This post should have been a tweet

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 17:18:23 +0000

TL;DR (the tweet version)

Most self-help books could have been a blog post. However, I think longer formats like books and long-form articles allow authors to present information/ideas with anecdotes/examples, which in turn allows the information to be better encoded into the brain.

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Have you ever finished a book and thought, “This could have been a single blog post?” You’re not alone. There’s a growing trend, especially in the self-help genre¹ , ² , ³ , ⁴ , ⁵, of books that stretch a single good idea into ~300 pages.

Many of these books take one (usually good) idea and then proceed to beat it to death⁶ over the course of hundreds of pages. Kudos to the author though, if someone asked me to write a book about “why checklists are good” or “why habits are powerful,” I’d struggle to write more than a paragraph.

I do think there’s something about reading or listening to long-form content that makes it stick with you much longer. I suspect it has something to do with the overall book experience, spending hours pondering a single idea. Not to mention, the anecdotes and examples presented in books (or long-form articles) also tend to aid with long-term retention quite well.

Most interesting books could be shortened, but perhaps to a longform article⁷ (not a tweet or blog post).

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1322163576 ↩︎
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5313716398 ↩︎
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4863236743 ↩︎
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1971653061 ↩︎
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1349944697 ↩︎
It must be pretty painful for the idea! ↩︎
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande was based on this article. ↩︎

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This post should have been a tweet

TL;DR (the tweet version)

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