This is an All Ears English podcast episode 2055.
Harvard professor Todd Rogers on three ways to write well for a busy world.
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Writing well is for school, but writing effectively is for life.
In today's episode, our guest Todd Rogers from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government gives us evidence-based tips on how to write well, not for school but for life, especially in a busy world.
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Welcome Todd to All Ears English.
How are you today?
I'm good.
Hi, Lindsay.
Well, I'm excited to have you on the show.
I love having guests to get new ideas into the show for our listeners all over the world.
Guys, I would like to start off today's episode with a bio from Todd Rogers.
So today in the show, I have Todd Rogers.
Todd is a professor of public policy at Harvard University in the Kennedy School of Government.
He's the co-author of Writing for Busy Readers and he has trained thousands of leaders across hundreds of organizations on the science of writing for those busy readers.
We'll talk about that in a second.
Todd has received his PhD jointly from Harvard's Department of Psychology and the Harvard School of Business.
By the way, Todd, I love combining psychology and business.
Why did you decide to go in that direction of combining the two?
Well, I was really interested in how we can change behavior.
And it turns out that that's across lots of fields.
And so I think of it as the science of behavior change, helping people be more effective and, in the process, make better choices.
I love it.
I love it.
So today we're talking about writing effectively, and i want to call out a quote from our email exchange back and forth.
That i thought was interesting and i think will be a little bit provocative for our audience, because we assume that when we go to school, we learn things for life.
So here's the quote you said writing well is for school, but writing effectively is for life.
So can you tell me what you meant by that first of all, before we go into your core tips Sure?
Yeah.
I think it's really this key insight that Jessica Lasky Fink, my co-author on this work, and I had is that when we are taught how to write, we are taught how to write so that people who are reading it sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, from top to bottom, carefully fully understand what we mean and we are being clear.
But it turns out no one in the world reads like that.
Yes.
And so writing well is different than writing effectively.
Okay.
And that's what this all this work is about.
That's what this is about.
And have you seen a real shift in I'm not sure how long you've been, you know, at Harvard Kennedy School, or just in your studies and your work and your research?
Have you seen when did this shift?
Was it with blogging?
Was it with the Internet?
When did people stop reading top to bottom and the full article?
When did we start just kind of grabbing the low hanging fruit and running away with that?
I see.
I don't I don't I don't know that there's some specific moment of shift.
I think everyone is busy and it's possible we're more busy now, but everyone is busy.
And when they read what we write, their goal is to move on as quickly as possible, often without understanding what we were writing.
I love that.
That is such an important piece of knowledge.
So what we're saying is writing has to kind of be reinvented for the real world.
If we want to have success really in any field, of course, unless we're writing academic journals and papers, that obviously is different, but I imagine many other things in life.
We need to be concise.
So let's get into writing.
Well Todd, could you give us, for our listeners, three core tips on how to write well now, in the real world?
Sure.
Okay.
So the first we say, designed for easy navigation, which is when we are writing.
We need to be aware that our readers are skimming and jumping around all over the place.
And so if we design our writing to make it easy for people to jump around and find what they want, they end up being more likely to read it.
So, for example, using headings, we've run randomized experiments with 50000 people where a six-paragraph message if you add a heading every two paragraphs, it more than double the likelihood they read past the first couple paragraphs.
Okay, using headings.
So let's tie this to a context of where this tip will work.
I'm imagining blogs, but I'm sure there are more places that you're imagining to use this particular advice.
How should we think of this?
What kind of container?
So design for navigation, it could be...
The idea is that people are skimming.
And so it could be in an email where you put similar ideas next to each other to make it easy for skimmers to find related ideas.
Headings is one sub part of it.
But the idea is, instead of thinking about our writing as a series of words, it is also a visual thing that people are jumping around on.
And how do you make it easier for people who are jumping around?
Could be reports.
I work with companies and organizations that they're one pagers and their executive summaries and their full reports.
Adding more structure makes it easier for people to jump around.
Also in emails, like putting similar ideas next to each other and dissimilar apart, making key information immediately visible.
Like in the U S army, they have a thing called bluff bottom line up front.
Love that.
Yep.
Don't bury the lead, mm-hmm.
And it works in the army because a general writing to enlisted people, enlisted people writing to a general all right, the same way.
But in the real world that actually doesn't always work, because it could become off as rude or too direct.
If you start with your first sentence being exactly what I want from you okay, okay.
So we need to do other things to design, to assume yes, we're gonna move into the email or the blog post or the piece of writing, and Do you?
I mean how much of this becomes redundant.
Right.
When I write an email, sometimes if I'm putting everything in bold, underlining everything, I hit, that point of now, nothing is highlighted or designed for skimming.
Where is that cutoff point?
Let's say in an email.
Oh, yeah.
In an email.
We've run all these experiments where people interpret bold, underline and highlight, as the writer saying, this is the most important content.
Yes, and one thing that is a cool implication of that is that it makes it way more likely they read that content.
Yes, but it also makes them way less likely to read everything else.
That's right and so so you using these things carefully?
Uh, because there's trade-offs.
We have also run studies where you, you highlight lots of things or you vote lots of things.
It decreases the likelihood that any one of them gets read.
Of course, everything's become redundant.
Yeah, Yeah.
So would you recommend in an email to limit yourself then using this principle?
Number one, your first tip designed for skimming to one core idea in any given email.
Let's say I think email is the best context to use for this today, for our listeners.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, uh, in an email, I think the, I, I, uh, If we wanted to focus on email, I want to drop this one.
Can we do it over?
Because I do think that if we... We can broaden it out, Todd.
It's okay.
We can broaden it out.
Where do you see this being most useful then?
Designing for navigation for skimmers is useful in every form of writing, whether it's an email where we are aware that the single request we have is going to get lost if it's in the second and third paragraph.
So we may pull it out and separate it visually.
Or we have multiple ideas.
We want to add structure to it.
Or a report where we add structure to make it easy for people to skim and figure out exactly what they want.
The idea is writing for skimmers.
And it varies by by context and person, but the idea is everyone's skimming.
So we want to design to make it easy for skimmers.
I love it.
So design for skimming, just that new way of consuming material.
That is now what we do.
We no longer read, we skim.
Awesome todd, what would be your second tip for writing?
Well today, in in life, not in academia.
So the second would be less is more, which i've heard you talk about and everyone talks about, and one of the things that has really resonated is we've done hundreds of randomized experiments on this is that in the past typically, people fight over what is, they think, style.
They think it's a preference and a choice that like how should we write is taste.
But it turns out that when you use more words, fewer people read.
When you add more requests, you ask for two things instead of one.
You decrease the likelihood anyone will respond to any of it.
When you add additional ideas, you decrease the likelihood that any of the ideas get through, but more get through to those who read it.
So it's just a constant trade-off.
The more you add, the fewer people are going to read it.
Yeah.
It's so hard though sometimes, isn't it?
Really just saying one thing instead of five things.
It's a constant battle to kind of home in and say, this is exactly what I need to get across.
The one most important thing.
Do you find that difficult in your writing?
I do.
I know I do.
I do.
I mean, one thing that we, in my research lab, the rule is no email can be more than four sentences.
And and, and the way we do it is, we say the first sentence is some acknowledgement of warmth and humanity.
Like Lindsay, it was great talking to you on that pod.
Thanks for having me on second.
You asked me for more of the research on how adding more decreases the quality and likelihood of people reading.
See below for or see attached.
For more information on that, if you have any questions, let me know.
And so then basically, it just makes it so that there's no way the recipient will lose track of what exactly you're saying.
I love it.
It's refreshing.
And it allows you to add as much as you want.
It's somewhere else and they can go to it when they're ready for it.
Right, and keeping one email to one topic too, is refreshing, right?
Because then the people well, i know i do this.
This is not a great thing to do, but i use my email inbox as kind of a task list.
I know you shouldn't do it, but i do and so having just one idea tied to one subject line and one actionable item is convenient for me as a consumer of those emails.
Yeah, if you're getting 100 emails a day, lots of things coming in what do you think that's exactly right?
Uh, for me.
But we ran a survey of professionals on this and it turns out that we asked them would you rather have three items that you have to do, three requests, in one email or in three separate emails?
And it sounds like, Lindsay, you and me are both.
I'd rather have three separate messages because my inbox is my to do list.
Turns out that 75 percent of people preferred in one.
Weird.
OK, I'm surprised by that.
Obviously, this is like.
This is one of the one of the takeaways from when we teach this is there aren't.
What's universal is everyone is busy and everyone is skimming.
And if you and this is real like we should have real communication with the people where that we regularly communicate with, how would you like to receive this?
I work with schools and like would you like it by text message or email or printed form, and then this is where, like actual communication with the people who are important to us, we can make it easier for them and more effective for us.
That's a great point, Todd.
So it's really about personalizing it to that person.
If you want to get work done with people, right?
If you want to work in a silo, work on your own.
Maybe you can have things the way you want them, but we're never working alone, right?
We're always collaborating, especially in academia.
I would imagine you are.
So what would be your third tip then?
So, so far our tips are designed for skimming and then keep in mind that less is more.
So Todd, what would be the third thing that we need to know to write well?
Make responding easy.
And by that, here's the high goal of all this work.
I want everyone, when they write, to have a round of edit where they ask themselves how do I make it easier for the reader?
And if you make it easier for the reader, it's more effective.
It's kinder to them because it saves them time.
It's a waste of their time and attention if it's harder to read than it needs to be.
And it's more inclusive and accessible.
It's just easier to read.
And so one of those is like make responding easy.
If I'm asking you and we had an email exchange about this, let's find a time.
I could say that sounds great.
When is good for you?
Now there is a 72 chance.
I made up that number, but there's like some chance that that's going to be 12 emails back and forth and it's going to take us a month.
And sorry, go ahead.
Oh, no, sorry.
Go ahead, Todd.
Keep going.
Yeah.
And so, in whatever we're doing, the fewer steps we require the people to take, the more likely they are to do it.
And so, if we want you to respond, make it easy to know what the request is and make it not general, make it specific.
If it's asking for a time, propose a bunch.
If there's a whole chain of people who've said, oh, the first and second time worked for me.
Someone's like, only the third and first work.
If you really want that last person to respond... consolidate it, make it easy.
The people are more likely to respond if it's easy.
I love that.
Yeah.
And maybe take the next step and create a poll.
It's easy enough to use programs to create a poll, just to make it easy.
You know, it's really interesting that you said that, because i know my mindset.
Usually i, when i collaborate with guests on the podcast or really for any meeting, i will provide those times.
But the times when i say when works for you is when i'm feeling tired or i'm feeling a little lazy, and i know that's not serving the person on the other end, i'm asking them to take on the burden and that does create an extra five or six emails, potentially right, and so i love this.
So It's always stepping into the shoes of the person who's receiving this.
It's kind of a level of empathy that I feel like we should be going through our work lives every day thinking about who's on the receiving end.
Right.
But for some reason, maybe we just get so kind of involved with our work.
Why do we forget about this?
I think that our writing, we love our writing.
We put a lot of effort into it.
And it's really hard to purge.
So it's hard to cut.
And it's and it's obvious that if it's important to me, it's going to be important to you.
So I assume you're going to read it carefully and put the effort in.
So, like, here's one that happens all the time.
We're communicating across time zones.
And I say, what about one o'clock?
Oh, my gosh.
And it's like, do you mean Eastern Time or Greenwich Mean Time or?
Oh, you nailed it.
And so and so like.
If I was really trying to make it easy for you, I'd say all Eastern time.
I'd say what about the following times?
All Eastern time or, or whatever.
But the idea is just like you're saying like, take their perspective and try and make it easier for your reader, because it makes your mess, your writing, more effective and it's kinder.
Yeah.
You hit on my biggest pet peeve, right?
Is by assuming for some reason we're all in the same time zone.
We're never in the same time zone.
We do a lot of work globally.
I'm in mountain time, which no one really knows what that time zone is, but working with the coast.
And so, yes, so that goes back to the empathy.
Make it easy.
Immediately.
Either tell them the time zone you're working in or translate it to a more well-known time zone.
I love it.
Any final tips, any overall tips you want to leave our listeners with today, Todd?
We talked about everyone is skimming.
So you want to design to make it easier for skimmers, right?
Yes.
Less is more because the more you add, the more effort is required of your reader.
And it just makes them less likely to engage and even catch the key information.
And the third is make responding easy, because the easier we make it, the more likely someone is to respond.
So like the high level takeaway is the easier we should write to make it easy for our readers.
It's nice to them.
It's disrespectful to not do it that way because we are wasting their time.
But it's also makes us much more effective at achieving our goals, which is we have some goal that we're trying to convey.
And so make it easy for our readers.
That's the big takeaway.
I love it.
That is so good.
So hopefully our listeners will take this advice today.
Take a look at their emails.
Guys, look at your emails.
See what you're doing.
Are you actually making it easy for that person to get back to you?
Make a couple changes, as Todd has suggested today, and see what happens.
Todd, can you tell us about your book that's coming out in, I believe, early September?
Yes.
It's called Writing for Busy Readers.
It's co-authored with Jessica Lasky Fink.
And it's based on the science of hundreds of experiments that we and others have done on the six principles of how you write.
So busy people are more likely to read and respond.
And the TLDR version.
The too long didn't read version is that everyone is busy and everyone is skimming what we write.
And so we need to write in a way that reflects the reality of how they read, and the high level point is this is how to make it easy for our readers.
So good, so good.
Where can our listeners find that?
Where should they go to learn more about you, to learn where they could find the book?
So the book is coming out september 5, but it's able to be pre-ordered now.
It you probably best place is to go to the website writingforbusyreaderscom writingforbusyreaderscom.
And we've all sorts of resources.
We have a grade level, like you can paste things and it's a grade level reading.
So it'll evaluate how difficult it is to read.
We also have an AI tool that we train, an AI tool to edit your writing so that it applies these principles.
To show you what that looks like
Oh, super interesting.
I love it.
Well, thank you for coming on the show and these useful tips.
Again, I think our listeners are going to have immediate value out of today's episode and be able to implement this right away.
Thanks again, Todd.
Nice to meet you.
It's great being on here.
Thanks, Lindsay.
Take care.
Bye.
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