‘The TL;DR, the too-long-didn’t-read of the whole thing, is that everybody’s skimming. So we need to write in a way that makes it easy for skimmers if we want to achieve our goals as writers.’
Todd Rogers has been using behavioural science for good for many years, from strengthening democracy to increasing student attendance, so his kids were somewhat underwhelmed when he turned his research to writing.
But think for a moment what the world would be like if everyone wrote clearly and effectively in a world where readers have little time and patience. Imagine the time not wasted, the offence not taken, the goodwill not squandered, the ideas not lost in translation.
Todd argues, and I agree with him, that better communication can lead to a kinder, more efficient world, and it starts with us. Whether it’s an email, a business report, or a book, here are practical ideas for writing that’s simply easier to read.
Writing for Busy Readers resources: https://writingforbusyreaders.com/resources/
Todd on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-rogers-6ba447/
Alison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-alison-jones/
The 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge: http://proposalchallenge.com/
The Extraordinary Business Book Club on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1447064765612358/
Alison Jones: I’m here today with Todd Rogers, who is the Weatherhead Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University, where he’s Faculty Director of the Behavioural Insights Group and Faculty Chair of the Executive Education Programme, Behavioural Insights and Public Policy.
He’s a behavioural scientist who works to increase student attendance, strengthen democracy and improve communication. And he’s also co-author, with Jessica Lasky-Fink, of Writing for Busy Readers, which, there it is, look, if you’re watching on video, he’s giving you the visual cue, which was named Smart Thinking Book of the Year at this year’s Business Book Awards.
So first of all, welcome, Todd. It’s great to have you here.
Todd Rogers: Thanks for having me, Alison.
Alison Jones: And secondly, congratulations. How does it feel?
Todd Rogers: Great! No, honored and very grateful.
Alison Jones: Well, what the listeners won’t know is that I was actually part of the judging committee that was assigned to the Smart Thinking category, which is absolutely the best category to be assigned to, I might say. And we chose your book as the winner and it wasn’t a difficult decision. It was absolutely standout.
So I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Well done.
Todd Rogers: Well, thank you. Yes I mean, I love the discussion we had beforehand that you found it particularly like practical and useful. And that was Jessica and my goal. So it’s incredibly rewarding to hear that.
Alison Jones: In our summation, we were making the point that writing is possibly the most undervalued, but ubiquitous business skill and that if everybody learned to write clearer emails and business messaging, the world would just be a happier place and much more productive and efficient and less confusing and oppositional place because so much misunderstanding happens through communication, doesn’t it?
Todd Rogers: The way we talk about it, exactly what you said, we would say it would be kinder also. It would, it is to write in a way that makes it easier for your reader to read, is more effective for us, and it’s also kinder to your reader.
Alison Jones: Yes and it’s not that hard. I think that’s a really important thing to take on board. We’re not asking you to become Tolstoy, in fact, we’re very much not asking you to become Tolstoy, overnight. But tell us about the genesis of the book, Todd. Where did that idea come from? At what point did you think, the world really needs this book?
Todd Rogers: Yes, just on the eve of generative AI being born, the story begins.
No, I will talk about AI in…
Alison Jones: Yes, let’s.
Todd Rogers: It started as I work on behavior change. How do we help people make better choices? I’m a behavioral scientist and professor and at one point spent 10 years working in politics, running hundreds of randomized experiments on how do we communicate to busy voters so they are more likely to read what we say, donate, volunteer, persuade, get out to vote. And then, and worked with one of the big political parties in the U. S. on this and ran lots of experiments.
Came back to academia and worked on instead, now how do we communicate to busy families? Trying to mobilize parents to support kids outside of school. And so ran dozens of these large randomized experiments to try to communicate to busy families.
And then my co-author Jessica and I started working on some papers in that space. And we realized that when we advise former students of mine and friends on communication, across all these domains, it’s the same problem: everyone is busy and everyone is skimming. And the TLDR, the too long didn’t read of the whole thing, is that everybody’s skimming.
So we need to write in a way that makes it easy for skimmers if we want to achieve our goals as writers. And so Jessica and I embarked on trying to figure out, how do we summarize and learn and make this accessible for people to write more effectively?
Alison Jones: And it’s such a great sort of pragmatic point because often I think when you’re writing you’re so in love with your material and it’s so interesting and nuanced and you have this vision of your reader leaning in and really engaging with the complexity of your argument and they are so not doing that.
It’s heartbreaking but they’re not.
Todd Rogers: Heartbreaking is the word.
I think, I mean, we do want to distinguish… like there is practical writing and you’ve been saying business writing, any kind of practice. Like it could be websites, it could be emails, it could be text messages, it could be Slack or Teams. It could be briefs and memos and proposals and sales pitches, anything where we actually want the reader to read it and understand it and maybe even respond, that’s the kind of writing we’re talking about. But there is beautiful, long form Tolstoy, poetry, whatever that, it’s just a different task, but practical writing, we’re not trying to, you know, inspire poetic beauty.
We’re just trying to effectively get from my head to yours in a way that you’ll actually read it and it’ll get into your head.
Alison Jones: Was it cripplingly self conscious writing a book about writing clearly?
Todd Rogers: Yes, a little, but I mean, I am so terse and Jessica is such a good writer. Like, she and I, we would, we are like very dogmatic about outlines. And so, the entire thing starts as outline and then, but in the end, it’s sort of exactly the counsel we give in the book. And I do these workshops, weekly with governments, businesses, NGOs on how to write so busy people read, understand, and respond.
And the takeaway at the end of it is always just, we should add a round of editing to everything we write, where we ask ourselves, how do I make it easier for my reader? Because when it’s easier for the reader, we are more effective. It’s also kinder and more inclusive. And so I say that as like, we wrote our book and then there’s a whole other round of like, okay, how do we make this skimmable?
How do we make it easier for people to navigate? How do we simplify the writing so that people who are going fast don’t have to re-read sentences because they’re complex? So it’s just like we say, just like it was just another round of editing at the end.
Alison Jones: Yes, you’re just walking the walk and you do, there’s lots of really tactical things in that, bullet points, headings, visual contents, the way that you explain a complex scene and how our eye dots around it, and then you can direct our attention. And you know, all that kind of stuff’s really, really fascinating.
I’m interested too, of course, it’s about the reader. Of course, it’s about what they take away from it and the outcome that you want to generate from that piece of writing. It’s a very leading question, but I don’t even care. Isn’t there some. impact on you as the writer when you force yourself to go through that process of going, what is the outcome I want here? What actually am I saying? If they take nothing else away, what do I need them to understand?
Todd Rogers: Yes, I mean, you’re a book person, so you’ll appreciate this and I hope your listeners do because it’s getting in the weeds in a way that I don’t think Jessica or I have talked with anyone about. But as we were writing the book, there are six principles and at the end, I hope you’ll include in the show notes, we have a one page checklist that’s easy to navigate on the six principles.
Alison Jones: I will put the link to that on the show notes. Yes
Todd Rogers: Thank you. And then I’ve also with a computer science colleague, we trained GPT 4.0, like sort of open AI’s large language model on the principles and tuned it for email, and it has hundreds of thousands of users that’ll just sort of like as a coach help with email, but that’s where we end, where we started, we had these six…. …initially seven principles and there was one that we were just, we decided wasn’t the principle for how to write better because you can’t write effectively without it, here’s what it was called: know your goals. Like it’s not a principle for effective writing because it’s like, it’s super, it precedes everything.
You can’t do anything effectively if you don’t know what your goal is and often writing clarifies our thinking. And that is like one function it has.
A second function it has is to communicate the magic of an idea from my head to your head asynchronously, you know, effectively and efficiently. And the first function of clarifying my thinking, sure, good, good.
But like, you can’t make it easy for someone to get the key point if you don’t know what the key point is. So it’s sort of, it precedes everything. And that’s, like you’re saying, know your goal. Like that’s, yes, we used to call it principle zero because you can’t do anything without knowing your goal.
Alison Jones: Cathy Rentzenbrink has a lovely phrase. She consciously shifts herself into before reader and after reader mode. So before reader, it’s just her and the text and then she’s grappling with it and it’s messy and she leans into the kind of uncertainty of it. And then after reader, it’s all about, okay, how do I communicate this to someone else now that I’m clear on it, which I think is a really helpful distinction.
Todd Rogers: Oh yes, no, I do like that.
We just talked about it as like these two functions, clarify my own thinking, and it’s great to do that. But when you’re thinking is clear, that’s not the end. That’s the beginning of where you actually do the writing to make it easy for the reader.
Alison Jones: Then it’s phase two.
Todd Rogers: Yes
Alison Jones: Yes, so how does it work in collaboration? And what was, so you’ve probably written a lot of academic stuff, I imagine, a lot of practical business stuff on your own. What was different writing with Jessica?
Todd Rogers: Well, Jessica and I have written a bunch of papers and so, academic papers, and what was different about the actual production of a book about writing for busy readers. And I actually have come to realize the title’s terrible because it’s not interesting. Like, I spent a decade working on getting people to vote.
And my kids are like, that’s good, Dad. Objectively good. I spent another decade working on getting kids to go to school and reducing absenteeism. And they’re like, that’s good. And then I spent the last five to ten years working on how to help, what I think is a higher order thing that like umbrellas over everything, how to help communicators be more effective across all categories. And my kids are like: writing better emails, Dad?
But, so the title is terrible. I’m starting to call my workshops and trainings on this, like, here it is, didn’t you read the thing with three question marks and an exclamation mark? Which is just like, the contempt: didn’t you read the thing? And so, yes, your question is like, what was the production process like, and the production process for us was, if we’re trying to understand this, in the past we were doing the primary research. Here, we were just reviewing across all these literatures, across all these fields what do we know about how skimmers skim?
And that includes vision, that includes literacy, that includes cognitive science, that includes behavioral science. What do we know about how skimmers, busy people, skim when they are trying to process something?
And then it was this deep dive into all these literatures. And in the process we were doing research. So I’d say maybe a quarter to a third of the research in the book is ours. And the rest is just great stuff that other people have done. And it was fun learning about it and really taking seriously that we had beginner’s mind and we just had a problem that we were, as researchers, trying to figure out what other people had to say about it.
Alison Jones: That’s so cool. So, if I were to say I don’t know, tell me something that you discovered in this process that was different from what you’d done before, what would you say?
Todd Rogers: Yes, thanks for asking. I love this. There’s a whole body of work that I, and a lot, like I said, lots of this research is stuff I had never seen before. We were just motivated by the problem, and one of the cool areas of research is on eye tracking. And we had, and you’ll remember from the book that I’ve never done eye tracking research, but what they’ll do is they’ll lock people’s heads into a little thing and then they’ll watch their eyes as they read.
And there is a common phenomenon, called period, yes, exactly, yes, period pause effect, where you go word, word, word, period, and then word, word, and people just sit at the periods. It’s really cool, and, and you can catch yourself doing it.
It’s because we were taught that a period tells you it’s the end of the idea, and so that means make sure you got it, and the longer the sentence, the longer the period. The more complex the sentence, the more likely you have to go back and reread. And anytime you add more effort, the more likely people are to quit.
And so it was just, it was this really cool. I mean, obviously you could kind of like figure that out without the eye tracking, but it’s just really cool to watch eyes and see how they report it. That like the more complicated the sentence, the more effort you have to expend to understand it.
And our whole thesis is if you want people to not quit on you and you want them to understand and you want them to engage at all, you have just got to make it easy. And complicated sentences that require re-reading multiple times may be grammatically correct, but they just are going to deter and disengage readers.
Alison Jones: And it’s not even, I mean, you’re talking about when you’re actually engaged with the text and you’re reading it, but you have a lovely example in the book of a sort of block of Danish text, and then the same thing sort of… and you just, I mean, I don’t speak Danish, but you look at that first block and you’re like, I just can’t.
Todd Rogers: Exactly. I just can’t.
Yes and what was cool was, you know, we don’t read Danish and I don’t know if you do, you, you seem erudite. You may, okay. So, and we also, you shouldn’t use words like erudite if we’re going to get to all the principles, I feel like you…
Alison Jones: …you’re amongst friends here. Don’t worry.
Todd Rogers: Yes, exactly.
Exactly. Book nerds. And so we can use words like that.
Alison Jones: You can use words like that. We like a bit of Latin.
Todd Rogers: Yes, yes, exactly.
So but we don’t read it. So what Alison you’re describing is there’s this like block of Danish text and then in one version, a block of Danish text, in the other version, it’s the same text, just every sentence is spread out with a bullet point.
And then they, some other scholars, had people read it for comprehension and it turns out that just the block of text people just skipped and couldn’t comprehend because it’s kind of just like visually intimidating, and so it leads people to skip over it or skim through it. And one thing that we have built on top of that is if you’re going to have bullets, a skimmer may be more likely to just engage with bullets than just a block of text. In addition, a skimmer has to read the entire bullet to know, or at least skim the whole bullet to know what it’s about. So one of the little like sub things that we suggest is if it’s going to be a long bullet, you may as well add a title to it so that a skimmer can figure out whether they can skip it.
Alison Jones: Signposting.
Todd Rogers: Yes, signposting; your whole goal is to make it easy for them to move on because they’re going to move on whether they understood what you wrote or not, like imagine, another thing that we often talk about is imagine if it was always your fault if the person didn’t read and understand what you said, normally we treat it as like, we throw it over the wall. I’m done. I wrote it. It’s on you now.
But like, but what if, we don’t have to own it, but imagine if we did for a moment, just like wear it, it’s my responsibility to make sure you read it. And I can’t harangue you. So then what can we do? Well, like, we can make it super easy for you to get the key info out.
Alison Jones: So I always ask my guests for their best tip. I mean, we could go on forever here with your best tips about writing, but I guess specifically, I want you to address people who are sitting down, girding themselves for the task of writing a business book.
What do they need to keep in mind?
Todd Rogers: The audience for my response to your question is people who are about to write a book, not people who are doing practical writing, is that so?…
Alison Jones: I mean, they tend to be both. There’s a massive Venn diagram kind of overlap there, but this is the Extraordinary Business Book Club. So, I kind of direct you towards a tip that’s for somebody who’s approaching a kind of book-scale project rather than an email-scale project.
Todd Rogers: Okay. I mean, I’m an outline guy and Jessica and I are kind of dogmatic about it. Man, I’m using fancy words between erudite, I just said harangue in the previous sentence. I’m like really owning them.
Alison Jones: I’m such a bad influence on you.
Todd Rogers: Yes, these are writers between the British accent and the authors as the audience.
I’m like, I’m really using my fancy words.
Alison Jones: There’s an ontological…
Todd Rogers: okay.
Alison Jones: …been so much better if I hadn’t messed up the word.
Todd Rogers: So I guess an author, I, think, other people have different processes, but for me, it’s outlines, like just outline, outline, outline. And in this case, I was surprised by how much joy I got, like truly surprised because I dread writing.
I dread, and I realized…
Alison Jones: No, wait, wait, wait. You dread writing?
Todd Rogers: Of course, I mean, yes, I dread it because well, what I’ve come to learn, and I think this may be a common, I don’t know how common it is, but what I’ve come to learn is what I don’t dread the writing or the research or the doing of the work. I dread not being able to get it done in the time that I’ve given myself and then there’s just this like cloud over me through the whole time that takes up cognitive energy and it’s just a voice of you can’t get it done in time, you don’t have enough time…
Alison Jones: …what were you thinking?
Todd Rogers: Yes, and so what was…
Yes. Yes. And so what?
Alison Jones: I imagine, I’ve obviously never had this myself.
Todd Rogers: Yes. You get in my head, get out of my head.
But for me, it’s like, so, one, outline, outline, outline. That’s just how I think and write. But I realize other people, writing is part of the discovery process for them, and then they have to… but for me, it’s like pretty dogmatic and rigid.
But then the other is the time. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed when I gave, because it was the first book I’ve written and first book Jessica’s written. And so we gave ourselves just kind of an indefinite, we just need to, like, we’re going to carve out time and I would spend two to ten hours on like, I’m writing a sentence and then I’d be like, I wonder what we know about that? And then I would go dive and it was just like, it was literally like no thinking experience in my life. Where I was not on the clock and I was not worried about how am I going to get this done in time? And what an incredible luxury and privilege to be able to do that, but it made it so much more And I think probably, I think I’m going to assert better, but that’s not for me to judge, but I felt more satisfied with it.
I was like, it was not about this sentence, it was about this idea. And then I was like, the writing was about the idea. And I’m like, well, I got to figure out what the answer to this idea is, and I would just go down these rabbit holes and sometimes they wouldn’t yield anything productive. And because I had given these so much, I’d like not given myself or Jessica a deadline on it to the extent that we could, we gave ourselves time. We control the inputs, not the outputs. Like it was just like, well, that’s cool. I mean, maybe it’ll come, maybe we’ll pursue it again.
I don’t know. It’s incredibly like luxury. And I’ve never for any other professional thing in my life had that orientation.
Everything else is like, it will be great if I get this done in the next 10 minutes. And I’ll hate myself if I don’t get it done in the next 30 minutes.
Alison Jones: And that’s a really interesting analysis of how, I guess, you know, academic writing is. It’s very performative, isn’t it? It’s very much, you’re writing for a really small, highly critical group of people, typically. And with a book, it’s much more led by curiosity and passion and the sense that this really matters and you want to understand it better.
So there’s a real kind of personal development stuff going on there as well.
Todd Rogers: Yes, and again, I’m naming the incredible privilege and luxury to be able to do that as the task. But yes, it was curiosity driven. I was surprised and I continue to be really surprised and want to chase it again. The curiosity driven learning of other people’s work that is not in my area.
And just try… and I don’t care about the thing that… and I’m interested in randomized control trials to demonstrate how people behave. I don’t care about why the author did the study or the motive or what the theoretical contribution. Sometimes I’m just like, Oh, like that Denmark, the Danish study you were describing. Their goal, they’re like entire papers about administrative burden and public management and whatever. I just care, their stimuli had these different formatting and I thought that was cool and Jessica did too. And so we, we pulled something totally different out of it than the authors did.
When I said chasing it a little bit, I don’t really want to write another book. Like, the writing is, I find writing to be brutal but I loved the learning about these topics and I am flirting with another idea that I would like to learn more about. And…
Alison Jones: …and dammit, you’re going to have to write the book if you do that.
That’s so funny. I love it.
I always,
Todd Rogers: What else do you get to pursue something that has the pretense of being productive, but it is just satiating your interest. Oh my God. I said it again. I use another word. It is just satisfying your interest.
Alison Jones: I find it incredible that if you gave yourself almost a blank check in terms of the amount of time that you could spend, I find it incredible you ever actually shipped the thing, you know, because you can, people spend years going down rabbit holes on this stuff. So, you know, well done you for actually pulling it together.
Todd Rogers: Well, that’s, I will never write anything by myself in my life. There are these deadlines that we have and I always have, like, I actually found myself and I mean, I think Jessica would be fine with me sharing this. I found myself like to my wife, like resenting Jessica, damn it, Jessica, why are you…?
And then I realized like, she’s done nothing. I just told her I would get this done by the end of the weekend. And she’s become this monster in my head and she has done nothing. But the deadlines, you know, we do all these games and I later worked through that it’s not a fair position to put her and our relationship in, as her as the enforcement monster.
And so I had to come up with new ones and my grandmother served for that one.
Alison Jones: Yes. I am many people’s enforcement monster and I love that role. Actually, I lean into it. I embrace it. I own it.
I always ask people, Todd, for a recommendation. You’re not allowed to recommend Writing for Busy Readers. I hope we’ve done that comprehensively.
But what book have you read that you think the world would be a better place if more people read?
Todd Rogers: Well, I have two in mind, but one of the principles of the book, is that less is more and if you ask people to do two things you decrease the likelihood they’ll do any one of them. If you write more you decrease how likely people will engage at all or finish if they do engage.
So I’m going to have to discipline myself and I am… this is hard because there are lots of books I love but I’m going to name one.
Alison Jones: I’m just laughing because I’m sure there’s something in your book about preamble as well, isn’t there?
Todd Rogers: Yes, I’m trying to use this as a chance to throw in more about the book so the people who are listening will learn more about the book and it’ll seem seamless but now it doesn’t. Thanks, Alison.
Alison Jones: You’re welcome. Call it. I call it.
Todd Rogers: Okay, so the book is, it’s called Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson. And it sounds, the title is so direct and practical, like my and Jessica’s title, Writing for Busy Readers, that both of them sound like they could be sold at a Kinko’s, like next to How to Make Good PowerPoints, you know?
But I think ours is more deep and substantive and useful. And this guy, Steven Johnson’s book is incredible. It is about where, how good ideas are generated, originated, and then ultimately how can we increase the likelihood that we have ideas that are novel and useful.
And the big idea that I remember from the book and that I talk about with my colleagues here at the university a lot is you encounter adjacent ideas. The phrase is the adjacent possible, you can’t innovate beyond what is next to you.
Alison Jones: Yes,
Todd Rogers: And so you just try to increase contact with adjacent ideas.
Alison Jones: So you’re increasing your surface area all the time because that increases what’s adjacent.
Yes. How lovely.
Todd Rogers: Exactly and then he also has a like, which you, it sounds like in the discussion we’ve had so far, will appreciate, he also has this whole section on long hunches, what he calls slow hunches. And, you know, like great examples through history of some of our great thinkers from, you know, Galileo and Darwin to, you know, Einstein and Twain or whatever.
And the idea is that sometimes they’re just like these little hunches that are in the back of your mind and it takes a long time for them to crystallize. And then it feels like they crystallized all at once, but you’ve actually been just noodling and they should, you know, picking up fragments of ideas that you cobble together and eventually crystallize.
You’re like, Oh yes, I just had this idea, but it actually came from lots of contact with adjacent things.
Alison Jones: Yes, it’s a coalescence rather than an immediate sort of thing that leaps into its entirety. Yes, I love that.
I think about Henry Mintzberg as well that I spoke to on the podcast a little while back and his advice was to cherish anomalies. And I always think that, you know, you just pick an anomaly, you pick another anomaly, and then suddenly you have this like anomaly pile and you’re like, this is really interesting.
And that’s, yes, that’s where the really good stuff comes from. Great, great recommendation, thank you, and good tip.
And Todd, if people want to find out more about you, more about the book, more about the work that you and Jessica do, where should they go?
Todd Rogers: writingforbusyreaders.com, and on that website, we also have the AI tool, where we have hundreds of thousands of users who just like, it’s a coach, you paste an email and it rewrites it as if you wanted it to be easy to read and skim. And it’s not the final word, but it’s a, I think it really supplements the people learning about how to do this in an applied way.
Alison Jones: Brilliant, love that, and I love that, I mean, AI is such a great tool, but that whole kind of delegating your email to AI, just, you know, tell me what I should write, it’s not so helpful, but that idea that you take something you’ve written, and then you improve it through AI, I think is exactly what we should be leaning into.
Yes, love that. Thank you.
And I’ll put the link on the show notes, obviously to Writing for Busy Readers, but also to the one pager that you talked about earlier, along with the transcripts of the conversation and all the big words maybe some dictionary definitions as well. So good to talk to you, Todd.
Thank you so much for your time today.
Todd Rogers: You too. Thanks for having me. And I hope this is useful to the listeners who are staring at blank pages.
Alison Jones: I’m sure it will be.
