In trying to articulate and write about something the last couple of days, I’ve realized that my main problem is often the “ramp up” to what I’m going to talk about. What I mean by this is that I often want to write a post about a topic that relates to my work but before I can talk about that topic, I need to lay a foundation which can lay the groundwork that I discuss the topic upon.
What happens though is that I end up realizing that I have to spend so much time discussing the foundational groundwork that I end up just giving up on discussing the topic because it requires too much time and energy to lay the groundwork first.
What this in turn is making me realize is that I need to communicate my work in smaller bite-sized pieces that are digestible and not so overwhelming all at once. This in turn means communicating smaller aspects of my work that can scaffold and build upon each other, piece by piece (i.e. small pieces, loosely joined).
In fact, in thinking about this, another thing I’ve noticed is that in linking back to older pieces that I’m using as a groundwork to write a newer piece, I often notice that I’m often referring to just a part of the previous post because I have three or four different topics in the one post. So the person, referring to the previous post, may have to wade through the other topics before they find the one I’m actually referring to.
So again, too many topics in one post. Instead I should be writing small posts on each topic and then write another smaller post that weaves the different topics together (via linking) into a larger one that builds upon the previous topics.
Actually the closest example of this type of format would be Andy Matuschak’s Evergreen Notes system.
