How I write my blogs

I write one of these every week, sometimes twice. People ask how long it takes. The writing is the fast part.

What takes the time is the order. Most business writing fails for one reason — it opens with the writer instead of the reader. Nobody has ever finished an article that began with someone clearing their throat.

So I built a system. Three steps, same order, every time.

Step 1 — The problem

Open with the frustration the reader is already living with. Their words, not mine.

Not a topic. A problem. "Time management" is a topic. "You finished at six and cannot name one thing you did that mattered" is a problem. The first is a category. The second is a Tuesday.

If they do not recognise themselves in the first line, nothing after it matters.

Step 2 — The solution

Give the fix. Early, plainly, no build-up.

Then the part most people skip: why the obvious approach fails and this one does not. A tip without a mechanism is a slogan. The mechanism is what lets someone apply it to a situation I have never seen and will never hear about.

It also has to be small enough to do this week. Anything bigger gets admired and ignored.

Step 3 — The proof

Show someone well known already doing it. Researched properly — the source, the setting, the year. Never from memory, because the one detail you half-remember is the one that turns out to be wrong.

Then turn it. The point is not that a famous person agrees with me. The point is what most people get wrong about them: the empty calendar that looks like an easy life and is actually a defended priority.

Done properly, that section is what stops the whole thing being my opinion.

That is the system. Three steps, in that order, and the order is the part doing the work.

There is a fourth step. I am keeping that one to myself for now.

— JZ