Ian M Rountree

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On Being Definitive

January 10, 2011 by Ian Leave a Comment

We love to categorize things, don’t we?

We call people beginners, novices, experts. Gurus. Knowledge Workers. The name-calling never ends.

Or worse – the lists!

5 Ways to Rule the World

9 Things Your Mother Never Taught You

3 Simple Ways to Get Rich by Noon Online

How many of these lists have we seen? Lots, right? How many have you written? If you’re a blogger, probably half as many as you’ve seen. How do you back them up?

Have you done everything on your list? By the time you had written the first and second ways to get rich online by noon – why, you must already have been rich! How did you go about list item three? Did you bootstrap it all over again, from zero? Why? That’s kind of silly, isn’t it?

Categorization can be really helpful – it provides a means by which we can communicate effectively by allowing us to speak in groups rather than reiterating lists many times over.

However, when you’re giving advice online – or in any other public arena – please, make sure the list makes sense and isn’t recursive. Categorization and process are two very different things.

Image by Rob and Stephanie Levy.

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Filed Under: Content Strategy Tagged With: 2011 themes, lists, recovery, theme 1

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