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.

Post

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).