s the most effective subject line?
0:37:27 I know it wasn’t make America great again.
0:37:29 I have no idea.
0:37:30 I have no idea.
0:37:33 It was lowercase H-E-Y.
0:37:45 And the idea at the time was, who would ever send you a message saying, lowercase H-E-Y?
0:37:46 Oh, it’s my friend, Barack.
0:37:51 Like, you open it thinking maybe it’s a personal message or something.
0:37:54 And of course, like, you captured attention under false pretenses.
0:37:56 Like, you tricked people into opening it.
0:37:58 And it was super effective.
0:38:02 Over the next few years, it became the norm to have informal subject lines.
0:38:04 And it stopped being effective, right?
0:38:06 So it was not a stable equilibrium.
0:38:10 It was just that the most effective message was capturing their attention and almost tricking
0:38:11 them into opening.
0:38:12 And then eventually everyone did.
0:38:13 And then it stopped working.
0:38:20 I say that as like, one, there isn’t a stable answer to how to capture people’s attention,
0:38:21 novelty and unusualness.
0:38:22 And that’s one.
0:38:26 But two, because I don’t think there’s a stable answer, since I’m all of our moral arbiter
0:38:29 right now, I kind of think it’s unethical to do it that way.
0:38:31 Let’s say it’s like fundraiser for Barack Obama.
0:38:33 And I’m like, delete.
0:38:34 Great.
0:38:35 As a reader, you’re trying to help.
0:38:38 I think we should have an obligation to try and make it easier for our readers.
0:38:39 So you don’t want to deceive them.
0:38:43 But there isn’t a single stable answer to what the subject line should be.
0:38:46 People have often asked me this question.
0:38:52 And I tell them that if you send me an email that the subject line is, I loved your book,
0:38:55 I guarantee you I will open that email.
0:39:02 Or if another subject line is, you are a great surfer, I guarantee you, I know you’re a liar,
0:39:04 but I guarantee you I will open that email.
0:39:18 Have you ever been to the Waco man-made surf park in Waco, Texas?
0:39:24 No, because I don’t want any brain-eating amoeba to get in my body.
0:39:31 But for my 70th birthday, my family, we rented surf ranch, the Kelly Slater surf ranch.
0:39:35 So we know about surf ranches and artificial waves.
0:39:36 So what about it?
0:39:37 I’m itching to go.
0:39:39 I didn’t realize it was a whole common thing.
0:39:42 I know a guy in Waco and he’s invited me to come.
0:39:49 And I’m like, I am a terrible surfer, but I love all the YouTube videos I watch of these man-made surf parks.
0:39:55 It’s like literally within any given two-week period, I always think three weeks from now, I’m going to do it.
0:39:57 Madison can chime in.
0:40:03 Going to a surf park for your very first time, if it’s a bucket list thing that you want to say you surf,
0:40:05 I would say that will work.
0:40:10 They’ll turn down the wave and there’ll be an instructor and help you do all that.
0:40:18 But if you really wanted to maximize the experience, you need to learn to surf a little bit and then go.
0:40:27 Because it would be like going to the finest French restaurant, having never eaten anything but a croissant from Starbucks.
0:40:28 I get it.
0:40:29 Okay, good.
0:40:31 I have, but I have not sufficiently surfed.
0:40:32 I’m terrible at it.
0:40:35 But okay, back to the regularly scheduled program.
0:40:35 Madison, what do you think?
0:40:39 Oh my gosh, you should definitely go if you have that opportunity.
0:40:42 And yeah, like I said, like there’s different levels of the waves too.
0:40:45 And like instructors and yeah, I would do it if I were you.
0:40:47 All right.
0:40:53 And I think I get my son who is, I’m not going to insult his surfing skills, but none of us are
0:40:54 gifted at surfing.
0:40:58 But we’ll be eating croissants at the French restaurant if we do it.
0:41:01 But it seems really cool because every time I’ve tried to surf, I haven’t been in a place
0:41:03 where you can get reliable good waves.
0:41:06 And so it’s just so much time trying to like get set up.
0:41:08 And it just seems like having one every two minutes would be awesome.
0:41:12 When you’re trying to do this, do you have an instructor with you or are you just trying
0:41:15 to do it and learn on your own?
0:41:19 When I’ve done it, I’ve even had instructors and I’m not skilled, but I think I could do
0:41:22 it on a small wave and I’m even a medium wave by myself.
0:41:27 Well, Todd, just so you know, I started surfing at 60.
0:41:30 I never surfed before in my life till 60.
0:41:33 I’m living proof that it can be learned.
0:41:39 I’m not saying I’m a good surfer, but I started at 60, which is roughly 55 years too late.
0:41:40 It can be done.
0:41:41 Right, Madison?
0:41:44 Guys, I think that you’re talking down on yourself.
0:41:45 I think you’re pretty dang good.
0:41:47 You’re out there on every wave.
0:41:49 So give yourself a little more credit.
0:41:58 I met Madison surfing because I kept dropping in on her waves and that’s how we met.
0:42:04 I don’t think it usually ends like that when you drop in on someone’s waves.
0:42:06 I chose to take the higher road that day.
0:42:14 The last time I did surf, the American Psychological Association was doing its conference in San Francisco
0:42:16 and I’m not normally invited.
0:42:18 That’s not an organization I usually give talks at.
0:42:22 And so they invited me to give what I thought was going to be a keynote and I was like, sure.
0:42:24 And I was real excited about it.
0:42:28 I flew out and I was staying at a friend’s place and it was not a keynote.
0:42:32 It was a panel and it was competing with goat yoga.
0:42:41 And we had zero attendees other than the person who invited us, which I’ve never in my life had zero.
0:42:47 So we were all sort of demoralized and I called a friend I was staying with and he’s like, I’m going to come pick you up.
0:42:48 We’re going to go to Stinson Beach.
0:42:52 And he picked me up 20 minutes of waiting with no one showing up.
0:42:53 You can’t beat goat yoga.
0:42:55 And then we just went and surfed.
0:42:57 So the Troop of San Francisco was worth it from Boston.
0:43:03 Todd, you come to Santa Cruz and Madison and I will take you goat surfing.
0:43:17 Inside joke, if we really wanted to do goat surfing with you, we would have to invite Kelly Slater because Kelly Slater is the greatest of all time.
0:43:22 And so it can be you and Madison and I and Kelly Slater.
0:43:26 That might cost about $100,000 to make it happen.
0:43:26 Careful.
0:43:30 I mean, between the Waco invite and this one, I have a surf vacation coming up.
0:43:37 There’s a lot of benefits for being on the Remarkable People podcast.
0:43:39 It’s not just the glory and the fame.
0:43:42 It’s all the experiences that come with it.
0:43:49 This particular episode of Remarkable People may break the record for the most digressions and the least amount of focus.
0:43:52 We are the antithesis of effective podcasting.
0:43:56 But we will have a PDF of a one-page checklist.
0:43:59 Hopefully, Madison, we can get that checklist in.
0:44:02 We will put it in.
0:44:02 All right, good.
0:44:05 Okay, so let us finish strong.
0:44:13 Just give us your drop-the-mic best advice for being an effective writer.
0:44:20 And before you even start, I got to tell you, I just loved your book.
0:44:24 And when we got the book, we get about a book a day to review.
0:44:25 I saw that book.
0:44:25 I picked it up.
0:44:28 I said, Madison, get this guy.
0:44:29 We’re going to do this guy.
0:44:31 He doesn’t have a Nobel Prize.
0:44:34 He doesn’t have a MacArthur Fellowship or anything.
0:44:36 Get this guy.
0:44:37 This is a really great book.
0:44:39 Everybody should hear about this book.
0:44:41 Thank you.
0:44:49 The TLDR, we should add a round of editing to everything we write where we ask ourselves,
0:44:50 how do I make it easier for the reader?
0:44:55 Because when I make it easier for the reader, I am more effective at achieving my goal, and
0:44:56 it’s also kinder to our readers.
0:44:58 How do I make it easier for the reader?
0:45:06 Okay, so TLDR, how about, is it a worthy piece of advice that take your writing, upload it to
0:45:15 chat GPT and say, give me edits using the expertise and style of Todd and Jessica.
0:45:16 Will that work too?
0:45:18 Yes, exactly.
0:45:25 Edit this the way Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink would edit it according to the principles of
0:45:26 writing for busy readers.
0:45:27 And it’ll be great.
0:45:28 I’ve actually started doing that.
0:45:33 Todd Rogers’ chat GPT is filled with saying, edit this the way Todd Rogers would edit it.
0:45:40 Okay, now, as I recall, because I’ve done it before, if I upload my Word file of our signal
0:45:46 book, and I give it that prompt about how would Todd and Jessica edit it and put it in the Word
0:45:51 document, I’m going to send you that Word document after you edit it.
0:45:52 I want to see what you say.
0:45:56 I mean, you know this, but you want to chunk it in your chat GPT.
0:46:03 So put it in by section so that, well, maybe I want to chunk it because it would be part
0:46:07 of like the editing process where I have wrapped my head around this section.
0:46:09 It could be a one page or a 20 page section.
0:46:10 I get it.
0:46:14 And then I get to see what it does so that I can do a little bit of what did it lose?
0:46:16 Because otherwise I’m going to forget.
0:46:20 And it’s hard to do perfectly parallel split screen.
0:46:24 So I would chunk it so that I can keep regulating what it’s losing.
0:46:27 And what if chat GPT says, this is already perfect?
0:46:29 Send that one to me.
0:46:30 I would like to see.
0:46:38 Yeah, this is already perfect guy and Madison.
0:46:41 You guys can go to your goat yoga class now.
0:46:42 You don’t need to keep editing.
0:46:45 Next time it freezes.
0:46:47 Next time that computer freezes, that’s how I’ll interpret it.
0:46:49 It doesn’t know how to respond.
0:46:50 It’s perfect.
0:46:53 Chat GPT is offline.
0:46:57 It figures out how to respond to guy and Todd and Madison.
0:46:57 Yeah.
0:46:58 All right.
0:47:00 Sam Altman.
0:47:02 Sam Altman, where are you?
0:47:02 All right.
0:47:07 Everyone, next time your chat GPT is down, you know, it’s got a very high reliability.
0:47:08 Sometimes it’s just that.
0:47:09 That’s what happened.
0:47:15 Guy put his book with Madison in and it’s still trying to figure out how do I tell them perfect?
0:47:20 All right.
0:47:23 So let me thank the Remarkable People team.
0:47:27 Of course, you even heard from Madison who made an appearance today.
0:47:31 So Madison is the co-producer.
0:47:33 The other producer is Jeff C.
0:47:37 Our sound design engineer is Shannon Hernandez.
0:47:43 And our ace researcher who prepares all this information for me is Tessa Neisner.
0:47:46 So that’s the Remarkable People team.
0:47:52 And Todd, when I work up the courage, I’m going to upload my Word file with that prompt.
0:47:55 And I’m going to see what happens.
0:48:02 This is Remarkable People.