How To
Why is it that “how to” and “10 ways to” headlines are the ones that grab readers’ interest? Well, at least, those are the ones that I respond to.
The ‘how to’ genre seems bigger now; it feels like the self-help books are now articles on Medium or other media. “How to make money writing”; “10 things I wish I’d known” and “Four habits that pay off”… maybe these are just the ones that show up in my feed, based on my seemingly insatiable desire to spend time reading about how to do it better, rather than taking on the harder task of deliberate practise to actually do it better.
Reading the ‘how to’ fills a gap, and makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something. There’s a ratio to be aware of: consuming versus creating, and I tend to lean heavily to the consuming instead of creating.
Yet all of the evidence points to the efforts to do it yourself that pay off, not continuing to read about it.
One of the ways I have tackled the consume/create skew is this commitment to 30 days of writing, for every month that has 30 days in it (so that’s November, April, June and September). I still have to figure out what to do with February, so that there isn’t such a gap between writing efforts in November through to April.
Since the ‘how to’ genre appeals to me, it must appeal to others. Being able to provide guidance, systems or protocols to help others with wicked problems is the key to being helpful and being one that others turn to when they need to solve problems.
That makes sense — hiding your knowledge within, not presenting it to the world, that’s not helpful at all. Creating a ‘how to’ mindset will force your thinking into ‘help’ mode, rather than keeping it to yourself.
There are many things we do naturally, without thinking too much about, while others struggle with it every day. The ability to pick up the phone for a chat is one that flummoxes me; yet others seem to do it with great ease. Meanwhile I’m awkward and tongue-tied, and always looking to get off the phone. On the other hand, the ability to organise my day, write tight paragraphs, read for comprehension, and create checklists — these are things I can’t believe that others have trouble doing, but it would seem that they do. To me, they are ‘no-brainers’, and that’s why I have a hard time understanding that a ‘how to’ guide on reading for comprehension would be useful for others. Similarly, a ‘how to’ guide on writing paragraphs or being more productive through checklists: how can people not know how to do that? So — that’s the realisation and take away here: I keep reading how tos, and I keep wanting to know more and different techniques or skills or knowledge about all sorts of productivity hacks. So if I’m doing that, surely there are others. And similarly, that which I do well — others will want to read about how I do them well.
