Just give me the facts.

That’s all I want. Give it to me, the points I want, then let me be. I’ll extract what I need from the sources and be on my way.

This is how we’ve trained ourselves to read in today’s information overloaded world. Small snippets–scanned, extracted and used out of context, only to wonder why we have such a shallow understanding of things.

And, because we’ve fallen into the trap of this type of reading, we’re training ourselves to write this way as well.

Forget leading the reader.

Forget opening them up to the possibilities and taking them down the garden path as that is a waste of people’s time. We’re all too busy and heaven forbid we should spend longer than seconds digesting. The closest you’re going to get to longform writing that people will read is the same re-hashed copywriting seminar style that exploded on the blogging scene over a decade ago in an effort to lure people into sales funnels.

Highlight your main points, add some filler to meet a word count, and spend all your efforts on the clickbait headline.

Pardon my cadence if I sound bitter, but we are quickly being trained to provide (and look for) dopamine hits rather than content meant to satisfy, challenge, enlighten and consider.

There’s so much good stuff out there, and just like a cherry-picker who must climb the highest branches to get the best of the tree, we must train ourselves to ignore the low-hanging fruit and aim higher as well.